More Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, 09:11 (10 days ago) @ David Turell

First cause

DAVID: Faith is not irrational.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote: “It is YOUR reasoning I am criticizing, not your God’s. Nobody knows God’s reasoning…” You replied:
DAVID: Welcome to faith which does not need rationality.

dhw: If you can’t find a reason to justify your faith, and your faith does not need rationality, how can you claim that your “faith is not irrational”?

DAVID: From previous: 'Evidence beyond a reasonable doubt' gives it rationality.

dhw: As usual, you are referring to the theory of design and God’s existence, which I acknowledge as being rational, though “beyond a reasonable doubt” goes much too far. You know perfectly well that I am talking about your illogical theories of evolution and theodicy. Stop dodging.

The wild Milky Way center

DAVID: I think it is all by reasoned design.

dhw: You cannot find any reason why your God would design billions of galaxies and trillions of stars (not to mention millions of irrelevant species) when all he wanted to design was a single system to accommodate us and our food.

DAVID: God has reasons I am not privy to.

Your inability to think of any reason once more illustrates the fact that most of your beliefs (apart from your argument for a designer God) are based on totally irrational faith, so please stop pretending that they are logical.

Microbiomes and post-surgical infections

dhw: Why did you “blame” [God] for the bugs? Why do you not blame him for knowingly allowing rape, murder, the Holocaust, although he must have known as you and I do that it is perfectly possible to lead a non-boring life without anyone committing evil?

DAVID: The necessary bugs are free to get into trouble. It is the way life has to work.

Yes, we know they were free to kill 50 million people in 1918, just as Hitler was free to kill 6 million Jews. And your omniscient God must have known what would happen when he gave them their freedom. Now will you please answer the bolded questions.

dhw: Which God do you wish for: the omnipotent one who is powerless to prevent evil, the all-good one who is to blame for natural disasters, or the selfless one who creates/allows evil in order to relieve his and our boredom?

DAVID: Same usual limp distortion. THE subject is human boredom! Stay on point!!

You keep forgetting the following:
dhw: I’m sure you’ll agree that your God, who you believe is interested in his creations, would find puppets pretty boring.

DAVID: Exactly!

And so he gave us free will because he would have found puppets boring. A very reasonable theory, which you have confirmed. What’s the problem?

DAVID: Apparently your desired perfection cannot exist.

dhw: “My” desired perfection? It’s YOU who claim he’s perfect, omniscient, omnipotent etc. but had to do this and that – thereby knowingly creating evil – and was powerless to prevent it, though he did his best!

DAVID: All secondary and required effects.

Please tell us if you regard the Holocaust and the 50 million flu victims as secondary and morally justified by the fact that such evil relieves us from being bored.

A new consciousness declaration

QUOTE:“The empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including all reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects.) (dhw's bold)

DAVID: there is no question animals are aware, perform purposeful activities and also can play. What they lack, as my bold notes, is self-awareness.

I don’t think anyone would argue that our fellow creatures have the same degree of awareness/self awareness that we humans have. The whole point is that they can think for themselves, which suggests that they can design their own lifestyles, strategies and modes of survival. What else would they use their consciousness for? I would also draw attention to “including, at minimum….” You have now published articles which completely support Shapiro’s belief that even individual cells have a degree of consciousness. Many thanks as always for your integrity in presenting all these articles.

New study on DNA repair

QUOTE: Luckily, cells have developed a complex set of repair mechanisms to protect vulnerable DNA and fix damage so that the cell’s genomic instruction manual remains intact.

DAVID: Did this defense develop because breaks happened early on, or was it designed from the beginning to avoid early loss of genes from brakes? Darwin-type unguided chance evolution could not have achieved this degree of controls.

I agree with your dismissal of unguided chance. It seems perfectly logical to me that, as with the whole of evolution, cells respond to new requirements. See above. The origin of all degrees of consciousness remains open to question, but the evidence of its existence in all forms of life is becoming stronger and stronger, extending to plants and to all cells and cell communities.