Autonomy and balance (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, June 05, 2016, 12:52 (3091 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Since 99% of all species are extinct, who do you mean by “all”? Life means living organisms, and what you are saying in effect is that so long as life continues and there is food for whatever species happen to be around, nature is balanced. If every organism on earth except bacteria were to die, nature would therefore still be balanced, because life continues!
DAVID: Yes. Even bacteria need food for survival. Life is continuous organization against entropy (2nd law).-I take “yes” to be your agreement that the “balance of nature” simply means life continues in no matter what form. -dhw: When you say balance is out of adjustment, you presumably mean that human interference is causing mass extinction of species. Before humans, it was nature that caused the mass extinctions. But there was/is still food for the survivors, so how do you know what constitutes balance and imbalance? 
DAVID: If life continues nature is balanced or attains balance after an extinction.-After an extinction it changes its balance. If balance = life continues, it is pointless to claim that balance is “out of adjustment” so long as there are still living organisms - as there are, for instance, in Australia. You have constantly given “balance of nature” as a reason for your God dabbling in order to create innovations and natural wonders, but life would continue without the whale's blowhole and the weaverbird's nest. I suggest that if there is any purpose at all, it would appear to be diversity and change, and since you now accept the possibility that your God gave organisms the intelligence - though you still refuse to use that word - to organize their own innovations (and of course I also include the natural wonders), we have a clear explanation for the seemingly random history of the bush. Your God may occasionally dabble, but the rest is worked out by the organisms themselves in conjunction with the ever changing environment - which (theistic version) he may also have designed to come up with its own higgledy-piggledy comings and goings, apart perhaps from his occasional dabble. (“Let's do a Chicxulub!”) -DAVID: 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 […] My God is certain of what happens next, while all this is going on.-dhw; “Running on its own” means the organisms themselves and not God are responsible for the higgledy-piggledy bush. That is not a contortion. If you insist that your God is clairvoyant, that is your personal reading of his mind and has nothing to do with the autonomy of the organisms. 
DAVID: You are contorting. God gives the organisms the mechanisms to use and the bush appears. I would assume that He knows the bush is coming with the help of his mechanism.-Where is the contortion? I have granted the possibility that your God gave organisms the mechanism. You have granted that the mechanism may run on its own. If so, it is the organisms that create the bush, not God. Yes, he will know that a bush is coming, because that is why he gave organisms the mechanism in the first place. But each twig is the product of the autonomous mechanism, and he will not know what each twig will be unless he is clairvoyant. Whereas in your hypothesis of preprogramming plus dabbles, your God had to specially design every single innovation and natural wonder.-dhw: I can't remember now what website you referred us to in relation to whales, but this one seems to me to offer a very clear account of their evolution, with explanations of the changes.
DAVID: Of course the explanations are clear! Everything works with survival. I'm referring to the advanced planning required to move a nose to a blow hole, conceive, birth, and nurse under water when it has never been done before. Look at the required planning, not the survival results. This is true saltation and the point of my discussion.!-We have long since agreed on saltation! We are discussing the autonomy of the inventive mechanism, as below.
 
dhw: But if you think your God had to dabble to fix it all [the whale], that's OK with me. It is the autonomy of the mechanism with the bush spreading “as it wishes” that is my point of focus.
DAVID: It may have worked that way.-And that is the concession I have been pleading for. Thank you.