New Miscellany 1 & 2: humanizing, intell., Milkdromeda etc. (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 08, 2025, 16:40 (3 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Why do you think he gave humans free will? Please answer.

DAVID: The conceptualization capacity of our brain needs free will to work at full capacity.

dhw: Back to your vague “concepts”. And why do you think your God wanted humans to have maximum “conceptualization capacity”? Please answer.

DAVID: Our brain is my evidence.

dhw: I asked you WHY you think he wanted humans to have this special gift. Please answer.

So we could communicate with and about Him.

Animal intelligence: the opossum

dhw: You insist that your God’s one and only purpose was to design us and our food, so please tell us why you think your God would have found it necessary to design the stupid opossum and give it special lessons on feigning death.

Part of a necessary ecosystem.

Bacterial antibiotic resistance

dhw: Why would your God give single cells autonomous intelligence but take it away when single cells form communities?

DAVID: Teamwork!!! Survival on your own requires that in singles, but not in teams of cells.

dhw; Difficult to follow. Why should individuals lose their intelligence when they form a team?

Teams of cells rely upon each other.

Atheism

DAVID: […] But you clearly dislike a God who works in designs for future use.

dhw: Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t make me an atheist!. […] What I do dislike, however, is any theory that makes no sense and is full of contradictions, e.g. by postulating a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient designer whose design is messy, cumbersome and inefficient. […]

DAVID: I am using the accepted conceptual form of the Biblical God. And you?

dhw: Whereabouts in the Bible does it tell us that humans evolved from a common apelike ancestor, and that God is a messy, cumbersome, inefficient designer who designed and culled 99.9 out of 100 species he never wanted, and that despite his omnipotence and omniscience he could not control the nasty bacteria and viruses he had inadvertently created?

Viruses and bacteria were especially created.

> Milky Way not hitting Andromeda

The combination of these quotes is hilarious. As usual, we have sensational new discoveries, which actually teach us that the conventional view of a merger is absolutely correct (though initially “it may not be right at all”), and the conventional timing of 4 billion years may be right, but it might be wrong. That’s progress for you.

DAVID: […] dhw will comment why did God make such a big universe if His only interest is us on Earth? My answer is God knows what He is doing and for some reason unknown to us the universe's size is required.

dhw: Your own bewilderment should alert you to the possibility that his sole purpose can’t have been to create one planet sufficiently fine-tuned to sustain us and our food. Another possibility is that there is no God, and the first cause is eternal matter and energy constantly combining into different forms that eventually produce the combinations necessary for life. I find both first-cause theories equally difficult to believe.

Our brain should convince you a designer God exists.