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

by dhw, Monday, March 31, 2025, 09:09 (3 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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”?

DAVID: Humans and bacteria create evil.

So a possible answer to the problem set by theodicy is that evil is not an unintended by-product or side-effect of your cumbersome, messy, inefficient God’s good works, but instead he deliberately gave freedom of action to his creatures. We humans invented the concepts of “good” and “evil” to mean whatever was good or bad for us, but all creatures simply do what they think is good for them in the great free-for-all of life’s history. However, you prefer to believe that evil is due to your God’s incompetence.

Evolution

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.”

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

You never cease to try and divert attention from your ridicule of your God by pretending that my alternatives are atheistic. This whole discussion concerns your God’s possible nature, purpose and method. If he exists, he must have had a purpose for creating life. The one you impose on him makes him look like a messy, inefficient designer. Elsewhere, however, you have expressed your belief that he would not have created life if he had not enjoyed doing so and had not been interested in his own creations. That will provide you with your “teleology”. You also proposed that he might have created us because he wanted us to recognize and worship him. More teleology. If he exists, I have no objections to your proposals. It’s you who oppose them and prefer to ridicule him.

Cellular intelligence

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

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: Intelligent actions can come from intelligent instructions.

You agreed that the “code” might create autonomous intelligence, but you defined that as meaning “automatic, no thought involved”. The fact that intelligent actions can come from intelligent instructions does not mean that when you accepted my description of the autonomous, information-processing, communicating, decision-making, instruction-giving cell, I actually meant an automatic, non-processing, non-communicating, non-decision-making, non-instruction-giving cell!

Fish use tools

QUOTE: "Scientists have debunked the belief that using tools is unique to mammals and birds,….

One of these days, perhaps some people will also realize that long ago, some scientists debunked the belief that micro-organisms right down to single cells cannot be intelligent. All that is needed is to rid oneself of what Shapiro calls “large organisms chauvinism”.