Evolution took a long time (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 29, 2016, 13:29 (2886 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Once again, what is your criterion for right and wrong? (Please answer.) If it’s that life should continue, any old balance will do. If it’s what is good for individual species, then history reveals a balance that was 99% wrong.
DAVID: What I am presenting as wrong is when humans arrive in a new area of the Earth and change the balance from the original form, i.e., Australia, Yellowstone, New Zealand as prime examples. In each case the introduction of improper new species or the destruction of an existing species made an ecological mess of things. What was naturally wrong for 99% of extinct species was a change in ecosystem balances they could not adapt to, which is a part of the evolutionary spectrum of activity, not a fault of the system. We've agreed the balanced is in constant change throughout history. Please note that I am discussing the current balances only (!) which have only two important attributes: they can easily be messed up by humans, and natures balance is important as a food supply.

I join with you in condemning humans for the ecological havoc they are causing to our planet. A totally different subject from “balance of nature” as your God’s purpose in designing all the evolutionary innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct so that life could go on until humans arrived. Your argument is relevant only to what has happened AFTER humans arrived. Thank you for making that clear.

DAVID: Research may well show why whales, monarch migration, and weaverbird nests are necessary.
dhw: Necessary for what? […] I sincerely believe humans would also survive without the weaverbird’s nest. Don't you?
DAVID: That is your belief. we don't know that as factual. I believe that every organism is there for a reason, not necessarily apparent to us.
dhw: I know this is your belief, which is why I pick on the weaverbird’s nest to show how unreasonable it is. So do you honestly believe that life would end or humans would perish without the nest?
DAVID: Of course not. But there may be long term effects we cannot understand now.

Since you believe God deliberately designed the nest, and since you are constantly criticizing me for not seeking purpose, and since you do not have a clue what your God’s purpose might have been, perhaps you might just possibly consider the option that God did NOT design the nest but endowed the bird with the intelligence to do its own designing for its own purpose, as do all nest-building birds and all home-building animals, including humans.

DAVID: You missed my point. I am discussing God as a perfect designer, with the human retina in mind. It is atheists who complain about it, while science shows how perfect it is.
dhw:We were discussing whales, monarchs and the weaverbird's nest in the context of my possibly God-given autonomous inventive mechanism hypothesis, and I don’t see how atheists complaining about the retina make my hypothesis illogical and atheistic.
DAVID: Because whatever is complex in current evolution must have God's input, as in the retina. Not ever autonomous, semi-autonomous. See my entry today about the human living complexity.

An admirable article, but you are now repeating your disbelief in an autonomous inventive mechanism. Your disbelief in a possibly God-given autonomous inventive mechanism does not make the hypothesis illogical or atheistic.

DAVID: …If organisms are free-wheeling in producing new complexity, if that drifts off course toward humans, God will guide it back. Inventiveness and guided all at the same time.
Dhw: By freewheeling, I understand that organisms organize their own evolution, lifestyle and wonders, which means they have an AUTONOMOUS inventive mechanism. To be precise, the weaverbird designed its own nest. Perhaps you should tell us next what you understand by freewheeling.
DAVID: Free-wheeling means the organisms are possibly free to invent and try out modifications, perhaps though epigenetic mechanisms, but God reviews and exerts final design formation. […]

Being possibly free to do their own inventing and trying out would require the means to do their own inventing and trying out. That freedom would therefore require an autonomous inventive mechanism, because if it was not autonomous, it would not be free. If God exists, he can dabble, which I take it is what you mean by “exerts final design formation”. How much he has dabbled throughout the history of evolution can only be a matter of conjecture, but if he preprogrammed or dabbled every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder you can think of, you leave the freewheeling inventive mechanism devoid of freedom and devoid of inventiveness. Either the mechanism is free and therefore autonomous (UNTIL it is dabbled with) or it is preprogrammed. “Semi-autonomous” is sheer weasel.