Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.
….
I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.Albert Einstein
If one accepts the hypothesis of intelligent design, one might reasonably conclude there are malicious intelligent designs.
Darwin was conflicted on this issue. He seemed sympathetic to ID on the cosmological scale but definitely not on the biological scale. The letter I quote from is here:
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-3154
He expresses some sympathy for cosmological scale ID
One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed
Charles Darwin
[What a juicy quote — hehe]
From the perspective of the cosmos, Darwin felt there was some sense of intelligent design. We might call it cosmological scale ID. On the other hand he rejected ID for the small scale in biology.
yet when I look to each individual organism, I can see no evidence of this. For, I am not prepared to admit that God designed the feathers in the tail of the rock-pigeon to vary in a highly peculiar manner in order that man might select such variations & make a Fan-tail; & if this be not admitted (I know it would be admitted by many persons), then I cannot see design in the variations of structure in animals in a state of nature,—those variations which were useful to the animal being preserved & those useless or injurious being destroyed.
Darwin states what many people feel:
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
Charles Darwin
Darwin was referring to cruel scenes like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziUdOdHKpk8
Was that cruelty by intelligent design? If one accepts ID in biology, I think the answer must be “YES”. However, Darwin finds the idea of malicious design hard to reconcile with an intelligent creator.
This very old argument from the existence of suffering against the existence of an intelligent first cause seems to me a strong one;
Charles Darwin
But why? There is no requirement that intelligent actions need be benevolent. Darwin took great pleasure in killing birds. Does Darwin’s cruelty against birds count as evidence against Darwin being an intelligent entity? Of course not.
Some of the parasites in nature seem awfully ingenious in their cruelty. So in addition to the examples Darwin himself mentioned, I found these:
Dermatobia Hominis – The Human Botfly
These buggers favor large mammals – including humans. A female botfly plants its eggs in a mosquito, which then bite and transport the eggs into a larger mammal. The larvae hatch from the eggs and then burrow out from under the mammal’s skin. They then fall to the ground, where they finish their pupa stage.
Cordyceps – The Zombie Fungus
This fungus comprises about 400 different species. It finds its way into insects and proceeds to slowly consume the insects’ brains. Once the brains are consumed, the fungus grows out of the insects’ heads to shower its spores down to the forest floor. Cordyceps often makes its victims climb high up in a tree or on a plant so the spores will have a better spread when they fall.
Dracunculiasis – Guinea Worm Disease
This parasite finds its way into humans and other mammals by swallowed water fleas. In a human stomach, the guinea worm larva tucks into a fleshy cavity and grows…and grows…and grows. Sometimes they reach 2-3 feet long. To get out, the worm creates a blister and burning sensation to entice a host to submerge the blister in water. If the host does so, the worm pokes its head out and squirts out a milky liquid, which carries thousands of larvae, into the water.
Nematomorpha – Horsehair Worm
Thankfully, this is another parasite that doesn’t bother humans, only insects. These parasites start off as larvae in water and get eaten by insects like grasshoppers. The worms then grow and mature. When a worm wants out of a host, it hijacks the host’s brain to make it commit suicide by plunging itself into water. The worm then exits.….
Ampulex Compressa – The Emerald Jewel WaspYou might feel bad for cockroaches after this one. The female wasp uses a stinger to first paralyze a cockroach’s body, then its brain. Her venom specifically targets and neutralizes the flight-or-fight response. Next, she leads the roach back to her burrow and lays her eggs. She then leaves, but first seals the burrow by placing pebbles at the entrance. The larvae hatch and eventually feed off the lobotomized roach.
Here is one for the advocates of Bio-Semiosis. This parasite sends false “Caterpillar” signals to birds to help the parasite breed:
Leucochloridium Paradoxum – Green-Banded Broodsac
These tiny worms wait around in fecal matter. Along comes a snail that unknowingly eats up the worm when it feeds off the excrement. Once in a snail, the worm actually reshapes the snail’s eyestalks to resemble big, juicy caterpillars. The worm controls the snail’s brain and forces it to expose itself. Along comes a bird or other critter that likes to eat caterpillars. Inside larger animals, the worm can now mature and lay more eggs.
Did the Designer create microbial parasites too? The Bubonic Plague, Malaria, Antrhax, AIDS , pandemic Influenza?
A TV show of relevance regarding both microbial and other parasites:
http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/monsters-inside-me/
On some level, one might desperately want to believe the world of biology is NOT intelligently designed, because if there intelligent design in biology, it is hard to run away from the inference that the source of the design is an intelligence willing to inflict malice.
The Bible refers to Satan as “the god of this world” suggesting the world is locally under the operative control of a Satanic intelligence because of God’s wrath. Whether one believes in such things or not, a Satanic intelligence operating on this world does seem a descriptive metaphor for the world of biology as Darwin himself observed:
What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!
Charles Darwin
I guess that God may have given humans a modified quadruped skeleton in order to be malicious, with backaches and herniated discs ensuing.
Or, you know, it could have been all that evolution could do with what it had.
I’m trying to imagine why the first notion could possibly be a better explanation. I also wonder why Darwin’s arguments against the utilitarian Paley are supposed to be relevant to today.
Well, except that IDists have never really explained anything, “good” or “evil,” let alone the various ways that animals make their livings. Science moved on to study adaptation, IDists just argue about the Designer being good, or sometimes, evil.
Glen Davidson
Rumraket,
What kind of sick bastard are you that you are OK with a world where children can starve to death? Man, what is wrong with you.
Nope…sorry Phoodoo. You’ve not shown jack. You’ve merely declared that everyone would be apathetic in a world of only good. And I’ve already countered your assertion. Got anything else?
Robin,
You have countered it? The reason you think you have countered it is because you don’t have the wherewithal to follow through on your thoughts.
You said people would do things in a world with no bad because it was fun. So if I did nothing that would be not fun?
And you said kids would eat candy, but they wouldn’t have to worry about getting fat or sick. So why eat at all, you also won’t get fat or sick right? And you certainly wont be hungry, because hungry is not good right? And you won’t need a job to get food, because that would be bad, so I have no need to go looking for food, it will already be wherever I reach. But I even don’t need to reach, because there are no consequences for not reaching, like less fun. Because I hate less fun. I think I am just going to lay down in the middle of the road, that sounds good.
And what do you mean people could commit suicide? Huh, in a world with all good, you want people to be able to die? Will anyone care? If you wife commits suicide would you be sad? No? Then why don’t you also commit suicide? And your kids? Why doesn’t everyone, there is no such thing as good or bad. It just is.
Try thinking about it a while Robin, huh.
Indeed. What kind of God allows himself to be crucified.
It’s all in how they are prepared.
Though I have to say, after reading the OP, I’m pretty sure I’ll never eat snails.
phoodoo,
It’s all about degrees of ‘good’. There does not need to be one vanilla shade of ‘good’ making all actions equally enjoyable. I can readily imagine a world without eye-boring parasites where I still enjoyed a bit of sex (any takers …?!). I can imagine a world where everything was ‘good’ and things still worth doing, in some sense. A lot of people see Heaven that way. Gawd help ’em if it isn’t!
I believe you have jumped to a conclusion before clarification received – in the very same post as you asked for it.
Some folks seem to think that Salvador is embracing the problem of evil. Whatever that means. How so?
Patrick, to Sal:
Ditto.
But Sal, does that mean you think Jesus was wrong when he said this?
No, it most definitely would not be fun, by definition.
Because eating, particularly eating things that you your brain says “yummy!”, is more fun than not eating. It’s pretty simple really.
Nope…disagree. Hunger is just fine…good really. Starvation…that’s something else however.
But that’s just being academic. Really it’s irrelevant if there’s hunger or not. Doesn’t change whether eating is fun and whether people would want to eat more than they would want to do nothing. Hunger plays only a small role in Western society these days, so really hunger is a non-issue for a world of only good.
Why would jobs be “bad”. I don’t agree with that. I think that a job someone doesn’t like or one someone doesn’t want to do is bad, but that’s completely different. Of course, this too is academic; in an all-good world, no one would have do without necessities, so people would only work when they wanted to and would only work to get things they didn’t need, but wanted anyway (because those things would be more fun than not having them). All good.
Ahh…but this isn’t about your personal opinions Phoodoo. Fun/= good and vice versa. They are two separate things (look em up why doncha). A world can be good without fun (pretty simple really), but a world cannot be fun without some good. There’s the issue you can’t seem to address.
So yes, there’d be consequences in a world of only good. Lots of ’em. There just would never be bad consequences; only degrees of satisfaction. Which would be great…if you want to be apathetic in such a world, you could. It would still be good, it just wouldn’t be as satisfying as some alternatives. But that’s ok too.
Sure…why not. Death isn’t bad in any absolute sense. There are certainly bad ways of dying (those would have to go), but death in and of itself could stay.
However, it is bad that those who are left living can’t still chat with, see, or hang around with those who have passed away. That would have to change.
Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say? We don’t have such a world.
Not if I could still see her, chat with her, and hang with her. No, wouldn’t bother me in the least in that case.
Maybe everyone would. But in a world of only good, what be be wrong with that?
I actually have. It appears you really haven’t. You’re still too inhibited in your imagination.
I guess my questions got lost on the previous page.
Question for theists. (I could be wrong, but I assume you all believe in an afterlife, an existence in which your consciousness continues in some form or another.)
Does the afterlife have disease, poverty, crime, sex, hunger, passion, and so forth?
Two parts to the question: what do you know, and what do you not know, but expect?
Mung,
I’m basing my assessment in part on this comment of his:
“#1” is that a god exists but is not omnibenevolent. That directly addresses the problem of evil by accepting one of the possible logical conclusions instead of waffling about inscrutable mysteries.
Keiths,
Of course I don’t believe Jesus was wrong. I accept on faith there is something he was trying to convey in a not-so-clear way as is Jesus custom to be not-so-clear.
That passage was about forgiving others while we are on Earth since God allows them to live on Earth (the rain and sunshine still provided). The forgiveness of sin is symbol of God’s perfection, but we may not know why.
With regard to the idea of perfect. I’ve rhetorically posed the question, would a Perfect Playwright write a drama that had villains and problems and world full of evil that is redeemed in the end by a hero? I suppose so, personally. If God is the Playwright in the sky, then all the bad is part of a larger drama that will have a happy ending for Him, not necessarily for all humanity. He has made villains so that He will be the Hero.
After all, a Rube Goldberg machine is made for the delight of the designer, not the benefit of the Rube Goldberg machine. A mouse trap is not made for the benefit of the mouse. A mouse has no cause to say the mouse trap isn’t designed merely because it is maliciously intended for the mouse’s demise.
That means even the villains who we’ve encountered, even the villains who committed crimes against my family were created for the day of trouble.
Of course, one does not have to believe this. Darwin and others had sympathy for some sort of cosmological scale ID whereby the Designer wasn’t at all trifling with the details of biology or every day life. It was one way to reconcile some amount of ID with the problem of Evil — Cosmological ID for the universe, but natural selection to supposedly create parasites which God doesn’t really have much mind of.
But if one believes the Designer is directly involved in the structure of biology at the nano-molecular level and the course of human history, it seems the reasonable inference from such nano-scale ID that there are malicious intelligent designs.
For some, maybe myself included, thinking all the trouble in the world is an accident rather than God’s wrath might provide one way to try to make sense of things.
But honestly, those parasites look pretty well crafted for their nefarious purposes.
One doesn’t need the Bible to hypothesize nefarious designs. It proceeds simply from what level of design one believes is involved in human history. I conjecture design because of things like the law of large numbers and the exceptional events necessary for OOL and the origin of Eukaryotes, etc. I’ve said I can’t formally prove the inference correct, but I wager it is correct.
I believe the Bible partly because the Designer I deduced from observing nano-scale designs in parasites accords with the God of the Old Testament. As Dawkins said of Him:
That’s good evidence for me the Bible is true because that is the way the Designer deals with us on Earth — famine, pestilence, wars and rumors of wars, death and suffering.
“the most unpleasant character in all fiction” — except if there is a Designer, this isn’t fiction, he made the parasites.
One wouldn’t expect someone with stcordova’s educational profile to be able to construct a proper English sentence. Either way, in capitalising the term ‘Designer’, stcordova is *NOT* advocating the ‘intelligent design theory’ of the Discovery Institute. That is his own uppercase IDism. But he doesn’t care because, regardless, it suits his personal evangelical apologetics. 😉
From the OP:
First, I think it’s absurd to call a design malicious. But whatever.
The intelligent designer(s) hate caterpillars? Or are they equal opportunity haters?
What thinking person would believe that arguing that God must be evil in the midst of a bunch of anti-theists who think the world is filed with evil even without any God or gods could possibly serve any useful purpose?
I’ll tell you what, petrushka. You haul out your Bible, paper or online, and find a few passages that you think speak of the afterlife, and I’ll tell you what I think about them.
I’ve already said what I think about hell, so you might want to keep that in mind in selecting your passages.
No, his claim is not that God is not omni-benevolent, but that God is malicious.
Perhaps God is maliciously benevolent. Sal hasn’t even touched the problem of evil, much less embraced it.
Mung,
No, you’re wrong. He’s being called ‘courageous’ by atheists as if sal is helping them understand how evil the Creator is. stcordova is a maliciously designed evil genius re: theodicy! 😉
Mung wrote:
So how would prefer to characterize the designed pestilence God had in mind on these people? “Sweetie pie hugs and kisses type designs?”
And how would you like then to characterize this use of biological warfare, would you like to call it “Santa’s Merry Christmas gift to the little kids?”
And you still insist there no such things as malicious designs.
[SNARK]I suppose Mung could argue inducing a parent to commit cannibalism is a very benevolent design [SNARK].
If the world was devoid of flesh eating bacteria and blowflies, would you then do nothing?
Or I could deny that cannibalism is designed. Yeah, I think I’ll deny that cannibalism is designed. I don’t think rape is designed either. Or murder.
I’ve never been attacked by blowflies, never had cancer, never had any of the really good tropical diseases. But every day I thank God that they exist and that someone else gets them.
And in all those child abuse cases, you were silently thanking God that it wasn’t your children or their children. I wonder if He heard you. What do you think?
stcordova,
What bad things do you think a designer God should be able to include in a world, and still be considered a “benevolent” design? Starvation, injury, heartbreak, loneliness, death, crime? If any of those are included in what you call a design, do you question the benevolence of the design?
Can you answer the question-In a world with no consequences, no failure, no disappointment, no tragedy, what is the motivation for doing anything?
Is the answer just more bliss? if it is, then what does less bliss feel like? What does no bliss feel like?
Does the concept of “good” even exist if there is no such thing as bad? How so? Can you really have good, and less good? And less less good, and more more good?
Phoodoo,
To answer the question we have to ask first which perspective ultimately counts.
A great new anti-parasitic drug might be judged to be a benevolent design by a human. Maybe not so much by the parasite it kills!
For us to complain about good, bad and moral behavior about God would be like parasites complaining about the morality of anti-parasitic drugs.
That said, We are called to bear the crosses which God designed for us. They are malevolent for our earthly lives, but if one believes in Jesus, they are benevolent in the end.
The rottenness of the present world makes meaningful the goodness of the next, much like the badness in the middle chapters of a story make meaningful a happy ending.
The bad designs in the present as far as Christians are concerned, are benevolent designs for their eternal life. 2 Cor 4:17.
As far as the non-Christians? You fill in the blanks….
There is no reason to see biology as now created by god on purpose. first the bible makes clear biology was changed by the fall. Death came and so bio war.
there is no reason to not see mechanisms as going on in a post fall world. Yet the foundations of biology were created. YES people changed their llooks by mechanism and no god didn’t have a part in it. Except the original creation had the ability to adapt.
There was no killer wasps or killer bacteria in EDEN.
Well, I’m a less sick bastard than god apparently. Because if I could (and I could if I was god), I wouldn’t let them starve to death.
Mung,
Still waiting for you to address this question about the problem of evil:
keiths:
Mung:
I didn’t say anything about the morality of the dog’s act.
Read the entire passage and then answer a couple of questions for us:
1. Do you think the uncle in the example above is a loving uncle? Why or why not?
2. Do you think your God is a perfectly loving God? Why or why not?
One that has an infinite supply of bodies?
Name 10 bad things.
Mung,
Why not both?
He explicitly chose the “not omnibenevolent” option in that comment.
stcordova,
But that doesn’t answer my question at all.
I am asking how can you have good without some bad? if all you have is good, there is no reason to do anything.
People are trying to propose a world which only has levels of good, nothing bad. If there are only levels of good, I can lay down in the middle of traffic and nothing bad can happen to me right? I not eat forever and nothing bad can happen to me. I can jump off a building, no problem, what can happen? I can cheat on my wife, why not? She can cheat on me. I can drown my kids, but nothing bad can happen to them. I can go into a crowded mall and fire an assault weapon at anyone I see. I can do nothing.
What world can exist, in which people create, and is only good?
I say none. Forget the Bible quotes for a minute. What kind of world can exist?
Rumraket,
Wait, you mean now you don’t want starving either? I thought before you just said you wanted less rape. What about broken bones, do you allow that in your ideal world? Loneliness? Disappointment? Divorce? Fights? Pain? When bad are you willing to allow, and what bad can we eliminate?
Automated cars will not run you over.
Some people find eating boring and have replaced it with alternatives. Soon you won’t have to “eat” anything if you don’t want to.
There are many ways to have a relationship. If you are happy with that then that’s fine.
Their nanobots will simply switch over to extracting oxygen directly from the water. In any case, automated systems would have noted your increasing mental instability and prevented you from carrying out your plan.
As above.
I can imagine a world where none of the things you have listed happen and still people “move around”. In fact, as noted, it’s more then likely such a world will come to pass sooner rather than later. What then, for you?
Name 10 bad things.
OMagain,
So you mean God created a world in which eventually nothing bad can happen to anyone? Well, great, that what are you complaining about?
No, I obviously don’t mean that because your God does nothing. If the world gets better it’s nothing to do with an imaginary old man in the sky.
And “eventually” does not do much for the millions of people who will suffer until such a world comes about.
And you now admit that such a world can come to pass and people will still “move about”. So your whole premise has been disconfirmed, by you no less!
God or the Intelligent Designer?
OMagain,
Its your believe that a world can exist that has only good, and people achieve, not mine.
Yet you can give no reason why if a world where all of your examples were removed or impossible people would stop “moving around”.
If it was impossible to be killed by a car why is that demotivating?
Your god is weak.
OMagain,
If nothing bad can happen to me, why do I need to move? Not moving is already great. Not having relationships is already great. Not having kids is already great. Not working is already great. Not having any relationships is already wonderful. Why move?
As demonstrated, if we remove each thing you mention from the world we are still left with a world substantially similar where people still “move about”. So the answer to that question is the same as it is now.
All this effort to justify to yourself why you believe in a god that deliberately causes children to go blind because of parasitic worms.
At least Sal is honest about the implications of Intelligent Design in the world. Even Behe says Malaria was designed. But you have to make excuses for god don’t you? He had to do it like this, phoodoo says, because it’s for our own ultimate benefit in the long run.
OMagain,
Why move?
OMagain,
Anyone can leave this world if they thought it wasn’t a fair deal.
So why move in your world?
You’ve provided no support for the assertion that “not moving is already great.” As I noted previously, “fun” /= “good”. Hence the reason people do things now – because sky diving is more fun (for some people) than standing at a bus stop. Both may well be “good”, but they don’t have the same level of fun.
You really need to think a bit more Phoodoo.
Why can’t it be that the malicious design be due to genetic entropy, ie Darwinian evolution, that has occurred to the originally designed populations over many generations?