.A Tight Ship .An extravagant nature Much of the extravagance of nature is what we incorrectly project from the Earth onto the universe. However, the Earth does display more than its share of extravagance: consider the one million species of beetles and the ~10^10 humans.
How does the Principle of Sufficient Reason speak to the one million species of beetles? Well, all those beetles do keep the entomologists busy, and there is nothing wrong with that. One might ask what would be a more proper number of species, but why not just suppose the more the merrier?
When it comes to humans, more is not always merrier. Much suffering may be attributed to overpopulation or at least to a too rapid growth of population. However, if we consider that the Earth and its inhabitants are one of a kind, it is more understandable that folks and beetle types would be dying to have their moment in the Sun, particularly if we are coming to the end of the moments. Our millennial population will be a matter of much deliberation.
One way to solve the population problem would be to have designed a bigger Earth. We do not know all the ins and outs of the Anthropic principle and how much leeway we are allowed in matters of design. This problem may be related to the problem of the monster group, which remains in abeyance. We have to continue to suppose that the Earth is the best of all possible worlds until we have firm evidence to the contrary. This, of course, does not mean that there is not room for continued human improvements, and improvisation. There will be plenty for us to think upon and work on over the course of our Millennium.
But let us return briefly to the beetles. To what do we ascribe their extravagance of morphology if not directly to evolution? First of all, evolution’s explanatory power has been vastly overrated due to the virtually unrestrained wishful thinking of the evolutionists. Evolution explains the world simply because it must. An idealist may appeal to an ideal, virtual evolution, or simply to the very idea of evolution. Evolutionists and entomologists do much of the work in the teleological matrix. The collective spirit of the beetles themselves in conjunction with a creative Nature should not be left out of consideration. There are plenty of smarts at the top and in eternity for Nature to fill its many niches without having to chain God to the drafting board or trying to teach virtual atoms to jump through metabolic hoops.
There is good reason to suppose that nature can employ fractal design from the top down, and that this strategy could be employed on the biological front as well, thus the extravagance of nature. God could use a fractal CAD/CAM computer instead of a drafting board. This is in a manner of speaking. I believe in the immateriality of Pentium chips, but what supersedes computing on the cosmic level in the teleological matrix is still well beyond our comprehension. Suffice it to say, what transpires is more holistic than digital. We may also rest assured that none of the extravagance is wasted.
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rev. 12/5/99