Back to theodicy and David's theories (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Sunday, January 31, 2021, 08:37 (1391 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A laissez-faire deity would offer a precise and totally logical theistic explanation of this history, as well as solving the mystery of theodicy. Now please tell us why it DOESN’T explain the history and why it DOESN’T solve the problem of theodicy.

DAVID: I admit I have not solved the problem of theodicy, but it is your approach to maximize the minimal error rate to denigrate God.

There is no denigration of God in my proposal of a free-for-all, just as there is no denigration of God in the concept of free will for humans. If humans do bad things, we do not blame God. If bacteria do bad things, you are lost: you can’t understand why he designed them, but you hope that one day someone will come up with a nice explanation. I’ve given you one, and you can find no fault in its logic.

Protein folding creates life

QUOTE: There are many diseases which are caused by improperly folded proteins, for example, type two diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and also ALS, that’s the disease that Stephen Hawking had. (David’s bold)

DAVID: The point I'm raising is that without this folding process life cannot exist, based on the biochemistry we know. God had to create this roulette game of chance knowing that molecules must be allowed to fold on their own to achieve the speed needed. He was able to create a great many good editing systems, but those systems rely on the same protein folding process, so errors are at times maintained but somehow the errors are insignificant enough that we humans were successfully evolved from bacteria. dhw ignores all of this. Perhaps it is from the lack of understanding the biochemistry of life.

For the umpteenth time, it was you who raised the subject of errors, and now all you want to do is forget about them and focus on what went right. Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease may be “insignificant” to you, but even you had your God trying and failing to find a cure! In any case, the bad things of life are not confined to errors in the system you believe your God designed. You have again omitted to mention all the other “bad” things you think he designed – like bacteria and viruses, and apparently environmental disasters too. The problem of theodicy is not confined to errors in protein folding.

[..]

DAVID: God is too purposeful to want free-for-alls another way of misunderstanding ecosystems and the bush of life.

dhw: Back we go: you have said yourself that your God is interested in his creations. A free-for-all would be far more interesting than what you called a dull Garden of Eden. […] I do know that ecosystems are necessary for ALL forms of life, and there have been millions of them that had no connection with humans. What is the “misunderstanding”?

DAVID: Back we go to your weird God who has to create interesting things for Him to watch. God is obviously interested in all He creates.

So if he is interested and he created what he is interested in, why is it “weird” to suggest that he created them because he wanted to create something he could be interested in?

Asian weather patterns

DAVID: ...And once life began all the organisms that have appeared by evolution are an expected result of the bush expanding, except what you obviously always have to ignore, our most unexpected, unusual brain. That is the difference in how to think about humans, per Adler.

dhw: Who “expected” the trilobites, the dinosaurs, the duckbilled platypus etc. etc.? Were you around at the beginning of life, writing in your diary: “I expect trilobites, dinosaurs and platypuses, but I don’t expect H. sapiens”? Yes, we have an unusual brain, but ALL forms of life are unexplained, and nobody knows how cells arrived, or how they combined to form ALL the multicellular species that have come and gone in the last 3.8 billion years!

DAVID: It is our study of the history of evolution that leads thoughtful folks to recognize how unexplained we are, and therefore unexpected.

Unexplained yes. You have not told us who didn’t expect us, and you have not told us why whoever it was expected trilobites, dinosaurs and duckbilled platypuses. Yes, we are uniquely gifted. No, we are not the only unexplained creatures on Earth.