Do we need to go any deeper? Life doesn’t violate it. As per the op: ‘Life is basically an ordered process to negative entropy’. I think that’s as much as we need.Freddy:
It’ll do only until you start to arrive at false conclusions, which happened in the very first post of this thread.
Indeed it has, albeit not in great depth.
If you simply want to say that teleology exists if God exists then I will completely agree. But it’s already been pointed out that there is no foreknowledge and it’s a matter of chance not design. And I appreciate that that doesn’t gel with your belief in God. How can it possible be entirely random and end up with us. Well, that’s a problem that you have and I don’t.Freddy:
If God exist then there is a purpose for everything, just not in the way you want to imply. When i say there is a teleological relationship between particular attributes and their environment i mean that those relations cannot exist as a possibility without the knowledge and intent of a creator because those relations cannot be considered natural even though they emerge naturally. I used the example of the key and the door because that is an example of a relationship that requires knowledge. The key and the door did not create that possible relationship because they are blind to their function. An intelligence did.
I arrive at this conclusion about nature because things like sight, nervous systems, brains, hearing, even the fight or flight response all presuppose the existence of something that nature has no knowledge of, and yet they are a direct reference to an environment. They meaningfully relate to an environment. These are examples of relationships that could only exist as a possibility if a creator intended for those possibilities to exist because a creator has knowledge and nature does not…
If you think that, then you are misreading my argument. My argument is correct regardless of the fact that attributes emerge naturally. It’s irrelevant to my argument.
They are improbable to the point of irrational, and are only the “best explanation” of the data if it’s assumed that there is no other explanation and can not be any other explanation. Still, they don’t explain it, only assume that somehow, it can be explained, eventually, maybe. Or maybe not.You keep using the word “presuppose”. What does that word mean to you?
You have a problem as I noted in my last post. You haven’t reached your conclusion about the senses and the environment and then decided it must mean that God exists. You already believe in God so therefore your view on there being design and the impossibility of it being entirely random is already fixed.
That remains to be seen.
From the atheist dictionary:
I believe in that which makes rational sense to me. My theism goes beyond faith, and is a rational conclusion based on experience.
You go and find someone then, and I’ll wait here.Freddy:
That remains to be seen.
Having thought about it more, I have to say that the definition at that website is quite poor. They need to consult someone who understands the subject.
But if you believe in God, for whatever reasons that make sense to you (and I fully accept that your reasons are as meaningful to you as mine are to me), then teleology in nature must exist. Am I right?Freddy:
I believe in that which makes rational sense to me. My theism goes beyond faith, and is a rational conclusion based on experience.
The problem with metaphysical naturalism is that you don’t really end up with an explanation of anything. Somewhere along the line you bump into a brute fact, and what you are left with is a just-so-story masquerading as explanation ad-infinitum. It’s literally the acceptance of anything but God.
This problem came up way before life. An absolute perspective on entropy was broken the instant matter started globbing together to form stars and galaxies.
Let’s try that in a different key:
I think you need to work more on that argument, it applies to a great many things, including Christianity.
The Second Law applies whether the system is open or closed. In a closed system entropy always increases. In an open system, entropy can locally decrease, but there is a larger increase in the surroundings outside the open system.
Why “a purpose”, singular rather than “purposes”, plural? Is the purpose of a poisonous mushroom to poison people or to propagate more poisonous mushrooms? Is it both? Multiple purposes are far more commonly seen than a single purpose.
I concur. If my post was unclear (and it related to the second law and life) then my bad. I didn’t mean the second law ceased to operate. Just that it runs in two directions depending on the circumstances.Freddy:
The Second Law applies whether the system is open or closed. In a closed system entropy always increases. In an open system, entropy can locally decrease, but there is a larger increase in the surroundings outside the open system.
A refrigerator decreases entropy locally, inside itself. The power generating station increases entropy in the surroundings by more than the decrease in the fridge.