Balance of nature: saved in New Zealand (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 01, 2016, 13:17 (2696 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Let me keep this in context, as you sometimes try to conflate all these examples with your theory that all innovations and natural wonders were part of God’s plan to balance nature to provide food to keep life going so that humans could arrive on the scene. The question, as always, is “important for what”? If the great white butterfly, rats, stoats and possums all disappear, nature will be balanced in favour of all the enemies of great whites, rats, stoats and possums. Nature was balanced in favour of the dinosaurs until it wasn’t. The term is meaningless as an explanation for the course of evolution. But I think we can say with some degree of certainty that it is important for humans that the balance of nature should favour humans. And it is important for rats that the balance of nature should favour rats.

DAVID: The concept is so simple. Life survives on available energy sources, which requires animal eating animal or plants. Of course the balance favors those who survived. We survived and are benefactors of that balance, so of course it is of importance to us. Your contorted discussion simply supports my point of view.

And David’s comment: (under biodiversity) Whether humans are the ultimate purpose or not is part of our debate. Accepting that we are here and in control, biodiversity is what made it happen. This explains the need for the bush of life. God knows what He is doing.

I’m sure that if God exists he knows what he is doing. My scepticism concerns whether YOU know what your God is doing. All forms of life depend on and have always depended on there being food for them to eat, which means there has to be biodiversity. The fact that 99% of species have disappeared suggests to me a free-for-all (which would have been your God's intention). It does not suggest to me that your God designed the brontosaurus and the trilobite and the weaverbird’s nest and the duckbilled platypus in order to ensure that humans could appear on Earth. (But my theistic evolutionary hypothesis allows for him to dabble, perhaps in order to give humans their extra degrees of consciousness.) The concept is so simple….