The universe (not to mention its unstable and brutally chaotic nature) is set up in a way in which life, at least a lot of it, has to kill and feed off of other life. That's a pretty harsh set up for a an omni3 God unless he had to set it up that way for some reason. But then if he had to set it up that way i wouldn't call him an omni3 God.

I think people are prematurely slapping the anthropic label with out really thinking about it. If someone says the universe was created by an intelligent designer because it is optimized for life a strong counter argument is that perhaps the universe isn't optimized for life but rather life thru natural selection is optimized for existence in this universe. Agreed?

However If the claim is the mutation rate is optimized for natural selection its silly to counter argue that natural selection thru natural selection is optimized for the mutation rate of DNA. Claiming its an anthropic fallacy doesn't quite work here.

I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying I wouldn't.

Let’s look at the mosquito. It is responsible for more human death than any other creature on earth. This is, of course, because of the wide variety of diseases it carries and injects into its victims using its specialized appendage, known as a proboscis. In addition to malaria, this flying syringe can carry West Nile virus and the organisms that cause Dengue fever, viral encephalitis and yellow fever. Its visual system is infrared and it homes in on the carbon dioxide that its prey exhales. The female can lay up to 200 eggs at a time and they can survive up to five years! If there be a designer, then it obviously loves these insects as there are over 2,500 species! To be fair, though, not all of them attack humans, some attack birds or horses or even turtles.

What kind of deity would create such a creature? What kind of creator would expressly make an animal such an effective vector of disease? The mosquito speaks volumes on the character of any god or goddess that would be responsible for its genesis. Think of it another way. Let’s replace “god” with something easier to put the blame on. Let’s use the commonly demonized stereotype, the “mad scientist.” What if this scientist created an army of very small flying robots that would inject pregnant women and young children with a poison that slowly killed them? How would such a scientist be viewed? What do you think would happen to this person? He would be viewed, that’s right, as evil and punished to the full extent of the law.

I still dont understand how when it comes to the creation of the universe you can judge the morality of the Christian God, Zeus and every other God described by man except for the one i described.

Yes. This is one of the misunderstanding that many of the proponents of anthropic arguments have.

I thought I explained this fairly clearly. This is the same as an anthropic argument because it asks the same question: Does the occurrence of an improbable event, in and of itself, indicate that the event was guided by some intelligence? The answer is no.

Because the omni3 god knew exactly what was going and had the opportunity to make it 100x better, but chose not to. The deist god you supposed had neither of these, that's why I judge that version of god looser.

I agree hes got some issues. Although some versions of Yahweh arent omni3 but thats a different subject.

The God i described can have foreknowledge. The only difference in the powers of the God i defined and the one you define is he cant interfere and had to make the universe in the way he did. Also you didn't judge his act of creation looser you wouldn't judge it at all.

The question comes down to. Is the creation of the universe in and of itself always an immoral act or is it only an immoral act for some Gods.

When you talk about how perfectly suited earth is to life you can make an effective counter argument against the anthropic argument becuase you have strong evidence that life adapts to the condition on earth. Your counter argument is effective because you have more evidence than your opponent.

However you cannot say the same things about natural selection or the constants of the universe. There is 0 evidence why the constants are the way they are. You have no effective counter argument against the intelligent creator in these situations and your counter argument amounts to a feeling.

The fact is things like the constants of the universe are evidence for an intelligent creator and they are evidence for a multiverse. Before we knew about how fined tuned our universe was I would say that in that time it was less likely that God actually exists. Now that we discovered the fined tune universe and we have new information that increases the likelyhood of Gods existence being true(it also increases the likelyhood of a multiverse being true).

This thread is tilting me because I can't wrap my head around the issue here. Who is to say that the rate of mutations/evolution is in any way "optimal"? What does that even mean? We have a scenrio where natural selection takes millions upon millions of years. All we can really say is that mutations don't happen too fast for all life to fail, or too slowly for no evolution to occur at all. Outside of that, we can make no conclusions about any of this!

I'm feeling really stupid for not getting what the bruhaha is here...

What the OP is saying is that if we were able to calculate the optimal rate of mutation (not just a rate that would allow for diversification but the best possible) and if we were to match up the mathematical rate with the actual rate and it turned out to be the same.

First off, I don't know what you mean by the universe is "unstable and brutally chaotic".

As far as life killing and feeding off of each other, I think that two things can be said. One being that it is clear in Christian theology that this was not the way that it was supposed to be, and secondly you have to consider the capability of said life for suffering.

I don't say that God had to set up the world the way that it is, but that is was a necessary possibility with free will beings.

I just don't see that you have much of a case here from a logical standpoint. If you want to say that omnipotence is the ability to do anything including the logically impossible, then I cannot say much other than you will be in a minority with that view. If you do not agree with this definition of omnipotence then I would say that you would have to further justify your claim.

Stars are exploding, galaxies are colliding, we are a gamma ray burst or meteor collision form extinction. All life on earth has come close to extinction on more then one occasion. I would call that unstable and brutally chaotic.

I think quite a few animals suffer and feel fear and pain. You probably dont and i cant prove it so...

Its not true this world had to be this way for free willed beings. At least according to your above statement and Christian theology. The Christian God did create a better world for free willed beings.

Your asking me to assume it is logical impossible to create a "better" universe. But i dont know if creating a different better universe is logically possible or imposable. I only think that if it is possible for an omnipotent being to do so it is wrong not to. If you want to say he can't then i would say he's not immoral.

Although imo the Christian God is not of the hook. He has feed the hungry, healed the sick and interfered in all kind of ways. So he does have the power to make this world better place but chooses not to. Which without a good reason is immoral.

What does "optimal" mean here? This presumably isn't like the "fine tuning" argument people like to make. Presumably there is a pretty wide spread for the various rates of mutation going on (if there even can be said to be a rate- there's no schedule LDO). What I mean is, between the extreme ends of too many mutations and not enough mutations the rate of mutation can vary greatly. To call any one rate optimal is nonesense unless it is compared to some as yet unspecified goal.

I think that's wrong and have reality to back me up, as someone else said previously, a beneficial mutation in Ecoli spreads rapidly, wiping out the unmuted part of the strain. Reminding you of limited resources and evolution should be enough to stop this argument. Better adapted/efficient methods of dealing with the same basic resources would wipe out less efficient methods, presuming a basic degredation (meaning things have to die or exchange/lose resources). Do you still disagree with this?
These things are observed, albeit probably not the wholly wiping out, since the world is a pretty large place. In petri dishes, its fairly easy to demonstrate. The fact of evolution proves the concept though.
Do you understand how the cell works? If you do, I cannot understand how you could say that DNA co-exists with RNA, and that that is somehow a contradiction of the principle of competition over limited resources.
Taking seriously for some reason this argument, if the elaborate transcription system that results in how cells work is improved by eliminating the step to RNA (I doubt it, amplification being one of the main arguments)
"I think the idea of the best competitor in a business buying up/destroying its lesser brethren to be a bit far fetched. "
Do you see why this is false now?

First bit is god of the gaps, which is a false argument.
You'll have to explain what this 'stability' of DNA is that you are talking about. I have no idea what you mean. Chemical stability? Evolutionary stability? Something else? It seems to me that you have been equivocating here. (again)

I don't see the chaos in the universe as a moral issue. I don't see why it matters that stars explode or galaxies colliding, it seems amoral to me as there is no suffering involved.

This is really a whole topic in it of itself. I do agree that some animals feel a certain level of pain. But I don't feel that the a tree cries when it is cut down. That is obviously an extreme, but like I said, really a whole topic.

I didn't say the world had to be like this, but that the possibility of the world being like this had to exist.

I think that there are certain steps that are logically necessary that ended up in the world the way that it is.

I would agree that if God could have made the world better without losing the most important aspects of us (like the ability to have a love relationship with our creator) but chose not to, then I would agree that he would be immoral. But I don't think that is possible.

I agree that there has to be a goal comparison. In this case I would say that we are talking about the best and most diversity in life.

Gtg ill be back latter. I Added to my post so you might have missed some of it.

If that's the goal then:

1) it is impossible to tell, since we don't know any other "rate" and thus have no clue what were "missing"

2) with all the flaws in our current life forms, plus the fact that a huge majority of all earth life forms are currently extinct, it would be odd to think of our current system as optimal

The antrophic principle. Yes.
You do not understand this process I think. Perhaps the arrow forward that some people think exists muddles it up for you.

Depending on the circumstances, certain mutations are benefited. If circumstances switch completely around, a once positive adaption/mutation can become negative, causing it then to dissapear again, or be adapted.

I cannot concieve how your optimized mutation rate would function.
Regardless, I see no reason to believe that there is such a thing as an optimal mutation rate in nature.

Quoting from the wiki of the anthropic principle:
""In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the collective name for several ways of asserting that the observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the life observed in it. The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and its fundamental physical constants remarkably take on values that are consistent with conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life as observed on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this apparent coincidence is actually a necessity because living observers wouldn't be able to exist, and hence, observe the universe, were these laws and constants not constituted in this way.""

So really, you just dont understand what it says or dont agree with it. Which is it? It certainly isnt a fact that they are evidence for specifically those two things. Why do you think that is the case? Why the false dichotomy?

I would say "optimal" means to mimimize the time it takes evolution to go from single cell creature to human like being.

Much of this is wrong and/or misleading. You cannot reasonably claim that something is fine tuned if you cannot show that it is possible to 'tune the settings' in the first place. But that is irrelevant. None of this addresses my post which you quoted. Even if we grant the idea that these things (UCs and mutation rates alike) are extremely unlikely to have the values they have through a random, natural process, that alone does not suggest that they were guided.

How about the other two, a gamma ray burst or a meteor collision. If those or a ton of others things effected earth there would be suffering.

There is also the chaotic nature of earth itself. Earth quakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, all have and will cause suffering.

Does a chimp suffer? I think they do but like i said i cant prove it.

Sorry i misread, i get what you said now.

If you want to say an omni3 God can't relieve suffering without messing things up then i wouldn't say he's immoral. But to me an Omni3 God should be able to relieve suffering. If that means im not defining Omni3 right or being illogical, well that wouldn't be a first.


The problem for me with the Christian God is he has relieved suffering without messing things up in the past. And he is supposed to relieve suffering in the future.

So the question is if he did relieve suffering in the past and will relieve suffering in the future, why cant he do it now? Free will and having a loving relationship doesn't work as both those have been and will be possible at the same time as suffering is relieved.