Your God is too Smallville

DM: In his defense, Steve, it is not necessary that human beings weigh 200 lbs, or stand the height they do...

SH: True. There are, however, certain physical constraints on flight.

There are also certain constraints on what it means to be human.

In chap. 11 of Nature’s Destiny (The Free Press 1998), Michael Denton has an interesting discussion on this very topic.

DM: There are many engineering trade-offs, admittedly, to flight, but I think John was volunteering one thing he considers an improvement, probably off-the-cuff.

SH: I responded to his example. If it’s a lousy example, that’s his problem, not mine.

DM: Now, more importantly -- is it necessary that you believe that God made men "perfectly" designed? I was just curious about that after having read the post John put up a few hours ago. I mean, certainly, it seems absurd to think that God couldn't make half-arsed creations if God so chose, but is there a logical necessity that whatever God makes is the best it could be?

Obviously, pseudogenes, endogenous retroviruses and vestigial organs come to mind, concerning "perfect" design...

Second, if I was in the "big chair", I suppose I'd create a world in which it was not necessary for starvation and viruses to exist. I can think of absolutely no reason that either must exist (esp endogenous retroviruses)...but I don't want to start a long thread here, just telling you two things I just thought of, sort of hastily, in pondering, "what would I do if I had all the power in the world...?"

Just a thought.

SH:

i) I already offered a response to Loftus when he raised the same basic objection:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/06/damning-questions.html

ii) Questions of optimality/suboptimality are relative.

Which is better designed—a leopard or an anteater?

There’s no one answer, for each design has compensatory advantages as well as potential disadvantages.

The anteater has a more specialized diet, and more specialized equipment to exploit its food source.

That’s an advantage insofar as it allows the anteater to monopolize a particular niche.

But the downside of being “perfectly” adapted to your environment is that you are ill-adapted in case of environmental change.

Conversely, a leopard is much more flexible. It has a wide range of food sources.

That’s an advantage insofar is it is not dependent on a particular diet or particular environment.

But the downside of its more generalized diet and equipment is that it faces a good deal of competition from other predators for the same sources of food.

So both designs carry survival advantages and disadvantages.

Likewise, human beings are practically defenseless except for their brainpower. Yet that one advantage trumps speed, power, fangs, claws, venom, &c.

iii) The answer also depends on the unit of optimality. Is the unit of optimality a particular organism, a particular species, or the ecological balance between one life form and another within the entirely of the ecosystem?

DM: I thought Steve was giving some silly examples (esp the opposable thumbs -- as though with wings we must become birdlike in every other way), although the point of engineering trade-offs is always a valid one (esp the question of how flight would affect our caloric demands -- although God could readily solve this problem by creating a world that isn't covered with so much desert and/or plants that produce more food for humans, etc etc etc)...

SH: How is the feature of opposable thumbs a silly example? Is Danny saying that opposable thumbs are unimportant to human nature and human success?

Or is he saying that a flying man could have opposable thumbs?

Birds have four limbs. Two are dedicated to flight (wings). The other two take the form of talons or webbed feet or other suchlike.

So where would the opposable thumbs go? Would they take the place of talons or webbed feet? Would they be able to perform the same task?

Or is Danny suggesting a winged man with six limbs? Hands, feet, and wings?

But is that practical from an engineering standpoint? As Danny knows, you can’t just graft a pair of wings onto a human being and make it fly.

You’d have to divert certain physiological resources to the flying musculature. Can you siphon off that much blood, oxygen, nutrient, &c., and still have a viable organism?

Human beings are very compact, with a certain amount of dual (or even triple) use technology (e.g. eating/speaking/breathing; copulating/excreting) to fit it all under one hood.

JL: A flying man is not an off the cuff suggestion. I mean it. And I have plenty of other suggestions. So tell me this Steve, and I really want an answer. Could God have created human beings so that they could fly? Yes or no? It might mean collapsible wings. It might mean heavier air. It might mean smaller bodies. It might entail a perpetual miracle that God just makes us fly when we flap our wings. The question is whether or not your omnipotent God could have created us this way and what the net effect would be on our happiness.

Steve, yes or no? And just because I suggest something that sounds strange means nothing at all. Birds can fly. Angels purportedly have wings. Why not humans? There would be a whole lot less suffering with just this one change, but I have dozens of changes that I'll suggest in an upcoming debate on evil...dozens. Any one of which would greatly reduce suffering in our world.

You see, when you claim to believe in an omnipotent God and then ridicule the idea that he could have made us with wings, then you betray your own beliefs. You either believe God is omnipotent or not. If he is and if we can find things in the natural world that he has done, then he could've done it for us. And had he done that for us we would experience less suffering. So the question for you is why he did not do it. And rather than offer an answer to my question people here would prefer to ridicule my question, not fully aware of the fact that what they are ridiculing is their own conception of an omnipotent God. Ya see, they ridicule it because they cannot conceive of a bigger God than the one who purportedly created this universe. They are stuck defending the God whom they believe created this world and will obstinately refuse to consider that such a God could have easily done differently because of a faith that is blind. For them God is only as omnipotent as this world reveals, even though I can suggest very reasonable changes that an omnipotent God, if omnipotent, could easily do differently. So go ahead, in ridiculing my suggestion you ridicule what you believe your own God could do.

SH: A number of confusions to untangle:

1.Notice that Loftus is backpedaling from his original question. As originally framed, Loftus said: “We know God could've done this because there are naturally existing birds in this world who fly.”

Note the key qualifier: “naturally.”

Now, however, Loftus is shifting gears from what could “naturally” occur to what could occur if God were to apply his omnipotence to the task.

Loftus is suddenly oscillating between two opposing models. In the one you have God working through natural mechanisms; in the other, God working apart from natural mechanisms, or altering the mechanism.

If you’re going to posit that God is working through a natural mechanism, then, according to the operating premise of your hypothetical, God is bound by the internal constraints of the physical medium.

Given a physical medium or concrete objects with certain spatiotemporal properties which interact according to a network of second causes, God cannot do anything whatsoever given the parameters of the medium itself.

That is not a limitation on God. Rather, that’s a twofold limitation of another sort:

i) It’s a logical limitation, given the way in which the hypothetical was predicated.

ii) It’s a physical restriction inherent in the medium qua medium. Space and time are limits.

In creation, God does not transfers his omnipotence to the creature. The creature remains finite.

Although God can do anything logically compossible, the creature cannot do anything whatsoever.

For example, Loftus talks about making the air heavier.

But if this is a question of what’s naturally possible, then, at the very least, if you make the air heavier (whatever that’s supposed to mean), then God would also need to make some other environmental adjustments to compensate for this one change.

And even if that were metaphysically possible, it may not be naturally possible to readjust all these variables (or forces or constants) and still have an environment in which organic, carbon-based life itself is possible.

2.Loftus is also trading upon an equivocation. If you modify a man, at what point does he cease to be a man? So we really have two questions bundled into one:

i) Can God do to x to y?

ii) If God does x to y, will y remain y?

For example, Loftus believes that mental events are identical with brain events.

Now, as presently configured, a lot of our physiological resources are dedicated to keeping the brain happy.

But can you reconfigure the human body to fly and keep the same brain?

To take another example: could God make a man who had all the feminine properties of a woman? Well, he could turn a man into a woman. But a man qua man will have masculine properties while a woman qua woman will have feminine properties.

Can God make a red object that is not a colored object? No.

Omnipotence is not a genie in a bottle.

3.What Loftus, in his philosophical and theological naïveté has done is to stipulate certain preconditions (e.g. what comes “naturally,” human identity), then speculate on some very radical modifications which might very well violate the initial conditions of his own hypothesis, then charge the Christian with failing to take divine omnipotence seriously.

To the contrary, all that Loftus has done is to pose a pseudotask for God by positing an incoherent proposition.

4.As to angels, Loftus is conflating Biblical angelology with popular iconography.

In Scripture, there are two different types of angelophanies:

i) Earthly angelic apparitions, where angels assume human form, appearing to man, and

ii) Heavenly visions of angels (esp. cherubim/seraphim), in which they assume symbolic (tetramorphic) form, with complete with wings, in the heavenly vision of the seer.

Popular iconography merges the two, and Loftus, who’s theological understanding rarely rises above the Sunday school level, perpetuates the confusion.