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

by dhw, Thursday, March 27, 2025, 11:37 (8 days ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

dhw: You approved of my statement that good and evil are human inventions based entirely on what is good for US, while bacteria do what is good for them – whether we think it bad or not! You don’t seem to realize that free will is precisely what makes a free-for-all! You agree that your God gave humans and bacteria autonomy, and so we and they are responsible for our own ways of survival and for what we humans categorize as good or evil. And that is an answer to the problem of theodicy: God did not create good or evil. He simply created a free-for-all, in which every creature does what is best for itself. This is a theory to explain theodicy. Please tell us why you reject it.

DAVID: In a dog-eat-dog sense your analysis is correct. It is purely a deist view. It throws out ethics and morals for humans. As as theist I can not accept is implications.

Of course it doesn’t throw out ethics and morals for humans! Have you not realized that ethics and morals are GOOD for humans – they are a vital part of our species’ ability to survive! But I’m suggesting they are OUR invention, not your God’s. I remain surprised that as a theist you continue to regard your God as the inventor of good and evil, refuse even to consider a logical reason to exonerate him from the creation of the latter, and also continue to ridicule him as an inefficient designer.

dhw: Next I point out its relevance [the free-for all theory] to theories of evolution:

Evolution

dhw: This applies both to behaviour (dog-eat-dog) and to design (responses to the environment). And so the free-for-all theory also removes the absurd illogicality of your own theory of evolution […], as organisms come and go in accordance with their autonomous ability or lack of ability to cope with changing conditions. […]

DAVID: Yes, free-for-all does not imply a directed evolution, just a struggle for survival.The 99.9% extinct produced/created the 0.1% surviving, a point you ignore.

Well done for realizing that a free-for-all is a free-for-all as opposed to being directed. I have not ignored your return to your absurd concept of reproduction! This was our very next exchange!

DAVID: Calling 99.9% 'irrelevant' to the 0.1% survivors is nutty. How did the 0.1% appear without them?

dhw: Because as you have said yourself, the 0.1% were only descended from those branches of evolution which survived. […] How many more times must we repeat what you have already agreed to, as follows:

dhw: Do you believe that we and our food are directly descended from 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived?

DAVID: No. From the 0.1% surviving.

dhw: When will you stop disagreeing with yourself?

Next comes yet another ridiculous response:

DAVID: I'm disagreeing with you. What is here in all the ecosystems that support us, is analyzed to show how evolution is a dispensary process, while achieving its results.

No one will deny that the ecosystems that are here are here, and no one will deny that vast numbers of species and ecosystems have been and gone and are therefore not here. As a result, give or take a few decimal points, 99.9% of what was here is not here now. You agree that the remaining 0.1% is descended from the 0.1% of survivors, i.e. is NOT descended from the 99.9% of all creatures that ever lived, but now you propose that every creature that is here now had 100 sets of mummies and daddies. For example, one set of figures tells us that there were 900 species of dinosaur, only four of which (therapods) have survived as birds. That leaves you with 896 species of dinosaur with no descendants although according to you they were all the mummies and daddies of birds! Please stop this nonsense and stick to your explicit agreement that the mummies and daddies of current species were the 0.1% of survivors and not the 99.9% which produced no survivors.

Cellular intelligence

DAVID: With a coded DNA conducting design, simple coding changes advance evolution.

dhw: […] Why is it unthinkable for you that the “code” is what creates the cell’s equivalent of a brain that processes all the information, decides what to do with it, and passes its instructions on to the rest of the community?

DAVID: That is exactly what DNA does from God's design.

dhw: Thank you for at last agreeing that your God might have designed autonomous cellular intelligence, instead of 3.8 billion years’ worth of preprogramming and ad hoc dabbling. Yet another red-letter day for the AgnosticWeb. As always, I shall record your agreement for future reference. […]

DAVID: I agree with your description recognizing it is all automatic, no thought involved.

You have quoted my argument in bold above: that the code (perhaps God-given) might be the equivalent of a brain which acts autonomously, and you dare to pretend that a brain which independently processes, decides and instructs means a brain that does not independently process, decide and instruct. Next you will be telling me that the word “intelligent” means “without intelligence”. Please stop it.