Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, December 24, 2016, 12:41 (2891 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Thank you for finally abandoning all attempts to link “balance of nature” with special design and the arrival of humans.

DAVID: I've not abandoned the link at all. It is you who is not willing to make the link from you agnostic position. You can't see purpose and I can. At least you have finally recognize balance for what it is, necessary food supply, supported by eco-niches requiring top predators. that makes the bush of life.

Nothing to do with my agnostic position, and nothing to do with not seeing purpose. The balance of nature, i.e. the supply of food for whatever creatures happen to exist at any time, does not require your God’s special design of whales, the monarch butterfly’s migratory lifestyle, or the natural wonder of the weaverbird’s nest. Life would have gone on just the same if your God had given them the means of designing their own evolution, lifestyle and home. This would explain the higgledy-piggledy bush of life, and it would remove the great gulf in your hypothesis between his desire to produce humans and his special design of organisms that have nothing to do with the production of humans. His purpose may have been to create the fascinating spectacle of life in all its diversity – and it may be that humans are a culmination of the process, perhaps as a result of his experimenting, or as an afterthought after he had lost interest in 99% of the species resulting from the process he had set in motion. Even as an agnostic, I have as much right as you to try and fit life’s history and a possible God’s purpose together in order to find a coherent pattern. I wish that, unlike W.C. Fields, you’d give a sucker an even break!