Teleology important for science

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Bradski said:
Two of the definitions I gave earlier involve design. It’s given as an integral part of teleology. My posts to you have been in response to your suggestion that the roots of a tree somehow reflect teleology because they have been designed to transport water to a tree. They are not. Not least because, as I said, if you involve design is any aspect of nature whatsoever, there is no point where you can stop. Once you give it a foot in the door, then there is no way to prevent it infiltrating literally everything. If the roots are designed, then so are the leaves and branches etc.
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You know, that reminds me of a story (by Eero Salola?) where some people decided to punish a lobster by drowning it. 🙂

Is there some reason why you think I can’t just agree - yes, leaves and branches are also designed?

Or are you not making an argument, but just explaining that you are afraid to see teleology anywhere in nature, lest that leads you to Catholicism?
Bradski said:
So design is out but maybe final cause is in. In which case you might explain what the final cause of a tree might be. Me, I know it’s there to create another tree, but you might have other ideas.
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Yes, that would also be a good example.
 
thinkandmull said:
Atheists and Christians have very different aesthetics. A philosopher teacher I know once related a story about a girl who said she preferred to believe that she and her boyfriend god together through an amazing stroke of chance than by the hand of a God.
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God governs chance too. 🤷
 
MPat said:
Or are you not making an argument, but just explaining that you are afraid to see teleology anywhere in nature, lest that leads you to Catholicism?
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There is one place in nature where teleology exists, and even the atheist cannot deny it no matter how hard he tries:

Namely, every scientific experiment.

Unless the atheist wants to argue that scientific experiments design themselves.
 
hicetnunc, your distiction between teleology and design isn’t clear. Teleology means that the world acts for a purpose, design is more the micro element of it. If people just believe in the Big Bang and no God, they believe “matter was like this” “matter did that” “matter does this”, and there would be no reason to say “the purpose of nature was for this to happen”. WHY there was a big bang is not a scientific question. I was thinking about atheists today.

They like the idea of chance and being blessed by it. If there is a God there really isn’t any chance. It isn’t really true that atheists don’t have their own music or art. John Lennon’s imagine song is an atheist song. Its always a sad aesthetic though. Lennon said that “God was a concept by which we measure our pain”. He did struggle with some kind of spirituality though and for awhile tried to become a Christian:

revbrentwhite.com/2013/04/10/john-lennon-was-however-briefly-a-born-again-christian-in-1977/

My point is that atheists try to turn the irrational and random into a spirituality. Has anyone here read Fr. Brian Harrison’s article on the Holy Office and evolution? There were Catholics back then fascinated with the idea that chance had something to do with the evolution of the human body. True Catholics however don’t believe in chance because nothing can be outside the domain of God.
 
Rhubarb said:
Is science a gratuitous exercise or does it have a goal?
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It’s not trivial at all. In every case they bake a cake because they have a reason for doing so. Whether it is valid or not is beside the point. Many people who have thought there was no purpose in life have committed suicide.
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Bradski said:
None of my examples showed any final causes at all. They were used to point out the fallacy of thinking, for example, that roots are ‘designed’ to transport water to a tree.

So… We need something to enable the tree to absorb carbon dioxode from the air. Leaves! And something for them to live on. Branches! But what will support the branches? Yes, we’ll design a trunk. But we’ll need something to protect the trunk. Any ideas? How about bark? Brilliant!

Now send this up to the art department and they can decide on a colour scheme.

You start wih teleology in nature and there is nowhere to stop. Everything becomes designed.
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The alternative is to believe that purpose is a human fantasy and there is no reason why anyone or anything exists. According to Sartre and Camus everything is absurd.
 
A telos is a final cause as it exists in the subject. A final cause is the purpose for which something is made. Design is how it is made, which is the means to attaining the end.

It hinges on the involvement of a will.

Depending on how broad one’s definition of science is, it may include none or all of these considerations.

What is the fuss?
 
I want to ask atheists; I know you don’t think there is evidence for God, but if there is a God would you admit that it would then offer the explanation for the universe?
 
tonyrey said:
It’s not trivial at all. In every case they bake a cake because they have a reason for doing so. Whether it is valid or not is beside the point. Many people who have thought there was no purpose in life have committed suicide.
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lolwut?

I don’t follow your point at all.
 
Rhubarb said:
It’s not trivial at all. In every case they bake a cake because they have a reason
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  1. People bake a cake because they have a reason for doing so.
  2. It may be a silly reason but it is a reason nevertheless.
  3. No one bakes a cake for no reason unless they’re hypnotised or deranged.
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I want to see if they will admit that God, if he does exist, would explain this universe and our lives
 
Charlemagne_III said:
God governs chance too. 🤷
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Indeed. If two events coincide God knows they occur but usually permits them because they are an integral part of an orderly system which would become unpredictable if He intervened too frequently…
 
thinkandmull said:
I want to ask atheists; I know you don’t think there is evidence for God, but if there is a God would you admit that it would then offer the explanation for the universe?
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I presume you mean ‘a god capable of creating the universe’, in which case the answer is implicit in the question. But that’s not to say it would have to be a personal god in any way.

It may cease to exist when the universe is created. It may become the universe, so would be what we call nature. It might have no control over what happens. It may be creating an infinite number of isolated universes. Maybe this one is a failure and we are comletely ignored and left to fend for ourselves.

So yeah, could be.
 
tonyrey said:
Indeed. If two events coincide God knows they occur but usually permits them because they are an integral part of an orderly system which would become unpredictable if He intervened too frequently…
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Nothing can be truly chance-random because God would have to see how it unfolded before He could approve of it, which is nonsense
 
That certain things of the same nature have within them a “direction” to produce this same effect over that effect seems integral to science making sense and being consistent. Otherwise scientific studies couldn’t tell us anything beyond what a specific sample did in one specific test. It would have no predictive value for future tests of even the same sample, let alone others of the same thing.
 
Bradski said:
I presume you mean ‘a god capable of creating the universe’, in which case the answer is implicit in the question. But that’s not to say it would have to be a personal god in any way.

It may cease to exist when the universe is created. It may become the universe, so would be what we call nature. It might have no control over what happens. It may be creating an infinite number of isolated universes. Maybe this one is a failure and we are comletely ignored and left to fend for ourselves.

So yeah, could be.
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Does belief in a God provide, even if it conflicts with the reality of pain, still offer an explanation of why we are here, or does randomness do this?
 
Wesrock said:
That certain things of the same nature have within them a “direction” to produce this same effect over that effect seems integral to science making sense and being consistent. Otherwise scientific studies couldn’t tell us anything beyond what a specific sample did in one specific test. It would have no predictive value for future tests of even the same sample, let alone others of the same thing.
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Unless one believes in Hume, believing that laws regularly seen are truly laws is essential to science. We are trying to see here if this points to God
 
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