Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 21:23 (3572 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 21:49

dhw: I still don't understand what you mean by “life stays in balance”. The 99% of extinct species suggest that it doesn't.
DAVID: Before humans got mixed up in covering the world, each environment had losses and gains of its inhabitants and life stayed naturally generally in balance. Organisms disappeared as new ones appeared, as the concept of natural selection tells us.-Natural selection only tells us why some organisms survive and others don't. If, as below, foxes kill off native species, natural selection will result in more foxes and fewer native species - i.e. a change of balance.
 
DAVID: Yesterday I saw an article that found foxes and cats introduced, by arriving humans, into Australia have killed off about 13% of all original strange animals known only to Australia which for millennia was so isolated. This shows natural balance vs. artificial disruption. I don't know what is so hard to understand.-I would suggest that evolution has always been a constant, higgledy-piggledy sequence of disruption and change of balance. Humans are just the latest in a long line of different contributory factors. 
 
dhw: ... You're happy to ask the atheist how chance could have done it, but complain if you are asked how God could have done it.-DAVID: I'm not complaining. My explanations for my belief in God don't just hinge on the point that evolution might have been God's method.-That is not the point at issue, since we both believe evolution happened. You keep saying God's evolutionary method was preprogramming and/or direct dabbling, i.e. he specially designed every innovation and unusual lifestyle. When I doubt the feasibility of this, and its relevance to the emergence of humans as your designated purpose, you reply: “You keep harping on how He does it, and I've freely admitted, I don't know.” I thought your dilemma lay between preprogramming and dabbling, but if you're merely saying "God did it and you don't know how", you're in the same boat as the atheist, who doesn't know how chance did it. 
 
DAVID: You don't accept chance either, so we can't be that far apart.-I don't accept chance, and I don't accept God, and I don't accept my panpsychist alternative, but I don't reject any of them. That's why I am an agnostic.-DAVID: Remember, my acceptance of God is based on lots of other factors besides the process of evolution.
dhw: That is a fair comment, and my own open-mindedness on the subject also incorporates other factors.
DAVID: Please, let's hear some of your other factors to explain toe source of the BB, fine tuning, life's appearance, and the majesty of human intelligence.-All of the above are directly linked to the three alternatives I have listed. Other factors that play a role in my open-mindedness on the subject of God's existence are connected with psychic phenomena and the mysteries associated with consciousness - emotions, aesthetics, reason, memory etc. With the possible exception of aesthetics, all of these are common to our fellow animals, though to a vastly smaller degree.