1. i didnt say it was, that's why it is in quotes. of course it isn't autonomous, its totally blind, but the metaphor usually works. evolutionary literature abounds with anthropomorphic language, but most people get that because its a useful way to communicate. anyways, we humans, we do make decisions, and what right do we have to introduce or delete species at will? I would argue that it is something that should be discussed more before we do not this mindless bs jurassic park stunt . this is an example of: "we can" therefore "we should". I don't think the first predicates the second.
2. i agree with you. we are probably in the midst of a massive extinction event right now (the 6th major one to occur), there was a good article on this in Nature in the last couple months. as gould has said, we could nuke the planet and nature wouldn't care ("care": thats a metaphor), life would go on. we'd be dead of course, but thats inconsequential to the machination that is nature and evolution.
3. this is a wooly mammoth we are talking about, not a recently killed off species.why waste time to resurrect a wooly mammoth? how about trying to preserve the biodiversity that we have now instead of wasting time on recreating the bloody Flinstones! at the very least if we restored a carrier pigeon that would have a bit more merit. my guess is this just a massive advertisement for some other business plan they have, like cloning your dog or cat. but again, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to. If we are able to recreate species going extinct and then introduce them back into their environment why wouldn't they just go extinct again? shouldn't we just fix the problem?
i don't think we disagree here!