Biological Design Argument?

[rossum]

To be precise, evolution could occur but to such limited extent life would be much simpler than it is now.

Probably. HGT would introduce some variation but the process would likely be slower.

A false dilemma. Even with perfect aim the limitations of the laws of nature preclude constant success.

Who designed the laws of nature? Did the designer make those laws so as to allow her purposes, or did the designer make those laws so as to obstruct her purposes? Is there perhaps more than one designer working at cross-purposes?

Intervention is necessary to guide the process of development and overcome inevitable setbacks like the virtual destruction of all life on this planet.

You have an omnipotent designer who has “inevitable setbacks” in their specially designed finely tuned universe? Forgive me for being sceptical. Either the designer is less than omnipotent or the designer is less than fully competent.

A correctly made finely tuned universe leads inevitably to life, with no further intervention required. A sloppily made, or not finely tuned, universe would need intervention. Pick one or the other please.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

Today, life on land in the Northern Hemisphere above the 50th parallel has few species. This contrasts with the incredible number of species found below the 25th parallel. Why is this so?

It is colder the farther you get from the equator.
Posting random questions will not convince people that there is no divine providence.

 

[nmgauss]

It is colder the farther you get from the equator.
Posting random questions will not convince people that there is no divine providence.

Actually the hottest places are in North Africa and Arabia.

The 50th parallel also has warm summers. At the 50th parallel, summers can be just as warm as they are in Texas. How come Saskatchewan has fewer species than Texas and it is 2-3 times times the size of Texas? Also, what does cold have to do with it? Why can’t life adapt to cold areas? In the Matanuska Valley in Alaska, farmers grow giant vegetables.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Why would three beings create two beings to reflect the relationship between them?

The relationship between them is a “living” eternal reality - the Holy Spirit. The reflection of this in human beings is that the love between a man and woman creates a new living reality - a child.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think Trinitarians adhere to the idea that the Trinity is one deity in three different persons but of the same essential persona. This is similar to the ancient Greek stage dramas where different actors play the same persona just by wearing the same mask…

Not true.

The Trinitarian doctrine is that three Persons have the same essential and eternal nature - the Godhead or Divinity.

I think Augustine characterized it as the eternal and perfect self-knowledge or self-awareness of the Father that proceeds eternally is the Son. The living relationship between the Father and Son is, likewise, an eternal reality - the Holy Spirit.

As a conscious being, one capable of “knowing thyself,” we could say there are two personalities represented. Your self and your knowledge of your self. If both of these were perfect and completely actualized - if human consciousness could actualize reality instead of merely visualizing it - there would, in a real sense, be two persons. We can only dimly imagine what such a fully actualized reality and the resulting relationship would be like, since even human knowledge of one’s “self” is very limited, so the Trinitarian doctrine is not explicable in terms we can grasp, but dimly.

 

[nmgauss]

The relationship between them is a “living” eternal reality - the Holy Spirit. The reflection of this in human beings is that the love between a man and woman creates a new living reality - a child.

Not necessarily. A child often happens between two people who are not loving toward each other. Also, a love between a man and a woman does not create a new living reality if either has been rendered incapable of creating a child. What is the role of the Holy Spirit in these cases?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Variation is essential. Mutations are one source of variation. They are an important source, but not the only one.

If the universe is fine tuned for life, then abiogenesis and evolution will occur naturally as a direct result of the initial fine tuning. The arrow hits the target because that is where the Master Archer aimed. Hence all that science says about what happened after the Big Bang is correct. The Master Archer does not need to intervene once he has released the arrow.

If the universe is not fine tuned, then the archer needs to intervene while the arrow is in flight, because it was not aimed correctly at the start.

Is God a Master Archer, with perfect aim, or is He merely a journeyman who needs to correct His work after releasing the arrow?

rossum

This presumes a “mechanical” concept of the universe, one “crafted” by a deist’s concept of God. Who is to say that God need function in that manner or to say that such a creation is inherently better than another model? Are you claiming that it is “in principle” better to build a machine that works perfectly than it is to, say, father a child? Is a machine an inherently higher class of created work than a living being that continues “in relationship” with its creator?

Or is a machine or craft inherently better or more perfect than a performance piece that is directly produced by the actions of its creator over time? Is a Beethoven sonata less perfect than a watchmaker’s watch simply because its existence relies on the continued action of the performer?

How do you know the universe is not kept in existence every second by God and that it must be so? Why would that be less perfect than a universe that subsists in some sense? How do you know that subsistence is even a possibility without making a presumption?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not necessarily. A child often happens between two people who are not loving toward each other. Also, a love between a man and a woman does not create a new living reality if either has been rendered incapable of creating a child. What is the role of the Holy Spirit in these cases?

You don’t understand the idea of paradigm or archetype, then? Humans may fail to live up to the paradigm, but that does not mean the paradigm is faulty.

 

[nmgauss]

You don’t understand the idea of paradigm or archetype, then? Humans may fail to live up to the paradigm, but that does not mean the paradigm is faulty.

Does the paradigm extend to other primates? Or other mammals? Or other vertebrates?

 

[Aloysium]

Does the paradigm extend to other primates? Or other mammals? Or other vertebrates?

One last try as you seem to be having difficulty with this.
Human beings are not animals. We are spiritual beings. We are created in the image of God. It is interesting to understand ourselves as also created as the image of God as the Trinity.

When you gaze into your lover’s eyes, you see her, lose yourself in the depths of her being. You and she, separate beings are one in love. One, two, three.

Adam and Eve were the first church. They loved each other as themselves and loved god totally. When we are saved, we participate with all the choirs of angels and Saints in worshipping God. The Trinity is analogous to the Church, in which we love one another and love God. Love being the Holy Spirit.

Our spirit is relational in nature. Every experience involves relating to some aspect of reality. It is not a dream; there is an objective reality, which we as frames of reference perceive and understand. Even here at the monitor: I exist as knower and the monitor is here as a physical object. That which comprises my being is unconscious for the most part as is that which constitutes the monitor, yet here we are united in this experience that exists. I can know myself (that I see, feel, understand etc) through the experience as I can know the monitor; that connection between us that is the experience itself, analogous to the Holy Spirit is not knowable other than it exists.

You can talk about your monkeys all you want, but this is human spiritual reality.

 

[nmgauss]

One last try as you seem to be having difficulty with this.
Human beings are not animals. We are spiritual beings. We are created in the image of God. It is interesting to understand ourselves as also created as the image of God as the Trinity.

When you gaze into your lover’s eyes, you see her, lose yourself in the depths of her being. You and she, separate beings are one in love. One, two, three.

Adam and Eve were the first church. They loved each other as themselves and loved god totally. When we are saved, we participate with all the choirs of angels and Saints in worshipping God. The Trinity is analogous to the Church, in which we love one another and love God. Love being the Holy Spirit.

Our spirit is relational in nature. Every experience involves relating to some aspect of reality. It is not a dream; there is an objective reality, which we as frames of reference perceive and understand. Even here at the monitor: I exist as knower and the monitor is here as a physical object. That which comprises my being is unconscious for the most part as is that which constitutes the monitor, yet here we are united in this experience that exists. I can know myself (that I see, feel, understand etc) through the experience as I can know the monitor; that connection between us that is the experience itself, analogous to the Holy Spirit is not knowable other than it exists.

You can talk about your monkeys all you want, but this is human spiritual reality.

How does this fit in with the idea of biological design? No biologist I know would approach the subject the way have done here.

 

[rossum]

Human beings are not animals.

Do human beings have physical bodies? Do those bodies have various properties that are shared with animals, with mammals, with primates, with Hominidae?

Our bodies are animal bodies. If we are not animals, then we do not have bodies.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

How does this fit in with the idea of biological design? No biologist I know would approach the subject the way have done here.

Thank you for asking. What I was attempting to address in my late-night stupor, is what underlies the entire structure of creation. My particular response was not detailed nor completely explanatory, but is meant to point to:

• how it is that we know anything
• that there is in fact a certain kind of objective world (the idea of Indra created by Brahma who sits in a lotus coming out of Vishnu’s umbilicus as He reclines on a crowned ten-headed snake that eternally sings of His glory, all occuring in a cosmic sea conjures up a different sort of cosmology)
• the purpose of biological creatures and hence the dignity that is to be alotted to them
• the nature of man, his purpose and worth
• there are other things, but I’m not about to write a treatise on this.

Studying biology without an understanding of Who created it and why, leads to facts that are meaningless save for their usefulness to satisfy our vanities.
The fact is that biology, ignoring these fundemental truths, does so at its peril and to the detriment of mankind.
It is because biology has lost its bearings that we are butchering millions through the holocaust of abortion and why our future on this planet is threatened.

Now I am not saying that a biologist needs to be a theologist any more than he would have to be a physicist. I suppose that biologists who do have an interest in these issues do not stay in research but move on to medicine and other disciplines where they can be of service to others.

 

[tonyrey]

To be precise, evolution could occur but to such limited extent life would be much simpler than it is now.

So slow that we wouldn’t be here to discuss anything!

A false dilemma. Even with perfect aim the limitations of the laws of nature preclude constant success.

Who designed the laws of nature? Did the designer make those laws so as to allow her purposes, or did the designer make those laws so as to obstruct her purposes?

That question implies it is possible in an immensely complex universe for all purposes to be fulfilled without any obstruction whatsoever. How could that assumption be justified?

Is there perhaps more than one designer working at cross-purposes?

Occam’s Razor eliminates that hypothesis.

Intervention is necessary to guide the process of development and overcome inevitable setbacks like the virtual destruction of all life on this planet.

You have an omnipotent designer who has “inevitable setbacks” in their specially designed finely tuned universe? Forgive me for being sceptical. Either the designer is less than omnipotent or the designer is less than fully competent.

A correctly made finely tuned universe leads inevitably to life, with no further intervention required. A sloppily made, or not finely tuned, universe would need intervention. Pick one or the other please.

It is still necessary to justify the assumption that** all **purposes can be fulfilled in an immensely complex universe without any obstruction whatsoever.

Can the laws of nature cater infallibly for every contingency?

 

[nmgauss]

If life is so important to the universe, why isn’t there life on the Moon, or Mars? Why did God create the Moon and Mars and not create conditions conducive to the full expression of life?

Also, why did it take 3.5 billion years after Earth’s creation to put humans on it?

 

[nmgauss]

homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/baloney.html

How to detect whether the evidence points to a proposed conclusion or points in another direction.
6. Does the preponderance of evidence point to the claimant’s conclusion or to a
different one?
The theory of evolution, for example, is proved'' through a convergence of evidence from a number of independent lines of inquiry. No one fossil, no one piece of biological or paleontological evidence has evolution’’ written on it; instead tens of thousands of evidentiary bits add up to a story of the evolution of life. Creationists conveniently ignore this confluence, focusing instead on trivial anomalies or currently unexplained phenomena in the history of life.

 

[prodigalson2011]

If life is so important to the universe, why isn’t there life on the Moon, or Mars? Why did God create the Moon and Mars and not create conditions conducive to the full expression of life?

The universe is not a conscious entity, and so cannot place import on anything. That’s point one. Secondly, it is simply silly to think that in order to be important, something must be omnipresent. On the contrary, it is most often something very rare that is most valued.

Nevertheless, the fact is that countless features of the universe, from the cosmological constants down to the thermodynamic idiosyncracies of water, are both fine-tuned for and inevitably directed towards the production of life.

But that is neither here nor there in regards to the question of the importance of life. To amend your formulation, life is not important to the universe, but to God. If there is no God, then life is not important at all, inasmuch as it will ultimately be wiped clean of existence.

Also, why did it take 3.5 billion years after Earth’s creation to put humans on it?

What difference does it make? A few days or a few billion years; it’s not like God’s on a tight schedule. Eternity is delightfully free of hurry.

It has been obvious to most Christian thinkers throughout history, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas, that God prefers to let his creation unfold, for the most part, freely. Given the nature of physical reality, that is the amount of time that was necessary for sufficient biological developments to produce something as complex as man. It’s as simple as that.

 

[nmgauss]

The universe is not a conscious entity, and so cannot place import on anything. That’s point one. Secondly, it is simply silly to think that in order to be important, something must be omnipresent. On the contrary, it is most often something very rare that is most valued.

Why have life at all? Why is life necessary for Earth? Why was the creation of life by God called “good”? What is the matter with a lifeless Earth?

Nevertheless, the fact is that countless features of the universe, from the cosmological constants down to the thermodynamic idiosyncracies of water, are both fine-tuned for and inevitably directed towards the production of life.

Again, why is that good? That is teleology.
“Since the Novum Organum of Francis Bacon, teleological explanations in science tend to be deliberately avoided because whether they are true or false is argued to be beyond the ability of human perception and understanding to judge.2] Some disciplines, in particular within evolutionary biology, are still prone to use language that appears teleological when they describe natural tendencies towards certain end conditions, but these arguments can almost always be rephrased in non-teleological forms.”

But that is neither here nor there in regards to the question of the importance of life. To amend your formulation, life is not important to the universe, but to God. If there is no God, then life is not important at all, inasmuch as it will ultimately be wiped clean of existence.

Why is life important to God? In Buddhism, incarnate life comprises a suffering existence and is to be avoided.

What difference does it make? A few days or a few billion years; it’s not like God’s on a tight schedule. Eternity is delightfully free of hurry.

It has been obvious to most Christian thinkers throughout history, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas, that God prefers to let his creation unfold, for the most part, freely. Given the nature of physical reality, that is the amount of time that was necessary for sufficient biological developments to produce something as complex as man. It’s as simple as that.

Why is man the ultimate goal? Why not value other complex forms of life, especially those that demonstrate the ability to solve problems?
What if it takes an eternity for life to appear? If it never appears, who cares?
If there is a leisurely process to the development of life, why can’t random processes be in effect?

 

[nmgauss]

What difference does it make? A few days or a few billion years; it’s not like God’s on a tight schedule. Eternity is delightfully free of hurry.

It has been obvious to most Christian thinkers throughout history, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas, that God prefers to let his creation unfold, for the most part, freely. Given the nature of physical reality, that is the amount of time that was necessary for sufficient biological developments to produce something as complex as man. It’s as simple as that.

St Augustine was a Neo-platonist. According to that point of view, the design of creations already exists in Forms. So if the Forms are there, who cares if they ever become concrete?

Why must God direct the creation of life? Why not just let life evolve randomly at its own pace? On the other hand, a designer should not have to wait an eternity to see his creation.

 

[nmgauss]

St. Augustine viewed creation as an instantaneous event. No leisurely process here.

“passage in Sirach 18:1, creavit omni simul (“he created all things at once”), which Augustine took as proof that the days of Genesis 1 had to be taken non-literally.”