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

by dhw, Thursday, April 03, 2025, 11:09 (1 day, 8 hours, 9 min. ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

This is a new tactic. Our subject is theodicy. Your latest theory was that evil was the unintended by-product of God’s works, which means God didn’t mean to create what he did create and therefore, in your own words, is incompetent. However, you then explicitly accepted the theory that “evil is the result, as you state, of freedom of action or free will” as bacteria and humans find their own means of survival. However, you couldn’t see how our brains could be developed by the struggle for survival, and so I told you. This has nothing to do with your belief that our brains were preparation for events that would take place thousands of years after they reached their present size. When will you stop dodging? You have explicitly accepted the theory that evil is the result of your God creating a free-for-all. (See “the human brain” on the other thread for your theory of “anticipation”.)

Evolution

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

Of course I deny it, and so did you. How many more times must I repeat the quote?

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.

Example: 396 species of dinosaur left no descendants. The only survivors were the four species that evolved into modern birds. How does that come to mean that we and our food are descended from the 396 species that left no descendants?

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.

DAVID: Cells respond automatically, thought not involved.

Your idea of discussion appears to be simple repetition of your subjective belief, ignoring your own agreement with arguments that run counter to that belief. This “schizophrenic” (your word) approach to discussion – glaringly obviously already from these first three sections - does you no credit. But you seem to take pride in acknowledging your prejudiced approach: “I first choose a form of God I wish to believe in. The rest follows.” This applies to many of your theories, no matter how illogical and insulting to your God they may be.

Fish use tools

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.

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

Innovation demands a different level of intelligence, but an organism which can outwit humans as it finds ways of countering our attempts to kill it must have a form of autonomous intelligence, as you have acknowledged under “theodicy”. After all, your form of God would hardly have given it instructions to murder us, would he?