Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 06, 2015, 18:16 (3577 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: In that case, I'm not sure what your point is. Living organisms have to have food, but the balance is always changing, 99% of all species have disappeared, and somehow this proves that God has planned everything? -DAVID: Of course the balance is always changing. This is planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship. What survives is balance of food supply, period.-You make it sound as if your God's purpose was to create a balanced food supply, regardless of what ate it! Balanced in whose interests? How do you define a balanced food supply if different organisms require different foods, and when there aren't enough worms for Dicky Bird, he disappears? -DAVID: [...] very complex lifestyles point to a designer God, since it is extremely unlikely that the organisms, by themselves, could have created these complex ways of living. -Extremely unlikely, but possible - a description that fits all the hypotheses.-DAVID: You question why He did it, I don't. You seem to be implying life should be simple and straightforward and it isn't.-Absolutely not. I question your anthropocentric view of the diversity (plus the new idea that God planned a varied but “balanced” diet regardless of what organisms might survive on it). -DAVID: I try to reason why based on design because I don't believe chance can create these complex lives. Why do salmon go to sea for six years? I don't know. [...] I start with the premise that it is designed, because it looks designed, and for me I don't have to go any further. It simply fits.-Interesting. Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation? Once more you revert to your attack on chance. I don't believe the salmon's voyage, the monarch's four-generation migratory lifestyle, the spider's silk, or the weaverbird's nest are the result of chance either. But instead of a 3.7-billion-year-computer programme or separate dabbles, I offer an alternative: a form of autonomous inventive intelligence (possibly God-given), akin to though different from the autonomous intelligence you believe is possessed by us humans, who also do our own inventing. It may seem unlikely, but as you put it so succinctly, it simply fits.