More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, July 01, 2024, 09:35 (143 days ago) @ David Turell

Why would God “challenge” us? (Now “theodicy”)

DAVID: I first entered Theodicy here.

dhw; You raised the subject, and then you told us we should forget about it because, for example, the 50 million victims of flu in 1918 are only “a small portion” of bad compared to good. Add that example to all the victims of floods, famines, diseases, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and all your God’s other deliberate “challenges” to make our lives more interesting. How do they support the theory of an all-good God?

DAVID: The good came with small side effects. Without the good would we be alive?

Theodicy does not question the good. It asks why an all-good God would create or allow evil. It is not an answer to brush aside all the suffering as a “small side effect”.

Offshoot from Giraffes

DAVID:[..] Evolution is a developmental stepwise process of creating desired forms from previous ones. Not the destructive distortion you use.

dhw: But YOURS is the destructive version, or do you not regard deliberate culling as destructive, e.g. your God chucking down an asteroid to kill off the dinosaurs? Under theodicy, you talk of proportion. In your theory of evolution, your God designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species. His stepwise creation of desired forms from previous ones involved 0.1% of the species he designed. No wonder you ridicule the destructive inefficiency of the purpose and method you inflict on him.

DAVID: Evolution under Darwin theory is OK for you. Under God it becomes a destructive mess. Your logic is distorted.

It is you who call your God’s form of evolution a mess. And deliberate culling of 99.9% of species could hardly be more destructive. Darwin’s theory makes no attempt to discuss God’s nature or motives or methods. Darwin only focuses on the processes that bring about the origin of species. Only my alternative theories discuss what might be God’s motives and methods, and none of them are as messy and destructive as yours.

Trilobites

DAVID: The Trilobites played a major role in the Cambrian ecosystem. Only God knows why.

dhw: And that sums up the whole of your daft theory. It makes no sense to you, but as you refuse to consider any other theory, you are confident that your God chose an imperfect and inefficient way to achieve the purpose you impose on him.

DAVID: Evolution under Darwin theory is OK for you. Under God it becomes a destructive mess. Your logic is distorted.
See above. Only your God knows why he would choose the destructively messy method and purpose you invent for him. You can’t think of a single reason.

Snake explosion

dhw: In answer to the quote, of course we can never know the precise conditions that gave rise to innovation, but the short so-called “waiting time” can be explained by intelligent design through intelligent cells instead of through some unknown and unknowable, sourceless mind. See the next article, however, for the REAL problem.

DAVID: God chose to evolve us stated theologically. He didn't tell us why. Intelligently acting cells are actually automatons following DNA instructions and not equal to a mind.

As usual, you dismiss all those scientists who believe that cells are autonomously intelligent, because you know best.

The brain

dhw: the very fact that so many of the complexities of the human brain are also to be found in the mouse brain confirms that for all its indisputable superiority, the human brain descended from earlier brains. This evolution can be explained by Shapiro’s theory that individual cells are intelligent enough to form all the different combinations that have formed all the different organs and organisms since the very first cells appeared. This would be the basis of what you call “natural evolution”. However, the ORIGIN of these cells remains an open question: the God theory is one answer and chance is another: I am agnostic because I find each answer difficult to accept.

DAVID: Chance is impossible. Obvious complex design implies a mind did it. I call it God.

Atheists have blind faith in chance. The complexities of the brain are nothing compared to the complexities of a mind powerful enough to create universes and design brains, but you have blind faith that such a mind can have come from nowhere and has simply existed for ever. You can each mock the other for your blind faith, and you are welcome to mock me for my neutrality, but the fact remains that nobody knows the truth.