More Miscellany (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 01, 2024, 12:45 (19 days ago) @ David Turell

Boredom and theodicy

dhw: […] your opinion one day is that your God enjoys creating and is interested in his creations, but the next day when I propose that he might have created life in order to provide himself with interesting things to do and watch, you insist that he has no self-interest. You even propose that he would find puppets boring, which leads to his knowingly allowing evil and creating murderous bugs (for which you blame him) in order to avoid boredom, but again, he has no self-interest.

DAVID: 'Self-interest' means doing something to satisfy yourself. God does not require self-satisfaction as I view Him.

I know what self-interest means, and I know you think he doesn’t require it, although you also think he enjoys creating and is interested in what he creates, and he would find puppets boring, and so he allowed human evil and created murderous bugs (for which you blame him) in order to prevent himself and us from getting bored. But not wanting to be bored, and doing things for enjoyment apparently do not entail self-interest.

Importance of microbiomes

DAVID: more information about an important microbiome. Bacterial and fungal microbiomes are necessary and vital for all life. BUT, the flip side is Pseudomonas infections in humans are often fatal. Again a theodicy issue. The plants benefit from the bug, so why complain about the evil they do. They are necessarily designed as free-acting. They cannot be puppets.

Once again, your omnipotent God is powerless to prevent evil, and you have not yet explained why you blame him. However, as above, you proposed the theory that he actually wanted evil as a means of relieving boredom (for himself and us). That would make sense, though it dents your concept of an all-good God without self-interest. A deliberately designed free-for-all, not just for bad bugs and human free will but for the whole of evolution, would also make sense, as an explanation for the enormous variety of life forms that have come and gone. As you say, your God would not want puppets, which would be boring, so he’d certainly find an ever-changing world more interesting than one in which he simply designed every creature and – through his omniscience – knew precisely what each one would be and do. It’s just a “maybe”, but your theologians have taught you that you can invent your own God, and these two inventions have the priceless advantage that they are not riddled with contradictions.

Aquatic spiders

(I am splitting the comments to clarify questions and answers.)

DAVID: Why did the spiders go back to water? As with whales many physiological changes had to occur. God must have stepped in as a designer.

dhw: The article answers your question: “Presumably, the spiders that later returned to a life aquatic were strongly drawn by something to eat there, or driven by unsafe conditions on land.” […]

DAVID: The authors spouted the usual reasons we all think of to explain such an unusual action.

dhw: And what do you find unacceptable in the usual reasons?

No answer.

dhw: …you will not even consider the possibility that this wide variety of adaptations might be the result of intelligent cells responding to new conditions in their own different ways.

Ignored

dhw: And I’d better not ask why you think your God specially designed all these variations. Do we humans really need them or use them?

DAVID: Same OLD answer: they fit into a necessary ecosystem.

All life forms fit into ecosystems necessary for themselves. Why do you think all the variations of spider design were necessary for us humans and our food?

Cerebellum helps learning

DAVID: the cerebellum is packed with specialized neurons. We see connections to the cortex and are still trying to find out how those connections work.

dhw: The brain, like the rest of the body, is a community of cellular communities, and these all communicate with one another. Even specialists can communicate with other specialists. Would it be too simple to suggest that the connections work because cells are intelligent, sentient, cognitive, information-processing, decision-making entities “that act and interact purposefully to ensure survival, growth and proliferation” (James A. Shapiro)? (NB: This theory leaves open the possibility that your God was the designer of cellular intelligence.)

DAVID: God is the best explanation.

For what? Do you mean he gives instructions to all the cells and takes their decisions for them, or he invented the autonomous mechanism by which they are responsible for their own actions and decisions?