Is DNA Designed?

[IWantGod]

But, physically speaking, does not DNA determine the existence of such traits, and is the content of DNA therefore not an adequate reason for “goal direction”?

DNA is functionally relevant, but it doesn’t explain why there would be such a thing as goal direction if only blind unguided physical processes exist. I may have desires because of my DNA, but that doesn’t explain why there is such a thing as desires, It doesn’t explain why i experience the desiring of anything. it simply identifies a correlate between DNA and the actuality of certain potentialities.

 

[Wesrock]

PickyPicky:

But, physically speaking, does not DNA determine the existence of such traits, and is the content of DNA therefore not an adequate reason for “goal direction”?

DNA is functionally relevant, but it doesn’t explain there would be such a thing as goal direction if only blind unguided physical processes exist. I may have desires because of my DNA, but that doesn’t explain why there is such a thing as desires, It doesn’t explain why i experience the desiring of anything. it simply identifies a correlate between DNA and the actuality of certain potentialities.

Speaking of humans, are you saying that DNA may (or may not) be sufficient to explain philosophical zombies but not actual intentions and desires, which we actually have?

And are you saying we could discuss goal direction in non-conscious systems, too, but you’re putting that aside because we only need one case for the argument to work, and it’s difficult/untenable to argue against human intentionality?

 

[PickyPicky]

It doesn’t explain why i experience the desiring of anything

You are a more complex creature than the plant that bends to the sun. In you the DNA inspired impulses that lead you to do the equivalent of bending to the sun are expressed in your thoughts and emotions, as well as in purely bodily urges. That is why you have those thoughts and emotions, and those bodily urges. That explains why you experience the desiring of anything.

Of course you may feel you also have them for some metaphysical reason; I won’t argue with that. I say only that the introduction of the metaphysical into the reasoning is not necessary.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Don’t take the analogy too literally. It’s there to explain a process. Not to be used as an example.

Some animals do one thing, some do another. Some animals are curious, some are not. Some eat everything, some are more picky. Some like fighting, some do not. Some are fearless, some are timid. Some like wandering some distance from home, some prefer to stay close to it.

Whichever arbitrary trait increases survival, then that trait is passed on. If enough animals exhibit the same trait (because all those without it it die off) then we call that instinctive behaviour.

I’m at a loss to explain that in any simpler terms.

No need to give further explanation because i didn’t reject natural selection and natural selection has no relevance to the argument. I rejected natural selection, not as a scientific explanation of why we see different traits in different environments (science). I rejected it as metaphysical argument as for why those goal directed traits such as an instinct or desire to survive exists at all.

Natural selection is what you term goal orientated. But there IS no goal orientation with natural selection. It looks like natural selection chooses winners and losers in the great game of life. But there are no winners. There are just those who remain in the game. There is no aim. There is no prize. You either get ejected from the game or you carry on playing.

And natural selection is the answer to why certain traits exist. Let’s change all those people on the island to monkeys. And I tell you that they avoid certain fruit that they have no idea will do them harm but which definitely will. You will say: ‘Well, that’s goal directed instinct so it must have been designed!’. But you know exactly how that occured and it was just an arbitrary taste preference plus natural selection. Nothing more.

The monkeys aren’t smart enought to be goal oriented and it needs no-one to have a goal for them and impliment it in some way. It’s naturally occuring. And invariably beneficial - otherwise the group would not survive.

You are starting with an incorrect premise - that goal oriented behaviour exists. And the examples you give are not goal oriented but instinctive behaviours produced by natural selection. They just appear to be designed. Which is not an unatural reaction. They look designed to me as well. And to Dawkins: "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”.

But if you dig a little deeper…

 

[IWantGod]

DNA

I strongly hold to the position that DNA as an object, when considering it’s mass, form, size, everything that is quantifiable, these things in them selves give us no sufficient reason to think that it can produce the goal directing effects that we see. We simply know from observation that such effects happen to emerge from those processes. The problem with the materialist is that he or she simply assumes that goal direction, if it exists, can be reduced to the quantifiable. But if the materialist really believes that physical reality is fundamentally blind, unguided, and is not aimed toward any end, then they face a logical problem whenever someone identifies Goal direction since any identification as such directly refutes the materialists/metaphysical naturalists claim.

And are you saying we could discuss goal direction in non-conscious systems, too, but you’re putting that aside because we only need one case for the argument to work, and it’s difficult/untenable to argue against human intentionality?

Goal direction in human being’s is just the easiest to identify and demonstrate since we all know that we have acted for a goal directed end. We make plans, we make decisions based on future predictions, we act on our intentions to fulfill a goal. The processes in our brains are clearly teleological, and at the same time we exist in a physical reality. You can’t refute that. But i think that this is not the only type of behavior in reality that exhibits goal direction. I think that physical nature and it’s activity, in its entirety, is evidence of teleological processes and thus an intelligent cause.

 

[IWantGod]

Natural selection is what you term goal orientated

Natural selection is not a physical object acting for an end. Certain organisms survive or are more suitable to survival in certain environments and that’s why they pass on there genes. That’s all natural selection is. It explains why we find particular kinds of creatures surviving in certain environments.

I don’t understand why you keep bringing up natural selection; it has nothing to do with the qeustion of why there is such a thing as goal direction in nature…

 

[IWantGod]

In you the DNA inspired impulses that lead you to do the equivalent of bending to the sun are expressed in your thoughts and emotions, as well as in purely bodily urges. That is why you have those thoughts and emotions, and those bodily urges. That explains why you experience the desiring of anything.

Explaining to us that DNA leads to goal directed impulses doesn’t tell us anything about why anything should have a desire to live, or breed, or defend it’s offspring when in reality they are suppose to be, according to materialists, fundamentally made up of unguided and blind processes that are not directed to any end. Goal direction should not exist and neither should DNA in such a world. We simply find the world that way. That doesn’t mean that what we find is consistent with the logical consequences of metaphysical naturalism. In fact it’s not consistent at all.

 

[rossum]

Natural selection is what you term goal orientated. But there IS no goal orientation with natural selection. It looks like natural selection chooses winners and losers in the great game of life. But there are no winners. There are just those who remain in the game. There is no aim. There is no prize. You either get ejected from the game or you carry on playing.

That is not a goal in itself, but it can give the appearance of a goal. Those species still playing the game today have not yet been ejected. Those who have been ejected are no longer playing. That gives the appearance of a goal: ‘Stay in the Game’.

By now, most surviving DNA has become good at meeting that goal.

rossum

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Natural selection is what you term goal orientated

Natural selection is not a physical object acting for an end. Certain organisms survive or are more suitable to certain environments. That’s all natural selection is. It explains why we find particular kinds of creatures surviving in certain environments.

I don’t understand why you keep bringing up natural selection; it has nothing to do with the qeustion of why there is such a thing as goal direction in nature…

I’m bringing it up because what you describe as goal direction doesn’t exist. What you have is natural selection weeding out those organisms who had no traits which appear to you to be goal orientated. Which are in fact just traits that enable survival.

They are just changes in the genome, mostly that have negative effects, but which sometimes give an increased chance of survival and so are passed on. And those traits are arbitrary. Just a spin of the wheel. And if they are important enough so that those organisms without it die off then all those surviving will have it. And it then looks like it was designed thus.

Instincts are not goal orientated as in a pre-ordained plan to reach a specific outcome. They are the result of arbitrary changes in the genetic code coupled with natural selection which gives an advantageous outcome (survival) which then makes it LOOK as if it were designed that way. As per rossum’s comments above.

 

[IWantGod]

goal direction doesn’t exist.

It clearly does exist because i act toward goal orientated ends every day.

 

[edwest211]

A mindless creation is not compatible with Catholic teaching. Like mushrooms, humans live, reproduce and die. We are nothing more. That is inconsistent with the knowledge that God exists.

 

[edwest211]

This is just name calling.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

goal direction doesn’t exist.

It clearly does exist because i act toward goal orientated ends every day.

If we are talking about humans then much the same rules apply. To a much greater extent than I could possibly hope to get you to agree to. If you read something of evolutionary psychology then it explains a lot about why we act as we do.

But notwithstanding that, we are a step up from the rest of life on the planet and we can rise above instinctive behaviour (which we generally experience first and foremost) and override it. We can think ahead. We can plan ahead. So instinctive behaviour may not necessarily be the most advantageous route to what we have ourselves have decided are our goals. We have almost excused ourselves from the effects of evolution.

The rest of nature? Not so much. Your average gazelle doesn’t spend any time planning what he’s going to do next week.

 

[Bradskii]

A mindless creation is not compatible with Catholic teaching. Like mushrooms, humans live, reproduce and die. We are nothing more. That is inconsistent with the knowledge that God exists.

That is inconsistent with the attitude of probably everyone on the planet. God or no God. It’s a nonsensical comment which apllies to no-one. A straw man extraordinaire.

 

[edwest211]

God created. That’s the point on a Catholic forum.

 

[buffalo]

A self-caused universe would need purpose and intent to move forward. An unscientific point of view would be a belief. Then, you do believe is that there is a self (god) behind the universe who caused it to be self-caused. Your god is the universe. When everything is part of god, that’s pantheism and you, yourself, would be part of god. Philosophy is necessary. Scientism can’t see the past. It can speculate and presume. Note: not all realities are physical.

Almighty God is the Uncaused Cause who causes everything else to come into existence. All things, visible and invisible, are derived from the Uncaused Cause.

With his view science would be rendered useless as the old pagan idea the universe is not intelligible would not make it able to be studied.

 

[IWantGod]

If you read something of evolutionary psychology then it explains a lot about why we act as we do.

You don’t seem to understand the epistemological difference between metaphysical statements and scientific statements. You seem to act as if a teleological view of the universe is competing with an established scientific theory.

Evolutionary psychology is not explicitly stating or rejecting a teleological view of the universe. However it indirectly acknowledges that organisms are goal directed in their activity. Evolutionary psychology is focused on how evolution has shaped the mind and it’s behavior. The operations of the mind clearly involves intentionality and goal orientated activity. It describes how cognitive processes have evolved. This is not the same thing as providing a metaphysical explanation as to why our minds act for goal orientated ends if metaphysical naturalism is true.. Remember i am asking why these things exist if metaphysical naturalism is true. It’s irrelevant to the philosopher that you can describe the natural processes involved in my walking to the kitchen and picking up a slice of bread. That’s the business of science; since science merely describes what things are doing, and that’s all it can do. What is relevant to philosophy is the question of why those processes are goal directed to the end of picking up a slice of bread to begin with, since it is self evident to all of us that this activity is goal directed, and it is a matter of interest that cannot be quantified or explained by the scientific method. Goal direction of any kind obviously contradicts any materialistic philosophy that would say that the fundamental processes of all reality is blind, unguided, and does not act toward a goal.

 

[Bradskii]

God created. That’s the point on a Catholic forum.

No problem. Except that I know how He did it and you don’t.

 

[PetraG]

No problem. Except that I know how He did it and you don’t.

Well, yes and no.

Here’s the thing: if scientists get some other theory that is a better explanation for all the observations that have been made at some point in the future, then a scientist can agree that there is a better explanation of all the facts and that’s fine. Newtonian physics was fine until some observations were made that were beyond its ability to explain.

The difference is that @edwest211 doesn’t have a better explanation of the data, because “a miracle occurred” isn’t an explanation. It is an admission that the mechanism by which Providence brought about some event is unknown, but also (if I understand him correctly) a contention that this is outside of what we can understand about the universe.

That contention is, as they say in medicine, a diagnosis of exclusion. Even the Church, when investigating miracles, looks for explanations that can be provided by the order God put into the universe rather than simply saying that some event was a miracle. The presumption is that creation obeys the order that it was given when it was created. That doesn’t mean that if someone is healed and a natural cause can be found that people can say, "“See, God had nothing to do with your getting better!” The Church isn’t saying that at all. The Church is saying that when Providence elects to bring about events that seem to defy the regular order of the universe, Providence is sending a different sort of message.

Therefore, it is totally possible that life on this Earth arose not because of a miracle (that is, by a mechanism beyond our capacity to investigate), but rather as a consequence of the order put into the whole universe from the beginning. In any event, whether by miracle or no, there was a physical mechanism. It is just that there are some we can eventually understand and control (or at least predict) and some that are beyond the dominion we were given.

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[Bradskii]

Again, you are assuming that instincts indicate a teleology. There is none in nature. None whatsoever. What you class as being goal orientated is an illusion.

And you are wrong in saying that science cannot explain why we do what we do and only how we do it. Evolutionary psychology does nothing other than explain why.

If you want to deny that it can be classed as a science, then that is an option available to you. If you know enough about it then the floor is yours. Because this is the crux of the matter. That nature is blindly led by instincts that have no goal and weren’t designed and are the result of the filter of natural selection. Says evolutionary psychology.