dhw: We agreed long ago that the balance of nature means nothing more than life going on. It does not explain why your God would specially preprogramme or dabble the platypus or the weaverbird's nest. The drive to extreme inventiveness "to see what evolves" is precisely what I have outlined above. That is very different from the “guided” drive to extreme inventiveness to produce what has already been planned. It's good to see you slowly moving towards my hypothesis!-I've gone about as far as I can go, based on what we know.