Autonomy and balance (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, June 04, 2016, 02:21 (3093 days ago) @ dhw

dhw; But the balance is constantly changing! The ecosystems do not maintain balance, they change their balance. That is why 99% of species have gone extinct. The only “full-blown purpose” (if there is/was one) would therefore have to be changing the balance - so you must choose: did your God manipulate every change in organisms and in the environment (and hence in the balance), or did he leave it to the organisms themselves as they interacted with the uncontrolled environment - apart from his occasional dabble?-You are nitpicking. Of course the balance changes as organisms change, but balance is always adjusting and maintaining. It may be briefly slightly out of balance, but adjusts right back. The balance means food for all, the necessary energy life requires. Looking at the present, I don't think God is currently adjusting, but our time here is so short as humans we haven't seen any current evolution. We've seen balance out of adjustment, but it is due to human clumsiness with Australia as a prime example. Since we are aware of epigenetic adaptations, they may be all that is necessary now. We don't know how new species arise, but that is not your question.-> dhw;The literal meaning of “clairvoyant” is clear seeing, and I hope you will be able to see clearly that without the shrimp's crusher, nature would have had a DIFFERENT balance.-Of course. There are micro balances in each little isolated area on Earth. It is not one vast balance.-> DAVID: I'm agreeing with you. I like the idea of complexity for complexity's sake, with God's dabbling after the complexity appears, as He sees necessary.
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> If you agree that your God gave organisms the freedom to create their own complexities, as opposed to his preprogramming or dabbling every change, you have a clear explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush, in which the balance of nature is constantly changing through the work of the organisms themselves, following no “full-blown purpose” other perhaps than your God's “let's see what happens next”.-Once again contorting my thoughts. Certainly a complexifying mechanism running on its own gets to the h-p bush, and God can then step in to help iron out problems, because in my view the whale series has to involve intellectual planning as a result of the phenotypic and physiologic changes demanded by the giant alterations. My God is certain of what happens next, while all this is going on.-> 
> dhw: I'm afraid I still can't take to the idea that the autonomous inventive mechanism creates complexities for their own sake without any particular function, bearing in mind the fact that all the different species extant and extinct, weird or not weird (by your standards), arose through innovations that must have worked. In the context of your God's “purpose”, diversity for its own sake sounds more feasible to me, as organisms explore the different possibilities of survival/improvement.-Complexities for its own sake best explains the whales to me. That is a weird and difficult series of changes, making the situations more difficult to solve instead of simply better. Of course, what survives today worked.
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> dhw; Finally, if your God designed an autonomous inventive mechanism which created all the complexities that resulted in all the diverse species, and if you believe in common descent, that mechanism can only be situated within the cell communities that go to make up each organism. -Yes, within the organisms that existed at some layer of their DNA genomes.