New Miscellany 1: theodicy, evolution and free-for-all (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 08, 2025, 11:42 (6 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: […] I have suggested and you have agreed that your God gave humans and bacteria freedom of will and action. This would also explain the dog-eat-dog history of living forms in general. There is no wrong or right place.

DAVID: Bacteria making penicillin or insulin pharmaceutically are placed right.

You have simply ignored the point that right and wrong/good and bad are our inventions, based on what is right or wrong for us. Bacteria that kill us are in the right place for THEM, and their freedom of will and choice exonerates your God from the accusation that he created evil.

DAVID: Free will is good for humans, but evil humans produce evil. The by-product is not God's fault.

If humans have free will, they are responsible for the good and the bad that they produce. Evil is not a by-product of good! You are now accepting my theory which exonerates your God, but you are distorting it in a totally illogical manner!

DAVID: (in Part 2 under “The brain”): The secondhand concept of design has nothing to do with your defense of theodicy which I accept.

Thank you for accepting it. I will make a note of this for future reference. See below on how it impacts on your other theories.

Evolution

dhw: 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.

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

dhw: “The 99% extinct produced us” is a quotation from one of your posts, and you keep repeating it. Please stop blaming Raup. YOU have agreed that we and our food are descended from 0.1% of survivors, and not the other 99% which produced no descendants.

DAVID: The 99.9% extinct produced the 0.1% surviving!

There you go again! It is the 0.1% of survivors that produced the species that are alive today, e.g. only 4 out of 700 dinosaur species survived to produce all the species of birds alive today. 696 died without leaving any descendants. Now please explain how species that leave no descendants can produce descendants.

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?

DAVID: the legs became flippers. What is your point?

The feathers – like the legs – would have served a different purpose before being “repurposed” for a different use. You completely misread the article you thought supported your theory that your God produced innovations which were useless at the time but anticipated future use.

DAVID: It depends on your underlying mindset, no designer possible. Accept a designer and the logic is obvious.

There is no logic behind the invention of something useless at the time. Your feather example is trifling compared to your theory that he designed and culled 99 useless species out of 100 in order to design the only ones he wanted. The “obvious logic” is…?

DAVID: You don't see God as an all-controlling designer of environment and living forms as I do.

dhw: Firstly, if your God gave living forms freedom of will and action, he does not control them - hence the dog-eat-dog history resulting from this gift.

DAVID: Note I said control of design of forms and environment. Their freedom of action has no role.

But the free-for-all theory that you have accepted under “theodicy” ALSO explains why your God might NOT be in control of forms and environment, as follows:
dhw: Secondly, yet again, if your God’s sole purpose was us plus food (which he could have created “de novo”), why would he have deliberately designed and culled 99 out of 100 of his living forms irrelevant to his purpose?

DAVID: I don't know His reasoning.

If he wanted a free-for-all (as under “theodicy”), then he would have designed the mechanisms whereby organisms produce their own means of survival (adaptations and innovations). Their survival or extinction would then depend solely on their own abilities, and you would not be left floundering with your inexplicable belief that your all-powerful God inefficiently and incompetently produced 99 out of 100 species irrelevant to the purpose you impose on him.