Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, January 07, 2016, 12:31 (3243 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay.-dhw: Your argument is all about humans being “here to stay”, not balance. Species are dying off by the dozens even now. There is no balance for them. According to you, 3.8 billion years of innovations, lifestyles and wonders extinct and extant have been preprogrammed just for us, and Nature is and always was “balanced” because here we are. “Balance for everyone” only means “for humans”.-DAVID : That is not what I have said. Our existence has nothing to do with balance of nature. The balance is required to provide energy for the living. The balance keeps changing as species disappear. All animals have natural predators. In Africa for the lion it is man.-In answer to my question how the weaverbird's nest etc. etc., fitted in with your anthropocentric concept of evolution, you wrote: “... you may not have recognized the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods.” (Tuesday, 5 January). Your usual reply, though, is that you don't know and I shouldn't question your God's logic. (Of course it's your logic I'm questioning.) However, if you are now going to argue that the balance of nature is required to provide energy for the living, and not just for humans, nature will be “balanced” so long as there is one organism left alive - probably bacteria. And so we have now effectively disposed of all the arguments you have used to defend your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution's history: 1) no forms of life beyond bacteria were “required”; 2) all species (broad sense) are “different in kind”; 3) the weaverbird's nest plus a million other innovations, lifestyles and wonders do not and did not serve the purpose of producing/feeding humans through the balance of nature. This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense. Time for a rethink...