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

by dhw, Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 11:41 (16 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The definition of habitability means all of life's requirements are available! What is your problem? My position still stands.

You don’t seem to take any notice of my responses (including the question about Venus)! Once more:
1)In the context of life’s requirements, the definition of habitability would be that environmental conditions are suitable for life. However, it is perfectly possible that other places in the universe are habitable, but do not contain the fine-tuned biochemical components which produce living organisms! In that case, even they are NOT fine-tuned for life.
2) Your problem, not mine, is your refusal to accept the fact that the entire universe cannot possibly be fine-tuned for life to appear if life can only appear in individual spots which (a) are habitable, and (b) contain the finely-tuned biochemical components of live organisms.

The entire universe is therefore demonstrably NOT fine-tuned for life to appear.

Theodicy
dhw: 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.

DAVID: Round and round. Stopping point.

I can understand your desire to stop discussing the problem when the only answers you can come up with are the blatant dodges I have listed.

God’s nature and/or purposes.
As you have now accepted that all your humanizing theories are possible, I’ll make a note of this agreement for future reference if needed.

Evolution

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

dhw: 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.

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

DAVID: Some strange branches were dead ends.

You have agreed that 99.9% were dead ends, so please stop telling us that “Humans were God’s goal in evolution. All animals and plants played a role.” And please stop accusing me of “distorting” your analysis when I reproduce your illogical theory that your God’s sole purpose was to create us and our food, and so he had to produce and get rid of 99 (or 99.9) out of 100 life forms that were irrelevant to his purpose, thus proving himself to be a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer.

Adler
I trust you will now stop blaming him for your own illogical theories. Thank you.

Polar bears’ deicing methods

DAVID: […] 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I have no idea. I think the bacteria are mistakenly in the wrong place. They can become resistant because we use antibiotics from nature which they recognize. God may have initially designed them, but has no further interaction.

There are bacteria which are good for us and bacteria which are bad for us. All of them do what is good for THEM. If your God has no further “interaction”, then clearly the baddies must have some form of autonomous intelligence to “recognize” our means of killing them and to find ways of overcoming them. You now have your God designing autonomously intelligent cells (the baddies) capable of devising their own means of survival. But you refuse to accept the possibility that the goodies might have been given the same autonomous intelligence, and that other cells and cell communities might also have been given the same autonomous intelligence. You admit that they behave as if they are intelligent, but you just happen to know that they are not.