Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, February 09, 2015, 14:45 (3575 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:Once again, a “balanced food supply” in whose interests?
DAVID: The survivors.
dhw: Put these statements together, and what have you got? God planned a balanced food supply in the interests of the survivors, but he didn't plan what was to survive.-DAVID: How do you know He didn't plan 'what was to survive?-I'm trying to understand your beliefs here, not putting forward my own. You wrote that the higgledy-piggledy bush entailed “planning for a balanced food supply at all times, not for survivorship” and specifically mentioned David Raup's belief that survival was accidental, though you did qualify it with “God may have made choices.” Please remember we are trying to find a convincing explanation for the diversity of life and the constant comings and goings, which you say amount to 99% of life forms but were all somehow geared to the production of humans. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant, but sometimes it is quite hard to follow your line of reasoning.-Dhw: If nothing explains consciousness, it doesn't really help much to say that consciousness was created by a consciousness which can't be explained!
DAVID: The explanation is that it always existed. Back to the issue that there has to be a first cause. -Back to the issue of whether first cause “pure energy” has always been a single conscious mind that knows all about everything, or evolves both consciousness and knowledge. 
 
dhw: You observe something that looks designed and conclude that therefore it is designed. You observe something else that looks intelligent (which you have admitted), and you conclude that it isn't intelligent. You have no way of actually knowing, but you impose your premises on what you observe.
DAVID: So do you. I know how single cells work. They are automated factories and are so described by biochemists. They have automated responses to stimuli, as do single celled organisms. -I try to keep an open mind and consider the merits of alternative views. As regards single-celled organisms - not to mention multicellular organisms, or cell communities - in addition to automated responses (which of course we humans also have in abundance), some biochemists believe they have a form of conscious intelligence. I needn't repeat the list of scientists or the list of attributes that they equate with that intelligence. Sometimes you accept the possibility and sometimes you don't.-DAVID: Because, as you know, I accept only either chance or design. One has to be the default.
dhw: Just as design by a human is design, design by a bird is design. Chance is not a factor here. We are talking about the inventive mechanism and not its source.

DAVID: I'm not arguing that point as you present it. I agree that animals appear to do some design on their own, but the basis of our argument is the issue of instinct as the problem. We do not know how it arises. Either the bird nest is a matter of repetitive attempts over many generations with epigenetic alterations or they were helped with design by pre-existing genetic instructions. I have my choice.

Of course you do. I don't have a problem with “design” as an argument. The problem for me continues to be the difficulty of fitting together all the bits and pieces that make up your choice: a 3.7-billion-year inheritable programme, divine personal demonstrations, the relevance of the nest and a 99% extinction rate to a balanced food supply and the emergence of humans as God's goal for evolution...