Autonomy and balance (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, June 04, 2016, 11:31 (2882 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But the balance is constantly changing! The ecosystems do not maintain balance, they change their balance. That is why 99% of species have gone extinct. The only “full-blown purpose” (if there is/was one) would therefore have to be changing the balance - so you must choose: did your God manipulate every change in organisms and in the environment (and hence in the balance), or did he leave it to the organisms themselves as they interacted with the uncontrolled environment - apart from his occasional dabble?
David: You are nitpicking. Of course the balance changes as organisms change, but balance is always adjusting and maintaining. It may be briefly slightly out of balance, but adjusts right back. The balance means food for all, the necessary energy life requires.
 
Since 99% of all species are extinct, who do you mean by “all”? Life means living organisms, and what you are saying in effect is that so long as life continues and there is food for whatever species happen to be around, nature is balanced. If every organism on earth except bacteria were to die, nature would therefore still be balanced, because life continues!
 
DAVID: …We've seen balance out of adjustment, but it is due to human clumsiness with Australia as a prime example. […] We don't know how new species arise, but that is not your question.-It is very much my question, since "balance of nature" is so important to your concept of God's planning. Did he do it all, or did he leave it (mainly) to the organisms? When you say balance is out of adjustment, you presumably mean that human interference is causing mass extinction of species. Before humans, it was nature that caused the mass extinctions. But there was/is still food for the survivors, so how do you know what constitutes balance and imbalance? (See above)-DAVID: I'm agreeing with you. I like the idea of complexity for complexity's sake, with God's dabbling after the complexity appears, as He sees necessary.
Dhw: If you agree that your God gave organisms the freedom to create their own complexities, as opposed to his preprogramming or dabbling every change, you have a clear explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush, in which the balance of nature is constantly changing through the work of the organisms themselves, following no “full-blown purpose” other perhaps than your God's “let's see what happens next”.-DAVID: Once again contorting my thoughts. Certainly a complexifying mechanism running on its own gets to the h-p bush, and God can then step in to help iron out problems […] My God is certain of what happens next, while all this is going on.
-“Running on its own” means the organisms themselves and not God are responsible for the higgledy-piggledy bush. That is not a contortion. If you insist that your God is clairvoyant, that is your personal reading of his mind and has nothing to do with the autonomy of the organisms. -dhw: I'm afraid I still can't take to the idea that the autonomous inventive mechanism creates complexities for their own sake without any particular function, bearing in mind the fact that all the different species extant and extinct [..] arose through innovations that must have worked. In the context of your God's “purpose”, diversity for its own sake sounds more feasible to me, as organisms explore the different possibilities of survival/improvement.
DAVID: Complexities for its own sake best explains the whales to me. That is a weird and difficult series of changes, making the situations more difficult to solve instead of simply better. Of course, what survives today worked.	-And what survived yesterday also worked. You don't get fossils of organisms that didn't live! I can't remember now what website you referred us to in relation to whales, but this one seems to me to offer a very clear account of their evolution, with explanations of the changes.
 
	The evolution of whales - Understanding Evolution
http://www. evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03-But if you think your God had to dabble to fix it all, that's OK with me. It is the autonomy of the mechanism with the bush spreading “as it wishes” that is my point of focus.-dhw; Finally, if your God designed an autonomous inventive mechanism which created all the complexities that resulted in all the diverse species, and if you believe in common descent, that mechanism can only be situated within the cell communities that go to make up each organism. 
DAVID: Yes, within the organisms that existed at some layer of their DNA genomes.
-Thank you for your agreement. For further discussion, see “protozoa”.