New Miscellany 1: theodicy, evolution, origin of life (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 06, 2025, 17:41 (2 days ago) @ dhw

Theodicy

dhw: So make up your mind: did God give bacteria the freedom of action or free will to murder us, or do they act under his instructions?

No simple answer. They generally follow God's rules of cellular activity but have freedom of action. There is no problem unless they end up in the wrong place, such as a human body.

dhw: You have ignored the fact that your “by-product” argument blames your God for his incompetence in producing something he never intended to produce.

I'm sure God knew exactly what He was producing. Tremendous good, a little evil.

DAVID: I still think bacteria follow instructions in surviving.

dhw: Bacteria can survive by being nice to us or by murdering us. You believe your God didn’t want bacteria to be “restricted in freedom of action”, and so he deliberately gave them freedom of will and action to survive by being nice to us or by murdering us. But he didn’t, because their freedom was the result of his incompetence (unintended by-product). Except that they aren’t free because they follow his instructions when they survive by being nice to us or by murdering us. I defy anyone to make sense of this.

The problem is when bacteria get into the wrong place. You ignore all the good they do.

Evolution

DAVID: I'm not discussing evolution at the nitty-gritty level you use. Of course species die out. I use an outside view of the whole process as Raup did.

dhw: Raup gave us the figures of 99.9% extinction and 0.1% survival. You interpret that as meaning we are descended from every single creature that ever lived, including the 99.9% that produced no descendants. How can creatures that produced no descendants have produced us? You agree that they couldn’t, but you still insist that “the 99% extinct produced us”. Please stop it.

I do not contend that at all. I say as Raup does, 99.9% went extinct to produce 0.1% surviving.

Designing for the future

DAVID: Has it occurred to you to question the appearance of feathers on dinosaurs before any flight happened? The history of life is filled with such events. See the new entry I'm creating:

QUOTE: "Yet finding new uses for existing components is precisely what evolution does. Feathers did not evolve for flight, for example. This repurposing reflects how biological evolution is jerry-rigged, making use of what’s available." (dhw’s bold)

dhw: [..] The article talks of “repurposing” not of purposelessness. [Explanations range from keeping dinosaurs warm to camouflage].

DAVID: Feathers allowed flight to appear, but not in your short-sighted view.

dhw: Of course they did, but that doesn’t mean they served no purpose before flight! The whole evolutionary process depends on “new uses of existing components”. Do you believe that the legs of prewhales were only designed so that they could change into flippers?

QUOTE: "Scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through photosynthesis."

DAVID: Another example of preparatory developments in preparation for a future use, in this case oxygen. Like feathers on dinosaurs, dhw will invent a just-so Darwinian tale to explain it.

dhw: The just-so story is entirely yours. Future uses depend on future conditions. If your God exists, the only preparation for the future would appear to be an autonomous mechanism that enables cells (including bacteria) to cope with or exploit whatever conditions may exist in the future. Do you really believe that dinosaur feathers evolved or were specially designed just to hang around doing nothing until there was flight, and that early bacteria used oxygen for no purpose?

Early bacteria used oxygen in their metabolism, fully purposeful. You don't see God as an all-controlling designer of environment and living forms as I do. He developed feathers in anticipation of flight.