Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 08, 2015, 00:14 (3576 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You keep telling us that God planned or dabbled all the innovations and lifestyles, 99% of which have disappeared. Now you tell us he planned a balanced food supply and not survival. So were all the extinctions an accident or planned?-David Raup thinks accidental ("Extinctions: Bad Gene or Bad Luck".God may have made choices.-> dhw: Has the food supply remained balanced when 99% of the eaters and the eaten have disappeared? -Yes, for the living, which kept reappearing in large new forms and quantities.-> dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?-The survivors.-> DAVID: “Extremely unlikely” suggests against all the odds, don't you think?-> Yes, I do. And that applies to a know-all consciousness that's simply always been there as much as it does to a consciousness that evolved and to the miraculous creativity of chance.-And where did that evolving consciousness come from? Pure energy? Energy interacting with matter to invent consciousness. And I'll skip chance. You've said you don't believe chance can do it. The appearance of consciousness certainly bothers Nagel. He wrote a whole book about his discomfort at the lack of recognition by science that nothing explains it. -> Dhw: Bacteria look intelligent, but you start with the premise that they are automatons! Which comes first - the premise or the observation?
> DAVID: From observation.
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> dhw: The salmon's lifestyle looks designed, and therefore your premise is that it is designed. The bacterium's behaviour looks intelligent, and therefore your premise is that it is an automaton. Hm.-Did you notice you are comparing single-celled vs. multicellular? Vast difference. Try a different tack.-> DAVID: Kauffman does the same thinking [as you]. It avoids an agency such as God.
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> dhw: Why “avoids”? You make it sound as if God is the default position, and Kauffman is trying to wriggle out of it. Why should you automatically assume that a complicated bird's nest was not designed by the bird but by a vast mind that nobody knows anything about? -Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.