Autonomy and balance (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 05, 2016, 15:29 (3091 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Yes. Even bacteria need food for survival. Life is continuous organization against entropy (2nd law).
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> dhw: I take “yes” to be your agreement that the “balance of nature” simply means life continues in no matter what form. - Evolution of life is continuous, although interrupted by six great extinctions. 
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> dhw: 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!”) - A very acceptable summary, aside from the fact you do not understand Australia. They know what proper balance should be, but feral foreign species are damaging severely the original species balance. 
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> dhw: 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. - God is still the prime mover. Presuming He gave organisms a complexification mechanism (CM) He can probably anticipate the outcomes. - > We have long since agreed on saltation! We are discussing the autonomy of the inventive mechanism, as below.
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> 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.
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> dhw: And that is the concession I have been pleading for. Thank you. - Agreed