Biological Design Argument?

[nmgauss]

nmgauss

**It can be argued that the child’s purpose is to give its parents pleasure or fulfill the expectations of the parents. **

Well, if the parents were to die when the child was born, wouldn’t the child still have a purpose?

Catholics believe that purpose is to glorify God by their works.

After the parents die, whoever is the caretaker of the child, be it an aunt or uncle or grandmother or grandfather can have the child fulfill a purpose, even if it is to follow in the footsteps of the substitute parent. I wonder what purpose President Obama fulfilled when both of his parents died. If the foster child is a burden to the substitute parent, then I don’t know what the child’s purpose is. In some cases, the child serves as a sexual object to a priest. That is one of the purposes of the child. Another would be for the child to be groomed to be a sociopath. If the adolescent falls under the spell of a gang, then the child’s purpose is to enhance the gang.

 

[buffalo]

Here it is again - top down - DNA is not the sole transmitter of inheritance - paper after paper is now showing the inheritance epigenetic information - information is the driver.

Neo Darwinism crumbling…

Rocking the foundations of biology

A major revolution is occurring in evolutionary biology. In this video the President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, Professor Denis Noble, explains what is happening and why it is set to change the nature of biology and of the importance of physiology to that change. The lecture was given to a general audience at a major international Congress held in Suzhou China. The implications of the change extend far beyond biology itself.

 

[edwest2]

Modern Synthesis Of Neo-Darwinism Is False - Denis Nobel

Thank you buffalo.

Peace,
Ed

 

[ngill09]

Here it is again - top down - DNA is not the sole transmitter of inheritance - paper after paper is now showing the inheritance epigenetic information - information is the driver.

Neo Darwinism crumbling…

Rocking the foundations of biology

A major revolution is occurring in evolutionary biology. In this video the President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, Professor Denis Noble, explains what is happening and why it is set to change the nature of biology and of the importance of physiology to that change. The lecture was given to a general audience at a major international Congress held in Suzhou China. The implications of the change extend far beyond biology itself.

And what part of this implies that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and that each species was created independently by magic? Debate within biology is hardly new and is a good thing, not a sign of weakness or whatever you’re implying it is.

 

[nmgauss]

Here it is again - top down - DNA is not the sole transmitter of inheritance - paper after paper is now showing the inheritance epigenetic information - information is the driver.

“Gene expression can be controlled through the action of repressor proteins that attach to silencer regions of the DNA. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell’s life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism’s genes to behave (or “express themselves”) differently.[2] There are objections to the use of the term epigenetic to describe chemical modification of histone, since it remains unclear whether or not histone modifications are heritable.”

This comes from Wikipedia article on Epigenetics.

As long as the information is in the chromosome, sexual reproduction entails random combinations of alleles from the female and male to result in a brand new human. Whether these random combinations produce a superior result is up for grabs. In other words, each embryo is an experiment. Sometimes the resultant baby is a disaster and it is either naturally aborted or, if born, dies soon after birth. If the baby has severe genetic defects, it may live for a time and then die. Or the parents may choose not to support their defective child. The children who survive to reproductive age unassisted by life support systems are considered to be successful, and those who do not are failures.

 

[buffalo]

“Gene expression can be controlled through the action of repressor proteins that attach to silencer regions of the DNA. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell’s life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism’s genes to behave (or “express themselves”) differently.[2] There are objections to the use of the term epigenetic to describe chemical modification of histone, since it remains unclear whether or not histone modifications are heritable.”

This comes from Wikipedia article on Epigenetics.

As long as the information is in the chromosome, sexual reproduction entails random combinations of alleles from the female and male to result in a brand new human. Whether these random combinations produce a superior result is up for grabs. In other words, each embryo is an experiment. Sometimes the resultant baby is a disaster and it is either naturally aborted or, if born, dies soon after birth. If the baby has severe genetic defects, it may live for a time and then die. Or the parents may choose not to support their defective child. The children who survive to reproductive age unassisted by life support systems are considered to be successful, and those who do not are failures.

Don’t bother quoting me wiki articles.

And since you brought up magic:

** The Magician’s Twin - CS Lewis **

A powerful must see video:

---

**The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism **

The Similarity Between Science and Magic

1. Science as religion
2. Science as credulity
3. Science as power

Evolution is an alternative religion

 

[buffalo]

And what part of this implies that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and that each species was created independently by magic? Debate within biology is hardly new and is a good thing, not a sign of weakness or whatever you’re implying it is.

Great, you accept science as being provisional. By its own definition science has a limited say about the universe as it is limited by our 5 senses, 3 dimensions and time.

Your faith says that is all there is and everything came from nothing.

It may surprise you but St Augustine may have gotten it right in his idea of prime matter.

 

[buffalo]

And what part of this implies that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and that each species was created independently by magic? Debate within biology is hardly new and is a good thing, not a sign of weakness or whatever you’re implying it is.

Now one has to ponder, these these ancients figured out space, matter and time or it was revealed to them. Take your pick.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

No.

There is nothing in scripture about any such god, not any scientific evidence of such a god.

rossum

Excuse me but you are absolutely wrong there. Both Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament amply testifiy to the One, Eternal, Unchanging God, who alone created the entire order of existence, both the angelic and the material and that there are no gods besides Him. This hardly needs to be defended, only a blind idiot would deny that. Of course one may deny the validity of the Scriptures, but that is a different matter. And of course, His existence cannot be demonstrated by science. However, His existence and that he is a personal, provident God worthy of worship can be known by all men from observing the things He has made. It is this fact upon which the philosophical proofs of his existence and nature are founded. However, these may also be denied.

However, to deny the existence of the Christian God ( of the God of Abraham) leaves us in a dark place, as proven by the dark dead ends provided by atheism and man made " religions, " as the cultish Eastern religions. Linus2nd

 

[prodigalson2011]

That has some philosophical problems.

Well, let’s see if we can’t suss them out.

Does rossum have a purpose? Then we have two different things: rossum and purpose-of-rossum.

Whether rossum has a purpose depends entirely on whether something (or someone) created rossum to achieve a certain end. If, as I believe, you are the product of a divine will, then yes, you have a purpose. If, on the other hand, you are the product of an essentially purposeless nature, then no, you do not have a purpose.

Which came first? Obviously we cannot have purpose-of-rossum without there being a rossum to attach the purpose to. Hence rossum must exist before purpose-of-rossum.

A demonstrably false assertion which can be disproved by any number of practical examples. Before there was an airplane, there was a purpose-of-airplane. From this purpose were derived the necessary physical dimensions and constituent materials to form “airplane.” And where does this purpose exist? In a mind.

So, again, we return to the question of whether or not rossum is the product of a mind. If so, there can indeed be a purpose-of-rossum prior to the existence of rossum.

This allows the existence of rossum independent of purpose-of-rossum. So rossum does not require a purpose.

I have not argued that you require a purpose, inasmuch as I have not, in this thread, argued the existence of God. That is another discussion altogether. For the sake of this discussion, my argument assumes the truth of God’s existence. So what I have argued, and believe I have substantiated, is that, given that God exists, you can indeed have an intrinsic purpose; an end towards which you are innately ordered, regardless of your personal goals.

By multiplying entities, as with both X and purpose-of-X, you are multiplying your problems. Do all entities have a purpose? What about purpose-of-purpose-of-X? Does that have a purpose?

As purpose-of-X is nothing more than a description of X’s nature and natural end, it is not really a separate entity so much as it is the ground of that entity. On that view, the purpose-of-purpose-of-X would be to form X. And what about the purpose-of-purpose-of-purpose-of X? Inasmuch as the question of there being any purpose outside of man’s making itself depends entirely on the question of whether God exists, and as we have assumed for the sake of this argument that the answer to the latter is “yes,” the answer to the former ultimately becomes, “To fulfill God’s will.”

All these are pretty much standard problems with reified entities. All reification is incorrect.

Reification only occurs if one removes God from the question, in which case there is no absolute ground on which purpose can be based.

Since I am Buddhist, your “if…” fails.

Until you can say you have conclusively proven that there is no God, the possibility is still on the table. My “if” does not fail just because you don’t believe it, any more than evolutionary science fails because YEC’s don’t believe it.

Heretic!! You shall be eternally confined to the Kitty-Litter™ Tray of doom!

Have they upgraded to the LitterMaid? Might not be that bad.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I think the fact of our consciousness necessarily relegates our purpose to the subjective. That we were created for any particular purpose does not necessarily make that our purpose. Slaves in the pre-Civil War South, for instance, would have been bred to work on plantations, but it does not follow that working on plantations is their only “objective” purpose. The only way you can counter this analogy is to say that those slaves were actually bred by an even greater slavemaster (God) to serve Him.

For me, however, a slave who decides to escape slavery in order to save himself and his family from torture and misery, has not defied his purpose, he has created it.

Since we are approaching the question from two different perspectives, let’s look at it from each in turn.

On my view, the following premises are assumed as being true:

• God exists.
• Everything that exists outside of God is dependent upon Him for its existence.
• God made man in His image (with intellect and free will) for the purpose of knowing and loving Him.

On your view, since I’m assuming you are an atheist, the following premises are assumed:

• The universe is self-sufficient.
• Man is the product of the blind forces of the universe.
• The universe, along with man, has no ultimate, immutable and immaterial end.

Now, on your view, there is obviously no ground for ascribing an objective purpose to man. Implicit in the notion of objective purpose is the idea that the thing to which it has been ascribed has an immaterial and immutable end towards which it has been directed by something immutably over and beyond itself. Those last five words are key, as I will presently show.

The comparison between God and the slavemaster fails because the slavemaster is only “over” the slave in a very temporal and conditional sense. This relationship could easily be reversed or eliminated dependent upon circumstances; it is neither transcendent nor immutable. The slave’s existence is not dependent in any fundamental way on the slavemaster. If the slavemaster were to die in the middle of the night, the slave would still be there the next morning.

But in the end (assuming materialism), both are the essentially meaningless products of meaningless forces, and thus whatever ends towards which they set either themselves or one another is equally subjective and ultimately meaningless. So, yes, if the materialistic worldview is correct, then all purpose is necessarily subjective.

Now, let’s look at this from the theistic perspective. On theism, all that exists only does so because God has willed it. Further, it only continues to exist because God sustains it. Unlike the relationship of our slave/slavemaster, wherein one contingent being has dominated and assumed control of another being like itself, in this case we are facing the relationship of all contingent beings to that upon which they are contingent. Whereas the slave pursuing his own will in defiance of the slavemaster’s in no way constitutes a violation of the slave’s nature, any defiance of the very ground of his being is ultimately an act of self-negation; a violation of one’s purpose as defined by that which has immutable control over it. Man does not belong to himself.

So, assuming theism, the fact of our consciousness does not relegate our ultimate purpose to the subjective. It simply allows us to create “little purposes” which may (or may not) contradict our ultimate purpose.

 

[rossum]

Excuse me but you are absolutely wrong there.

No, I am absolutely right there. Look at the top right of my posts. I am Buddhist. When I referred to “scripture” I was referring to the Buddhist Tripitaka, not to any of the Abrahamic scriptures.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Until you can say you have conclusively proven that there is no God, the possibility is still on the table.

Can God be the creator of the universe? No. If we define the universe as “all that exists” then God cannot have created it.

Can God be the eternal creator of the material universe? No. The material universe is not itself eternal, so prior to the Big Bang God cannot have been the creator of the material universe, because that would be like a parent without children. A logical impossibility. A ‘creator’ who has not created anything is not a creator.

Can God create time? No. Creation/created is like cause and effect. Cause comes before effect – that is the way we can tell them apart. In the absence of time there is no “before”. God cannot create from nothing, He requires time to be present as well.

rossum

 

[Linusthe2nd]

No, I am absolutely right there. Look at the top right of my posts. I am Buddhist. When I referred to “scripture” I was referring to the Buddhist Tripitaka, not to any of the Abrahamic scriptures.

rossum

Ah well, you should have made it clear which Scripture you were referring to. But our Scriptures says something quite different. Linus2nd

 

[ngill09]

Since we are approaching the question from two different perspectives, let’s look at it from each in turn.

On my view, the following premises are assumed as being true:

• God exists.
• Everything that exists outside of God is dependent upon Him for its existence.
• God made man in His image (with intellect and free will) for the purpose of knowing and loving Him.

On your view, since I’m assuming you are an atheist, the following premises are assumed:

• The universe is self-sufficient.
• Man is the product of the blind forces of the universe.
• The universe, along with man, has no ultimate, immutable and immaterial end.

Now, on your view, there is obviously no ground for ascribing an objective purpose to man. Implicit in the notion of objective purpose is the idea that the thing to which it has been ascribed has an immaterial and immutable end towards which it has been directed by something immutably over and beyond itself. Those last five words are key, as I will presently show.

The comparison between God and the slavemaster fails because the slavemaster is only “over” the slave in a very temporal and conditional sense. This relationship could easily be reversed or eliminated dependent upon circumstances; it is neither transcendent nor immutable. The slave’s existence is not dependent in any fundamental way on the slavemaster. If the slavemaster were to die in the middle of the night, the slave would still be there the next morning.

But in the end (assuming materialism), both are the essentially meaningless products of meaningless forces, and thus whatever ends towards which they set either themselves or one another is equally subjective and ultimately meaningless. So, yes, if the materialistic worldview is correct, then all purpose is necessarily subjective.

Now, let’s look at this from the theistic perspective. On theism, all that exists only does so because God has willed it. Further, it only continues to exist because God sustains it. Unlike the relationship of our slave/slavemaster, wherein one contingent being has dominated and assumed control of another being like itself, in this case we are facing the relationship of all contingent beings to that upon which they are contingent. Whereas the slave pursuing his own will in defiance of the slavemaster’s in no way constitutes a violation of the slave’s nature, any defiance of the very ground of his being is ultimately an act of self-negation; a violation of one’s purpose as defined by that which has immutable control over it. Man does not belong to himself.

So, assuming theism, the fact of our consciousness does not relegate our ultimate purpose to the subjective. It simply allows us to create “little purposes” which may (or may not) contradict our ultimate purpose.

Actually, I would see both the theist and atheist assertions you listed as being unjustified. But I still don’t see the theist situation as providing an “objective” purpose, since I don’t just think that no such purpose exists, I think that such a concept is incoherent and misunderstands the nature of purpose. Even if we were made for a reason by a being upon which the entire universe is contingent, even if we were “owned” by God (making my slavery analogy more appropriate), that would still not fulfilling God’s reasons for creating us an “objective” purpose. At best, it would be God’s subjective purpose for us, and would only be our purpose if we subjectively agreed that the criteria you listed were valid.

You could argue, I think successfully if it were known that God existed, that God’s purpose for us is better than any purpose we can think up. But it is to mistake the ontology of purpose to claim that any purpose is objective, existing independent of any mind.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Actually, I would see both the theist and atheist assertions you listed as being unjustified. But I still don’t see the theist situation as providing an “objective” purpose, since I don’t just think that no such purpose exists, I think that such a concept is incoherent and misunderstands the nature of purpose. Even if we were made for a reason by a being upon which the entire universe is contingent, even if we were “owned” by God (making my slavery analogy more appropriate), that would still not fulfilling God’s reasons for creating us an “objective” purpose. At best, it would be God’s subjective purpose for us, and would only be our purpose if we subjectively agreed that the criteria you listed were valid.

You could argue, I think successfully if it were known that God existed, that God’s purpose for us is better than any purpose we can think up. But it is to mistake the ontology of purpose to claim that any purpose is objective, existing independent of any mind.

Except that in the case of God, his being is ontologically superior to all reality, so while his purpose might be subjective in some sense it is at the same time ontologically prior to all objective reality and therefore objective. All that you take to be “objective” is only so because God precedence determines it to be so. It is only objective to you or any other “non-God” being who can only speak of objectivity because God has brought about an objective reality that exists “outside” all other beings, yet still “within” God, so to speak.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

This whole discussion in the end comes down to whether one believes in the existence of God. Given God, it seems improbable that the existence of the universe and everything in it does not have a purpose. Denying God, it seems the universe and everything in it is without purpose. However, neither the universe nor everything in it can define its own purpose, since to have a purpose must be declared before creating the thing that has a purpose. A hammer not only does not create itself, but does not declare its own purpose.

 

[nmgauss]

This whole discussion in the end comes down to whether one believes in the existence of God. Given God, it seems improbable that the existence of the universe and everything in it does not have a purpose. Denying God, it seems the universe and everything in it is without purpose. However, neither the universe nor everything in it can define its own purpose, since to have a purpose must be declared before creating the thing that has a purpose. A hammer not only does not create itself, but does not declare its own purpose.

That depends on ones view of God?

“Do Deists believe that there is a purpose to life?
Yes and no. Deists do not believe that there is an absolute mandate by God on what our purpose is in this existence. However, based on Reason we can come to our purpose and what that purpose is. Most Deists believe that the following is our purpose in life. “Our purpose is to honor God by using our God-given Reason to understand what it means to be alive is every sense of the word (to live life to the fullest) and act in such a way as to secure human happiness and contentment.” Reason dictates that life is short and that this may be all there is. Furthermore, we must all live together on this planet and in this existence and should make it desirable for all. Therefore, we must do what is best for ourselves and others based on natural law and Reason and that is our purpose.”

 

[edwest2]

And what part of this implies that the universe was created a few thousand years ago, and that each species was created independently by magic? Debate within biology is hardly new and is a good thing, not a sign of weakness or whatever you’re implying it is.

We’re giving you the Catholic Answer. You just don’t like it. You don’t believe, obviously, and that’s your choice.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Charlemagne_II]

nmgauss

**“Do Deists believe that there is a purpose to life?
Yes and no. Deists do not believe that there is an absolute mandate by God on what our purpose is in this existence. However, based on Reason we can come to our purpose and what that purpose is. Most Deists believe that the following is our purpose in life. “Our purpose is to honor God by using our God-given Reason to understand what it means to be alive is every sense of the word (to live life to the fullest) and act in such a way as to secure human happiness and contentment.” Reason dictates that life is short and that this may be all there is. Furthermore, we must all live together on this planet and in this existence and should make it desirable for all. Therefore, we must do what is best for ourselves and others based on natural law and Reason and that is our purpose.” **

As to the Deist view, much of what you say above applies. However, there is no coherent view of Deism. Every Deist appears to be a prophet unto himself. The common thread of Deism, as you have correctly suggested above, is that it gives rather short shrift to the idea of human immortality, which is at the center of theistic religions. It cannot do so without recourse to an authority beyond human reason. This means that Deism gives a temporal purpose to our existence … to use “our God-given Reason to understand what it means to be alive is every sense of the word (to live life to the fullest) and act in such a way as to secure human happiness and contentment.”

From the theist point of view, this is totally inadequate as a purpose. The Deist God is only playing with wind-up toys that are discarded when they wind down and die. The theist God offers a good deal more … the hope of everlasting life … a hope that many atheists (like Jean Paul Sartre and Antony Flew) have not been able to resist at the very end of their lives.

What kind of a god is it who appeals only to our heads but not to our hearts?

The theistic God has designed us to desire Him both with our heads and with our hearts. That is our ultimate purpose … and a very good one it is in my opinion.