New Miscellany: fine tuning, theodicy, evolution (General)

by dhw, Sunday, March 16, 2025, 09:02 (19 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You don't understand my emphasis. This universe is fine-tuned for life to appear. That is a primary requirement. Then habitability must exist somewhere for life to appear. A two-step process. Both equally important.

dhw: It’s a lot more than two steps, but in any creative process, fine-tuning is the final step. It is blindingly obvious that unless a planet offers hospitable conditions, it cannot be called “fine-tuned for life”. Would you say that Venus is fine-tuned for life? If not, why not? Your answer should tell you why it is absurd to say that the entire universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: We agree and disagree. On a different universe with different basic fine-tuning in its structure life cannot appear.

We are talking about THIS universe. Of course if a different universe was different, it would be different!!!

DAVID: It happens that this universe is totally fine-tuned for life wherever it would like to appear. All I am emphasizing is a non-biological fine-tuning must come first. That was the major point of discussion thirty years ago, the unique fine-tuning of our universe and its theological implications.

All of a sudden we have a personified life, which says to itself: “I wanner appear just
there!” and the only “just there” we know where life would like to appear is Planet Earth. Maybe on its wanderings, life found that the rest of the universe was NOT fine-tuned for life, and so it decided not to appear there! I couldn’t care less what people were discussing 30 years ago. Welcome to March 2025. You refuse to accept that fine-tuning is the final stage of any creative process, although on March 3 you accepted “the Wilsonian view”, and as usual you have ignored a direct question, which I will now repeat: Would you say that Venus is fine-tuned for life? If not, why not? Your answer should tell you why it is absurd to say that the entire universe is fine-tuned for life.

Theodicy

DAVID: I think He is powerless to prevent human evil.

dhw: Our discussion includes all the murderous viruses and natural disasters for which he is responsible. But in any case, an all-powerful God should not be powerless. On the other hand, an all-good God should not willingly create evil. You see how complex the problem of theodicy is?

DAVID: You refuse to accept how the problem is answered by the proportionality concept that religious people are comfortable with.

Most religious people have probably never heard of theodicy. Your belief that you’ve solved the problem by pretending that evil disappears if you only think of the good is simply head in the sand.

Evolution

dhw: The question is not whether God uses a different dictionary from ours,

DAVID: Yes it is!!! […] He understands our words in our meanings, but He may use them for Himself in some other way unknown to us.

dhw: I do not believe for one second that YOU did not use the words with the meaning we all give to them. The question is whether he loves us as WE understand love, not whether his dictionary gives a different definition of “love” from ours.

DAVID: Exactly!!!

So stop telling us that the question is whether God has a different dictionary from ours!!!

Nature’s Wonders: octopus rape

dhw: Don’t you agree […] that it demonstrates intelligent cooperation between bacteria and the cell communities of the octopus? Or do you think your God gave different instructions to the female's and the male's bacteria and cell communities?

DAVID: Same instructions.
And:
DAVID: Is God using evolution to create logical?

dhw: If God exists and we believe evolution happened, then of course it’s logical that he used it. What is not logical is your absurd theory that he used it for the one and only purpose of designing us and our food and therefore designed 99 out of 100 species unconnected with us and our food, and designed the female octopus to eat the male octopus and designed the male octopus to paralyze the female so that she couldn’t follow his instructions.

DAVID: So God's evolution is logical. And it can certainly be logical God's desire was to produce the human brain, the only biological form that could think in a way similar to His thinking. Adler uses it to prove God!!

I’m beginning to wonder if you actually read my posts. The two bolded theories above are absurdly illogical. So you ignore them.

dhw: (under “savannah”): I have offered you alternative “God-given” interpretations of evolution’s history, and you even acknowledge their logic, but your beliefs are now fixed and your mind is closed.

DAVID: So is yours. You refuse to accept Adler's view of God.

I have no fixed beliefs: I neither believe nor disbelieve in God, and I offer alternative theistic interpretations of evolution, not beliefs. Adler uses humans as evidence for belief in God, who may or may not love us. I have no objection to these possibilties. But you have told us that Adler does not cover the wacky, now bolded theories you propose above. Please stop trying to hide behind him.