If God planned it all then he's an even bigger wanker. He's annihilated 99% of all species ever to exist. He's bombarded the planet with asteroids. He's blown shit up with volcanoes. He's a fucking wanker of fucking note. If I were a Supreme Creator looking for some slavish apes to kiss my ass I'd just fucking create a bunch of slavish apes. No need for billions of years of fine-tuned evolution, if you can create an entire universe by an act of will a bunch of apes would be a doddle. What's the fucking point of all the rest of it, shits and giggles?

laklak wrote:No need for billions of years of fine-tuned evolution, if you can create an entire universe by an act of will a bunch of apes would be a doddle. What's the fucking point of all the rest of it, shits and giggles?

Look, the guy has no family, no wife and he has no friends (just people trying to suck up to him and asking various favours all the time). Can you image what that does to you after living an infinity/13 billion years in total solitude?. Plus, he can define his own morals. So, can you exclude the shit and giggles? And don't overplay the giggles part. There is not that much fun in it if you already knows everything that's going to happen.

Bert
Who thinks the guy could use a day off; a day with no one bothering him. Like Sunday, or something. Oh wait. (George Carlin was great).

Darwinsbulldog wrote:To Miller evolution is the workhorse, that does the routine stuff. Souls are not routine, because he believes they have [an undemonstrated] magical component* which still gives his god a job to do.

*Disembodied souls, immortal souls, souls independent of body, souls transferred by god into/out of bodies, etc.

Souls which had to hang around for a near-eternity before evolution came up with something capable of hosting them?

tolman wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:To Miller evolution is the workhorse, that does the routine stuff. Souls are not routine, because he believes they have [an undemonstrated] magical component* which still gives his god a job to do.

*Disembodied souls, immortal souls, souls independent of body, souls transferred by god into/out of bodies, etc.

Souls which had to hang around for a near-eternity before evolution came up with something capable of hosting them?

To clarify, I have no problem with mortal souls, that is, the personality, identity, life experiences, and traits of an individual, because all such things can be explained by science, the genetics, development, life experiences and so on. Such "souls" are totally dependent on the body, and are therefore 100% natural and die when the body dies.



I don't think woo-merchants should own such a handy little word.
So I re-defined the 'soul" in naturalistic terms.

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

Animavore wrote:Miller suggests, in his book Finding Darwin's God, God might be able to influence evolution by affecting genes by knocking them with electrons (or something like that). That's not science, and Coyne contends he shouldn't even be saying misleading shit like that.

What Miller says is possible, but not even remotely probable and not scientifically testable anyway. People will conflate the idea that these theistic scientists like Ayala, Collins, Conway-Morris know their science [and they DO!] with their religious notions. Ayala is an ordained priest as well.
People untrained in science or philosophy [or at the very least critical thinking] will just assume Miller is being cautious. But he is not, because quantum fluctuations are just random and don't mean anything. But he does not say that. He throws other believers a bone.
Kudos to him for defending evolution and science, but I think a part of it is him defending his belief in theistic evolution against a rival belief, literal creationism. In other words, it is a religious turf war as well as a scientific debunking. You god is silly, mine is not.
To Miller evolution is the workhorse, that does the routine stuff. Souls are not routine, because he believes they have [an undemonstrated] magical component* which still gives his god a job to do.

*Disembodied souls, immortal souls, souls independent of body, souls transferred by god into/out of bodies, etc


.

What Miller suggest is imaginable, not least because first one has to imagine God and then ascribe him special powers, thus rendering it an ontological argument.

THWOTH wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

Animavore wrote:Miller suggests, in his book Finding Darwin's God, God might be able to influence evolution by affecting genes by knocking them with electrons (or something like that). That's not science, and Coyne contends he shouldn't even be saying misleading shit like that.

What Miller says is possible, but not even remotely probable and not scientifically testable anyway. People will conflate the idea that these theistic scientists like Ayala, Collins, Conway-Morris know their science [and they DO!] with their religious notions. Ayala is an ordained priest as well.
People untrained in science or philosophy [or at the very least critical thinking] will just assume Miller is being cautious. But he is not, because quantum fluctuations are just random and don't mean anything. But he does not say that. He throws other believers a bone.
Kudos to him for defending evolution and science, but I think a part of it is him defending his belief in theistic evolution against a rival belief, literal creationism. In other words, it is a religious turf war as well as a scientific debunking. You god is silly, mine is not.
To Miller evolution is the workhorse, that does the routine stuff. Souls are not routine, because he believes they have [an undemonstrated] magical component* which still gives his god a job to do.

*Disembodied souls, immortal souls, souls independent of body, souls transferred by god into/out of bodies, etc


.

What Miller suggest is imaginable, not least because first one has to imagine God and then ascribe him special powers, thus rendering it an ontological argument.

In other words, non-argument!

Shrunk wrote:Larry Moran puts it succinctly:

Michael Behe's acceptance of common descent is not significantly different from that of Ken Miller and Francis Collins. All three believe that the gods used evolution to produce the diversity of life we see today but they tweaked it from time to time to nudge it in certain directions. Michael Behe thinks that the gods left direct evidence of their intervention. Francis Collins thinks the evidence is indirect and Ken Miller thinks that the gods hid all evidence of their involvement so that the whole process looks perfectly natural.

“Theistic evolution” means that God is superintendent of the entirely naturalistic process of evolution, and does not intervene in it. However, some variations of it, particularly that of the Catholic Church, allow for some divine guidance. However, theistic evolution - as expounded by people like Campbell and Mivart - originally meant something like ID where God designed evolution to unravel in a certain way, or periodically intervened to generate new variation which natural selection preserved. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discover of natural selection, also became a theistic evolutionist in that he believed that Darwin's theory explained everything in biology except for the emergence of mankind. His main gripe was that humans possessed mental, artistic and physical faculties way beyond the need to survive and reproduce, ergo god.

laklak wrote:If God planned it all then he's an even bigger wanker. He's annihilated 99% of all species ever to exist. He's bombarded the planet with asteroids. He's blown shit up with volcanoes. He's a fucking wanker of fucking note. If I were a Supreme Creator looking for some slavish apes to kiss my ass I'd just fucking create a bunch of slavish apes. No need for billions of years of fine-tuned evolution, if you can create an entire universe by an act of will a bunch of apes would be a doddle. What's the fucking point of all the rest of it, shits and giggles?

Have you never played a game of Populus before? The God of the OT is not omnibelevolent. He sends fire and brimstone, plagues, pestilence, murders babies and.....creates global floods. For all we know, he is preparing a terrible fate for atheists and those who don't believe in him.

Oh noes!

Wortfish wrote:

laklak wrote:If God planned it all then he's an even bigger wanker. He's annihilated 99% of all species ever to exist. He's bombarded the planet with asteroids. He's blown shit up with volcanoes. He's a fucking wanker of fucking note. If I were a Supreme Creator looking for some slavish apes to kiss my ass I'd just fucking create a bunch of slavish apes. No need for billions of years of fine-tuned evolution, if you can create an entire universe by an act of will a bunch of apes would be a doddle. What's the fucking point of all the rest of it, shits and giggles?

Have you never played a game of Populus before? The God of the OT is not omnibelevolent. He sends fire and brimstone, plagues, pestilence, murders babies and.....creates global floods. For all we know, he is preparing a terrible fate for atheists and those who don't believe in him.

Or, since the OT god works in strange and mysterious ways, maybe he's prepared a terrible fate for those who DO believe in him.

It would be a totally typical "I changed the rules again on you guys" kind of fuck-you move for the X-tian god.

Wortfish wrote:

laklak wrote:If God planned it all then he's an even bigger wanker. He's annihilated 99% of all species ever to exist. He's bombarded the planet with asteroids. He's blown shit up with volcanoes. He's a fucking wanker of fucking note. If I were a Supreme Creator looking for some slavish apes to kiss my ass I'd just fucking create a bunch of slavish apes. No need for billions of years of fine-tuned evolution, if you can create an entire universe by an act of will a bunch of apes would be a doddle. What's the fucking point of all the rest of it, shits and giggles?

Have you never played a game of Populus before? The God of the OT is not omnibelevolent. He sends fire and brimstone, plagues, pestilence, murders babies and.....creates global floods. For all we know, he is preparing a terrible fate for atheists and those who don't believe in him.

But it's all for the best so, yes, he's still omnibenevolent. Any mysterious. Mysteriously omnibenevolent.

Shrunk wrote:
But it's all for the best so, yes, he's still omnibenevolent. Any mysterious. Mysteriously omnibenevolent.

Bene-vol-ence necessitates freedom of will. By giving creatures freedom of will (including to microwave pussycats), the Creator is fulfilling his benevolence.

Wortfish wrote:

Shrunk wrote:
But it's all for the best so, yes, he's still omnibenevolent. Any mysterious. Mysteriously omnibenevolent.

Bene-vol-ence necessitates freedom of will. By giving creatures freedom of will (including to microwave pussycats), the Creator is fulfilling his benevolence.

Ah, a policy statement from the Ministry of Truth. This is doubleplusgood.

Calilasseia wrote:I'd really like to see how bestowing the ability to inflict misery and suffering upon others constitutes "benevolence", even from the elementary dictionary standpoint, let alone any more rigorous conceptions of the term ...

Because without freedom of action, including to inflict misery, there can be no such thing as benevolence. Doing good is a choice.

I think you're getting mixed up. You're talking about God being benevolent, not people, remember? This being the case, people choosing to do good applies to their benevolence, not God's. Their benevolence, I might add, in a world where the concept of evil already exists. Since doing good is a choice, God could choose to just not allow anything harmful or horrible to exist in the first place. He has far less of an excuse than people. God has control over the entire show. God created evil, concept and act. God created disease, parasites, torture, hatred. God created everything that is.

Isaiah 45:7 wrote:I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Before God, these things simply did not exist. Concepts, ideas, actions, meanings, referents - none of it. God could have set things up in any way he wanted. In ways we can't even begin to imagine because we're not God. He could have set things up so that we had freedom of action and no way to inflict misery. He's omnipotent, remember? He has unlimited power. He makes the laws of physics and the rules of logic. He didn't, though. He chose this. That's not benevolence. That's either incompetence or malice aforethought. Oh, and lest we forget, the claim isn't just that God is benevolent. It's that he's omnibenevolent - infinitely good.

In addition, God appears to have created a great deal of things which inflict misery and suffering on people - diseases, natural disasters and so forth. What's the deal here? Giving people free will and see how they get on with suffering that could be avoided had God not chosen to put it there in the first place.

What a dick.