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

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 02, 2025, 20:28 (1 day, 4 hours, 58 min. ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

And that brain was given to us in anticipation of its current uses.

Evolution

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

dhw: 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.)

You cannot deny the 99% extinct produced us, the 0.1% survivors.

Cellular intelligence

dhw: 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.

Cells respond automatically, thought not involved.

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.

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

Yes, bacteria edit DNA in limited ways. They don't modify into new species.