>Al, you say "Nature is the enemy" ? Nature is nature and it certainly is
not
>the enemy ! Were it not for nature, you for one would not exist ! The
>viruses,the mites, the bacteria, etc., are all nature's natural controls.
They would
>most likely "not have gotten to the present out of control state" if man
>were not constantly messing around with this and with that - and
subsequently
>throwing all nature out of balance. You also need to remember that, because
>life depends on other forms of life to live.
 
Your argument gets weak the first time you or I go to a doctor. We, at that
point are fighting the "natural controls". If we have had medical help to
survive before we reproduced, we have foiled natures best plan to stop the
weak genetics from spreading. Our (or our parents) trip to the doctor was
"throwing all nature out of balance." I for one would have been dead years
ago as a result of bacteria and viral attacks.
 
>I'd like you to consider Al, which form of life is responsible for the
>most massive everlasting irreversible destruction on this lovely planet
>- the mites or us humans ? I don't see any mites putting their trash in
>our local town dump that threatens our water supply!
 
Would you be willing to include other "natural" processes such as ice ages
(before greenhouse gasses came from autos) and the like? How long ago did
the virus start killing things off? Why think of putting trash near the
water supply as anything other than a selection process?
 
>Those bits of life that couldn't make it, that you blame on nature for
>running into extinction, are simply examples of genetics that didn't work
>in the environment in which that bit life was living.
 
Yes, but now man (and what man does) is now part of the environment in which
these things live. We are part of the same "nature". If something we do puts
reproductive pressure on another species then we are doing nothing more or
less than what an ice age did long before man existed. So if man kills it
off then its genetics just didn't work in the environment in which it was
living.
 
We were brought in by this "nature" and are now part of its process. In a
way nature has tended to spread out and then weed out. Could one think that
man is just the lastest weed-puller? Creatures that we like (for whatever
reason) are given a survival advantage, and things we do not care about are
selected against. Bees that do well in boxes are given an advantage over
bees that do well in trees. Are there today, more European bees in boxes
than in trees? If so then the bees being liked by man has given it a
survival advantage.
 
Anyway, the context of the original post was that in keeping bees in boxes,
nature was not our friend. Maybe if we stopped trying to keep bees in boxes,
stayed within ten miles of our place of birth our entire lives and did not
form tools out of wood and rock all would be well. I am just glad that I do
not think anything I wrote in this post is true :)