Balance of nature: wolves and bears (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, February 17, 2017, 14:30 (2836 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Not fair. Skips balance of nature, providing energy for life to evolve. Life dies. Evolution implies passage of form from simple to complex. Of course 99% are gone. That supports my analysis.

dhw: So wild animals are perfectly capable of working out a necessary balance for 99% of them to die. Anyway, I thought it was your God who worked all this out, by specially designing them so that life could keep going (with a 99% drop-out rate) until he could dabble with the brains of a few of their descendants. Why is this “not fair”? I thought that was your theory.

DAVID: God designed the species so balances could be maintained. It is my theory. You twist it.

dhw: I thought I was merely restating your theory. Please tell me what I have twisted.

DAVID: Of course 99% die. That is evolution, and one of your twists. Balance of nature is absolutely necessary, and you sneer at it as a concept.

I have not twisted the extinction of 99%, and whatever happened constitutes the history of evolution. It does not mean that your God had to design all the species, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct in order to produce humans. A particular balance of nature is absolutely necessary if particular species are to survive (as in the articles you have quoted relating to foreign invaders). That is quite different from the ever changing balance of nature that marks the history of evolution. All you mean by it in that context is life must go on if evolution is to go on. Nothing whatsoever to do with your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution. There would still be a “balance of nature” if humans disappeared.