New Miscellany 1: theodicy, evolution, cellular intelligence (General)

by David Turell , Monday, March 24, 2025, 18:05 (10 days ago) @ dhw

The range of subjects is expanding, though many are interlinked. I’ll try to list them.

Theodicy

dhw: The problem raised by theodicy is how and why an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God created evil. A possible answer is that he is NOT all-knowing but deliberately created a system which produced an unpredictable free-for-all for ALL life forms, not just for humans, as they ALL use their perhaps God-given intelligence to design their own means of survival. (If God doesn’t exist, then of course a free-for-all is the only possible explanation of evolution’s history.) The concept of good and evil is a human invention, based on what we think is good for us. A murderous bacterium does what is good for itself. God (deistic form) merely watches the history unfold – has enjoyed creating it, and is interested in all its variations (thus confirming your own view that he enjoys and is interested). We have no idea what he thinks or feels about it all. But he is not all-knowing, and he has not deliberately created evil. If you set aside your own preconceived notions of God (“I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows”), you will see that although of course this can never be more than an unproven theory, it solves the problems raised not only be theodicy but also by your own wacky, anthropocentric theory of evolution. (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold is a correct view. It fits my point that evil is a side-effect of God's good works.

dhw: You have totally ignored the whole context of this theory! So-called good and so-called evil are not side effects but evaluations created by us humans solely according to our own interests! They are the direct results of a free-for-all – and a free-for-all is the very opposite of your view of your all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God, who started out with the sole purpose of creating us and our food, deliberately created all the “good” but was powerless to prevent the bad, or alternatively, we should ignore the bad because he deliberately created so much good, and that makes you happy.

You gloss over the fact of our free will from God allows humans to create evil!! Free-will bugs can cause illness, but most bacteria are beneficial and cause trouble when they slip into the wrong places. Bacteria are a required part of the balance of nature.

David’s theory of evolution

DAVID: Same answer: if God created evolution, and its endpoint is humans, of course humans were a goal.

dhw: Same old "iffy" obfuscations. 1) We do not know that the “endpoint” is humans;

We are the current endpoint.

dhw: 2) if God created a free-for-all, there is no reason to assume that he deliberately created humans

Evolution was a managed process, with n o evidence of free-or-all.

dhw: 3) even if he did, you have subtly changed one and only goal to “a” goal; 4) if he created every species, extant and extinct, and 99.9% of them were irrelevant to humans, then he must have had a different goal in creating them – although you dismiss this possibility, because you prefer to view him as a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer.

Your usual distortion of the orderly evolutionary process which when analyzed lost 99.9% of organisms to reach the current 0.1% survivorship.

Bacteria and the intelligent cell

DAVID: Being part of an organism creates a totally different [biological] environment than as a single cell. Survival is a community problem.

dhw: Do you really believe that single-celled bacteria don’t have to find ways to survive, and when they form a biofilm in order to enhance their chances of survival, they suddenly lose their intelligence? You’ve turned it all upside down: It is the environment that creates the need for cells to form communities.

My fault. I've correct my sentence in bold. When in an organism, cells function differently than free-living cells. Yes, environmental change forces responses.