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

by dhw, Wednesday, April 02, 2025, 08:48 (1 day, 2 hours, 14 min. ago) @ David Turell

Theodicy

DAVID: Evil has nothing to do with God's incompetence. How did you conclude that? God is not incompetent. Evil is the result, as you state, of freedom of action or free will.

dhw: After your initial solution (ignore the evil and only think about the good), you declared that evil was a by-product or side-effect of God’s good works, and you defined these terms as “the unintended result of any action.” If your God produced something he had not intended to produce, I would suggest that is a sign of incompetence, which goes hand in hand with your belief in an inefficient designer (see your illogical theory of evolution). However, you have now explicitly supported the theory that your God created a free-for-all. Thank you. Another red-letter day for the AgnosticWeb.

DAVID: Under this present discussion I accept your desired free-for-all as a major part of dog-eat-dog fight for food for all forms.

This present discussion is about theodicy, and you have agreed that evil as an “unintended by-product” would show your God to be incompetent, whereas a deliberately created free-for-all exonerates him from blame.

DAVID: But contrarily I don't see a struggle for survival producing such items as our magnificent brain.

You don’t see that the invention of tools, the adaptation to different climates and other environmental conditions, the exploitation of new discoveries (e.g. fire) all represented improvements to our chances of survival and all required new work from the brain either through complexification or, in earlier stages of our history, expansion. It’s only in more modern times that our magnificent brain has been used for purposes other than survival.

Evolution

DAVID: Ridicule of God is your invention. That He uses cumbersome evolution is His choice to achieve Human intelligence actually shows that it works.

dhw: I have never heard anyone use the terms “messy, cumbersome and inefficient” as a compliment, just as I have never heard of a bad, unintended result being regarded as a sign of competence. These are terms of your invention, not mine. However, you have now accepted the free-for-all theory in the context of theodicy, so perhaps you will also accept it as a possible and logical explanation for the 99.9% of species that had no connection with the purpose you have imposed on your God.

DAVID: Let's not go back to fighting over the 99.9% extinction rate which produced us.

Please stop this obfuscation. We were not produced by the extinction rate but, as you have explicitly agreed, by the 0.1% of survivors. You also admit that you have no idea why your God would have designed and had to cull the other 99.9%. But you refuse to believe that he might not be messy and inefficient and instead, as you have accepted under "theodicy", might have created precisely what he wanted: namely, a free-for-all. (NB the free-for-all is only one of my alternative theistic theories, but it would be the only possibility for an atheist.)

Cellular intelligence

DAVID: At all times you think cells can think. Nonsense.

dhw: What do you mean by “at all times”? Most of the time, cellular behaviour is automatic – it has to be if organs and organisms are to remain stable. I keep telling you when intelligence is needed: e.g. if there are new problems, requirements, conditions. Then cells must process the new information, communicate, make decisions, and issue instructions. But even then, there are cells whose function is simply to obey those instructions. When your intelligent self instructs your arm and hands and fingers to pick up a gun and shoot yourself in the foot, the arm and hands and fingers will automatically obey.

DAVID: Yes, the body obeys the brain. And cells obey adaptive instructions in DNA.

I have explained why your statement that “at all times you think cells can think” is a complete distortion of what I think. Now you simply revert to your belief that although you agreed a couple of days ago that cells autonomously process information, communicate, make decisions and issue instructions, this means they do not autonomously process information etc. etc.

Fish use tools

DAVID: Fish have brains, therefore they think.

dhw: Bacteria have no brains, but you agree that they can also think. So why not other single cells and cell communities?

DAVID: The key is 'free-living'. Bacteria must use many automatic reactions to challenges.

Under “theodicy” you agree that bacteria have autonomous free will to choose what is best for their survival, and here you claim that they react automatically. You can’t stop contradicting yourself, even within the same post.

DAVID: 'Multicellular-living' means all the cells cooperate with each other automatically.

1)You have agreed that bacteria act autonomously, not automatically. (They have free will.) 2) The fact that they cooperate and other cells cooperate does not mean there is no autonomous processing of information, communication, decision-making and issue of instructions from the thinkers to the doers. You seem to believe that by inserting the word "automatically", you can eliminate all the autonomous thinking processes that precede every new action.