Balance of nature: loss of species may bring extinction (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 26, 2018, 12:53 (2434 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID’s comment: The balance of nature is much more important than the dhw approach that it always changes but life survives. This article is probably overstated, but we could starve ourselves out of existence if we are not careful. And we are currently running the Earth's systems to some degree.

dhw: A grossly unfair remark, totally ignoring the context of my “approach”! You know perfectly well that my comment concerns the history of evolution and not current ecology! I fully support your concern over what humans are doing to the environment. I do not support your argument that your God created the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush in order to “balance nature” so that life could continue until he was able to produce the human brain. There is no connection between the two subjects. Shame on you!

DAVID: Not unfair. Balance of nature is one pillar of my theory, which you constantly poo poo, as above. The two subjects are intimately connected providing energy for life to continue over 3.8 billion years for evolution to proceed to the present. Could the evolution have proceeded without food for the survivors? Of course not. Competition for food does mold how evolution proceeds.

Of course life couldn’t go on without food. And the balance of nature changes according to which organisms can find enough food to survive. That has absolutely nothing to do with 1) your theory that evolution was guided towards the production of the human brain, and it has absolutely nothing to do with 2) the fact that humans are currently CHANGING the balance of nature in a manner that endangers both themselves and other species. You are simply using the term in two different contexts and trying to make out that 2) somehow bolsters your case for 1). It doesn’t. And I most emphatically do not underestimate the importance of the threat posed by 2).