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

by David Turell , Saturday, March 22, 2025, 19:57 (12 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: More obfuscation. Why have you substituted "support for life" for "fine-tuning"? You have agreed that life is impossible without a fine-tuned environment and fine-tuned biochemical components. You have agreed that the ONLY place in the universe that we know combines these two indispensable fine-tuned factors is Planet Earth. But you believe the entire universe, most of which we know does NOT contain the fine-tuned environments or fine-tuned biological components without which life is impossible,is neverthelesss fine-tuned for life to appear. The difference between us is hardly “slight”, as you agreed on March 3, as follows:
DAVID: Why attack my construction? I have accepted the Wilsonian view of fine-tuning in my statement.

I have now repeated my attack on your absurdly illogical “construction”, and I do wish you would abide by your agreement so that we could close this subject.

Let's close with our slightly different views.

Theodicy

DAVID: I have offered the faithful answers. You keep pounding the same old points. We have exhausted the subject for now.

dhw: You have offered answers that are either irrelevant or self-contradictory, and you have rejected my own possible answer: that your God, who you believe might enjoy creation and be interested in his creations, created precisely what he wanted to create: a free-for-all, based on the autonomous actions and reactions of the cells with which he set life’s history in motion. Having done so, he sat back and watched (a form of deism), though he might possibly have intervened when he felt like it (a learning God akin to that of process theology). At a stroke, this solves the problem of theodicy while at the same time explaining the endless comings and goings of different life forms. It's just a theory, but of course it doesn’t fit in with your preconceived notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God who is powerless, or who does more good than bad, or who makes you happy.

I don't see how your described God solves the problem of evil, which must be part of a free-for-all.

Evolution
DAVID: Raup did not discuss purpose in evolution.
And:
DAVID: Raup in no way supports me. I don't know why God chose to evolve us.

dhw: So please stop quoting Raup, and please stop pretending that you know God’s sole purpose in creating and culling 99.9 irrelevant species was to produce us, and please don’t disown your own humanizing theories as to why your God might have wanted to create us in the first place.

No pretense: a history of evolution delivers us, God's endpoint goal.>

The intelligent cell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Cells do what God designed them to do, no more. I think all automatically.

dhw: Perhaps your God designed them to do their own designing. Shapiro thinks autonomously. I find his thinking more convincing than your view that 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed - or alternatively dabbled ad hoc with - all cells, providing every response to every new situation for every life form throughout the history of life.

Still touting secondhand design. All organisms can adapt to minor new challenges.

Cell metabolisms control developments

QUOTE: Instead of thinking about the gene expression networks just happening to interact with metabolism, it’s really metabolism driving [developmental decision-making],”

DAVID: so, it is not just genes ordering everything around. There is an active interplay and feedback from metabolic enzymes directing the cells toward goals. This cannot happen by chance.

And since "developmental decision-making" occurs through interaction with such factors as the environment, it could hardly happen without some form of intelligent processing within the cell, the goal being its efficiency in enabling its survival and that of its community.

All done with automatic responses.