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

by dhw, Thursday, March 20, 2025, 09:13 (15 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Yes, using your definition.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Yes, under your definition.

March 3: DAVID: I have accepted the Wilsonian view of fine tuning in my statement.

Please tell me how it is possible to define “The entire universe is fine-tuned for life to appear” as meaning the universe is only fine-tuned for life to appear where there is a habitable environment and the biochemical components of life have been fitted together in a way that endows them with life.

Fine tuning from plate tectonics
DAVID: a fascinating study. Our life must have plate tectonics to arrive and survive. A part of fine tuning.

Precisely. This is part of the fine-tuned environment without which life cannot appear, and as it is not to be found throughout the entire universe, it is ridiculous to claim that the entire universe is 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I've listed the expert answers. I have nothing to add.

There are no ”experts” on the subject of a possible God’s unknown nature, and please stop pretending that your ignoring the subject, making an all-powerful God powerless, or being happy provides an answer to the problem.

Evolution

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Evolution required 99.9% loss in reaching humans per Raup. Yes, evolution is a cumbersome method of creation to reach a specific goal.

You told us that Raup provided this figure in his account of how successive extinctions led to new species. You did not say he believed that an all-powerful God had to design and cull 99.9 out of 100 species to fulfil his one and only purpose of creating us and our food. If he did, then his theory is as illogical as yours.

Polar bears’ deicing methods, leading back to the intelligent cell

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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. […] But you refuse to accept the possibility 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.

DAVID: I KNOW how bacteria react. I don't mean our cells are their equals as you try to invent.

I don’t “try to invent” anything. If you can accept bacterial intelligence, there is no reason why you should reject Shapiro’s theory that other cells may also be intelligent. You needn’t accept the theory. It is your know-all closed mind that I object to.