More miscellany (Evolution)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 09, 2024, 09:35 (135 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

DAVID: All apply as you point out. Proportionality is still the major answer.

dhw: For someone who prides himself on sticking to his own theology, you surprise me by your adherence to an answer which is not an answer. “Why would an all-good God create evil? Because there is a lot more good than evil.” His viruses killed 50 million people in 1918, but we can ignore that because lots more people survived. Wonderland logic!

DAVID: It is the most authoritative answer I can find.

And so you refuse to consider other answers, suggest a completely different one yourself (God wanted to “challenge” us and make our lives more interesting) and pretend that somehow it is “authoritative” to state that God’s reason for creating or allowing evil was that there is far more good than evil so we shouldn’t bother about the hundreds of millions of people who fall victim to the various kinds of evil he has created or allowed.

Back to David’s “schizophrenia”

dhw: Thank you for recognizing your problem, which is the utter absurdity of trying to defend blatant contradictions in your own theories, and in opposition to alternatives. Perhaps it is time for you to open your mind.

DAVID: With two different approaches my mind is wide open.

dhw: No it isn’t. Your two “different approaches” result in a head-on collision, but you still stick to your illogical theories and reject all logical alternatives.

DAVID: My two approaches mean my mind is wide open. As a believer my God is perfect. As a philosopher I recognize His warts.

Your Jekyll mind is closed, since you believe your God is benevolent. Your “philosophical” Hyde mind, however, tells you that your God can’t be benevolent because he is certainly not human in any way. And so your Hyde mind is also closed. An open mind would say: “We don’t know if God is benevolent or not.” And amazingly, that’s the mind you pretend to follow, although you don’t. See the evolution thread for more details.

Introducing the brain

QUOTE: “The planarian is thus not only the first animal to possess a brain, but may be the ancestor of the vertebrate brain.”

dhw: It’s only a theory, but planarians apparently go back 839 million years, i.e. 300 million years before the Cambrian.

DAVID: There were no complex brains before the Cambrian. That primitive neurons existed before them does not remove the concept of de novo creation of brains. Keep grasping at straws to remove the gap!

Why are you talking of complex brains and neurons? Of course an ancestor would be a simple brain, and the article, which you said was a great find, stated that the planarian possessed a brain. It was you who brought up the subject of neurons. Please tell me how an article which suggests that the planarian brain may have been the ancestor of the vertebrate brain comes to mean that the planarian brain could not have been the ancestor of more complex brains.

How the universe lit up

DAVID: what I find most interesting is the universe evolved from the time of the Big Bang, Assuming God in charge, note also that the Earth as well as life also evolved. God obviously prefers evolutionary processes over direct creation. I see this as purposeful evolution, not following the weird, humanized forms His aimless 'God' creates to enjoy or experiment.

Since the universe, our planet and life all evolved, it is reasonable to assume that God, if he exists, chose the method of evolution. This does not mean that his one and only purpose from the very beginning was to design humans plus food. If his aim was to create a free-for-all for his enjoyment, or to experiment with different forms of life, that would explain the comings and goings of all the species that had no connection with us plus food. As regards weird humanized forms, see the evolution thread and the clash between your two warring selves.

The complexity of cell division

QUOTE: As my college biology prof used to say, “The amazing thing is not that we get sick. The amazing thing is that we are ever well,” considering how many things must work correctly each moment of every day. Never become complacent about these realities taking place inside us. We are witnessing intelligent design at a level never comprehended throughout all human history." (David’s bold)

DAVID: cells are doing thousands of biochemical molecular processes every second and as the prof noted the vast majority of the time it all works just fine. This cannot happen by chance. It is the answer to objections in theodicy.

I agree completely with your professor and with you until you reach your silly conclusion. The problem raised by theodicy has nothing to do with the wonders of cellular processes. It concerns your God’s creation or allowance of murderous viruses and bacteria, and every natural disaster that causes suffering on a huge scale, plus all the evil created by us humans, which your omniscient and omnipotent God knew perfectly well would be the outcome of his giving us free will.