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

by dhw, Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 11:28 (17 days ago) @ David Turell

Fine-tuning

DAVID: As I pointed out, the discovery that the entire universe's structure was fine-tuned for life introduced much discussion about God, about the Anthropic Principal, etc. I base my thinking on that time.

The fact that Planet Earth is the only place in the universe which we know to be fine-tuned for life can also “introduce much discussion about God”, and indeed our very uniqueness has been used by none other than David Turell as evidence that there is a designer at work.

DAVID: This universe will allow life wherever it is habitable. We agree but you don't like it served up the way I view it.

I don’t like demonstrably false statements, and the fact that they are 30 years old does not make them any more acceptable. Yes, the universe will allow life wherever it is habitable, but a) the entire universe is not habitable, and (b) even if a place is habitable, that still doesn’t mean it’s fine-tuned for life, because the biochemical components of which all living things are made must also be fine-tuned. If you now accept that your statement (“the entire universe is fine-tuned for life to appear”) is demonstrably false, then we can agree and close the subject.

Theodicy

dhw: A recap on your answers: 1) don’t even think about evil – just focus on the good; 2) your all-powerful God is powerless to prevent evil; 3) your all-good God has created evil, but who cares so long as you are happy and are satisfied with your answers?

DAVID: This is why you have a mental block to faith.

The subject is not my agnosticism but the question how an all-good God can produce evil. Your answer is to put your head in the sand and ignore evil, or to inform us that your all-powerful God is powerless, but you are happy. Stop dodging.

God’s nature and/or purpose(s)

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!!!

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

DAVID: He may well have a different dictionary. My 'exactly' came from misunderstanding your sentence. "whether he loves us as WE understand love" is what I accepted. Sorry.

dhw: Recap: you have made the humanizing proposals that your God might enjoy creating, be interested in his creations, may or may not love us, might want a relationship with us, might want us to recognize his work and worship him. We do not know if any of these human thought patterns and emotions are true of him, but you think they are all possible. What do you object to in this summary of your thoughts?

DAVID: Nothing.

Thank you. Then please let’s have no more denial of possible human thought patterns and emotions, no more talk of concrete terms being “allegories”, and of your God possibly using a different dictionary from ours.

Evolution
dhw: You have agreed that 99 out 100 played no role in what you insist was your God’s sole
purpose, to produce us and our food. Hence your ridicule of him for his inefficiency.

DAVID: This is your usual distortion of an evolutionary process analysis.

Your analysis is that your God’s only purpose was to produce us and our food, and in order to do so he had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species that had no connection with us.
Listen to yourself:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our foods are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

What other reason do you have for ridiculing your God as a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer?

Adler
dhw: : […] you have told us that Adler does not cover the wacky, now bolded theories you propose above. Please stop trying to hide behind him.

DAVID: As my teacher I must use him.
And:
DAVID: Adler taught me how to think about God. You are getting the result.
And:
DAVID: Adler is distilled into my thinking.

Please stop blaming Adler for your illogical theories, your self-contradictions, your prejudices and your ridicule of your God.

Polar bears’ deicing methods
DAVID: I wonder about diving birds in the Arctic and other animals who are partially aquatic in their lifestyles. The evolutionary process has a solution for every challenge.

dhw: I agree. One might conclude that the cell communities of which all life forms are made have minds of their own (possibly created originally by your God) which enable them to find their own individual solutions to the problems posed by their respective environments.

DAVID: Only if they are guided by a designing brain.

By which I presume you mean God gives them instructions for every new response to every new situation. You just can’t conceive of the possibility that other life forms, starting with bacteria, have an intelligence of their own. Do you think murderous bacteria are guided by your God to devise defences against our human efforts to stop the killing? Please answer.