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

by David Turell , Sunday, March 30, 2025, 18:01 (4 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

DAVID: A side effect is the unintended result of any action. A byproduct is the same. Yours is a non-answer to the issue that God does not cause evil.

You now present us yet again with a God who produced something he never intended to produce. As with your theory of evolution, your omnipotent, omniscient, all-good God is a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer. However, bacterial and human free will suggest that he wanted to create a free-for-all, in which his invention of the intelligent cell would autonomously provide the ever-changing history which is the reality of the past, present and, no doubt, the future. You agree that the concepts of good and evil are a human invention, based on what we think is good for us or bad for us, and what we regard as a bad bacterium is only doing what is good for itself. So if God gives you and them free will, is it you/bacteria or God who “cause evil”?

Humans and bacteria create evil.

Evolution

dhw: ….and you have ignored the dinosaur example, as you strive to distract attention from your belief that your God is a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer. Please explain what other reason you can give for ridiculing him in this way?

DAVID: Explained: evolution is a cumbersome way to create.
And:
DAVID: I obviously have no answer as to why God used evolution to evolve us. I am convinced we ere His purpose.

dhw: It is only cumbersome and inefficient if you impose a purpose on it and then insist that your God personally designed but had to cull 99.9 out of 100 species that were irrelevant to his purpose! But you would rather ridicule your God than open your mind to any alternative theory, because as you once confessed: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.”

Teleology is something you must exclude from evolution because it evokes a designer.

Cellular intelligence

dhw: You have quoted my argument […] 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.

DAVID: He coded DNA to give responses automatically.

dhw: More obfuscation. If something harms us, of course we automatically try to escape from it or find a way of removing it. And so our intelligence leads us to processing the new information, communicating with others, taking decisions, giving instructions…You agreed with my description of this process, as applied to cells/cell communities, and now you pretend that autonomous intelligence means automatic obedience.

DAVID: Not a pretense.

dhw: So you really believe that autonomous intelligence means automatic obedience! And “intelligent” presumably means “without intelligence”.

Intelligent actions can come from intelligent instructions