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

by dhw, Friday, March 21, 2025, 11:10 (14 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: 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.

DAVID: I have included your addition.

It is not an “addition” but the ultimate, indispensable stage of fine-tuning which produces life instead of merely allowing life, and which is not present throughout the entire universe. But you can solve my “problem” very easily. Do you now agree that the statement: “The entire universe is fine-tuned for life to appear” is wrong? Yes, or no?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I opened the subject!!!

And since then you have offered us nothing but two blatant dodges and one blatant contradiction! Why did you raise the subject if you don’t think it’s a problem worth duscussing?

Evolution

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Raup did not discuss purpose in evolution.

So please stop pretending that his arguments in any way support your illogical theory that your all-powerful God’s only purpose was us plus food, and for some unknown reason he had to design and cull 99.9 species that had no connection with us.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You should not ridicule my faith in God.

I have never ever ridiculed your faith in God, for which I have the utmost respect. It is your faith in your illogical theories about your God’s purpose, nature and methods that I object to, and the only ridicule in these discussions is yours, when your wacky theories lead you to describe him as a messy, cumbersome and inefficient designer. The theory that cells are intelligent, and God may be a possible source of their intelligence, is an alternative to your faith in your illogical and partly insulting theories about him.