Hi Carol,

> the purpose of
> a deer's muscles could be said to be to get that deer away from its
> predators as fast as possible so that it can live to have more baby
> deer, but the deer's predators have been evolving right along side
> them

This may sound kind of religious, or a little on the philosophical side,
but the way I think of this issue you're addressing, is that the entire
living world is kind of like one mega-organism, with overall survival and
evolution of itself as its goal. And so, just as the organism of the human
body is continually striving for balance between all sorts of cooperating
and conflicting factors, so it is with the giant "organism" of the living
world of plants and creatures. Deer and wolves kind of balance each other
out, in terms of the overall evolution of the "organism," just like calcium
and oxalates, or insulin and glucagon, in the body. In fact (at the risk of
sounding like a real space cadet) I think of the entire universe in those
terms.

So, at any given moment, some things are "sacrificed" and others are
"enhanced," but this is all part of a gorgeously intricate, cooperative,
and
benign, "upward" movement towards something even better and more wonderful
than
currently exists.

I believe this happens in a real way  --  like with squirrels and nuts, or
deer and wolves, or birds and seeds, for instance, not just that it's a
pretty sounding theoretical argument.

Well - I just let GenieBoy take a look at this post, and he says he has NO
IDEA what I'm trying to say here. Think I'll send it along anyway, though,
in the
hopes that maybe it's not quite as unintelligible if you've been following
the recent thread.

Love,  Liza


--
[log in to unmask] (Liza May)