Theodicy (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 22, 2020, 19:03 (1491 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are the one who thought God created so he could have a spectacle. I certainly think He is interested in His creations, but not as entertainment. It is the vast difference in how each of us views God's personality, a difference you always skip past.

dhw: It is you who used the word entertainment, not me. In my comment above, I have not offered a single comment on God’s personality beyond our agreement that he would watch life on Earth with interest. Why do you think he would watch life with interest but would not have created life so that he could watch it with interest?

You used 'spectacle', which implies entertainment.

DAVID: Again the same view of chopping up time into discontinuous parts. The process of evolution produces the future from the past.

dhw: That has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that (a) evolution produced millions of branches unconnected with humans, and (b) that if he designed all the bad bugs etc. before we were around, and watched them with interest, he clearly didn’t design them so that they would make life more interesting for us!

We do not know why bad bugs exist. You forget He knew humans ere coming on the scene.

DAVID: […] God gave us exactly the system/reality He wanted and the only system of living organisms He could produce required by the necessary biochemical speed of reactions, which includes His design of giant molecule enzymes to make sure the speed exists.

dhw: […] We agree that he gave us the system/reality he wanted! I am not disputing “the necessary biological speed”. I am suggesting that he wanted all the errors and the bugs and meat-eating monsters and parasites whose “selfish” behaviour is mirrored in most forms of evil. And this in turn makes life more interesting than a dull Garden of Eden.

DAVID: On that point I will agree.

dhw: Good news, then! We agree that your God is interested in the world he created, but you have no idea why even before we were around, he would have designed bad bugs and parasites and meat-eating monsters, whose “selfishness” is the root of most evil. I suggest that their existence made/makes life more interesting for him than a dull Garden of Eden would be. But I go one step further: I propose that he didn’t design them all directly, but just like your free-to-make-errors molecules, he gave all cells the freedom to find their own means of survival. This theory relieves us of accidental, unavoidable errors (caused by a fault in the system he designed, and suggesting incompetence as he tries and fails to correct some of them) and of deliberately creating evil (exemplified by the bad bugs) – a pretty scary thought, which I’m sure you and most of your fellow believers would rather not even contemplate.

You still don't understand the biology of life as designed by God as I view it. The bold is not a fault but a requirement for free molecules in the soup of life. Your God gives freedom to life to do what it wants. I see it as under very tight controls from a very purposeful God.

X
Under “error corrections III and IV”:

QUOTE: "If a mismatched base pair, bound strongly by a transcription factor, makes it through the DNA replication cycle without being repaired by another type of protein—known as a repair enzyme—it can become a mutation, and mutations can lead to genetic diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration. (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: The mechanism described appears to make it easier to produce mutations. But note the bold. There are repair mechanisms present to reverse DNA mistakes and resist mutations.

QUOTE: "Vital functions of multicellular organisms, such as growth, development, and tissue regeneration, depend on the precisely controlled division of cells. A failure in the underlying control mechanisms can lead to cancer.

DAVID: […] This study shows the complexity of mistake controls designed by God.

dhw: And every case of cancer and neurodegeneration shows that the repair mechanisms don’t always work. God’s incompetence? Surely not. "What God wants, God gets. "God gave us exactly the system/reality He wanted" (D. Turell)

Exactly