Teleology & Neo-thomism (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, October 15, 2015, 11:55 (3328 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: QUOTE: “...when an ID-er notes that some characteristics of organisms can be described by mechanics,informatics, thermodynamics, control theory, etc. he is not saying that organisms are machines. To describe some properties of an entity in mechanical (or more generally in scientific) terms and to say the entity is only a machine are two different things.”
Dhw: Excellent observation. A bacterium is an organism. You may spend as long as you like describing its characteristics in mechanical terms, but that does not make it a machine.-DAVID: Life is machinery but also that something extra we call 'living matter'. So far no researcher in OOL struggles has crossed that threshold. We have no idea where the threshold is. All we have is life and non-living.-Perhaps the other way round: living matter is machinery but also that something extra we call ‘life'. Some biologists would say that ‘life' entails sentience, cognition, intelligence, awareness - attributes which you are willing to recognize in larger organisms but refuse even to contemplate in micro-organisms, which you insist act only as machines. I doubt if your author really thinks his readers can't tell the difference between a living organism and a non-living machine, but in any case his observation fits in neatly with the studies of the eminent biologists you accuse of “hyperbole”.-dhw: Some eminent biologists also believe that every component of a multicellular organism is an organism in its own right. -DAVID [erroneously attributed to me in your post]: My liver, my heart, and my kidneys are all separate organisms? I don't think they believe that. I certainly don't. Who are these eminent biologists out in left field?-I take them to mean that these organs are individual cellular communities (= organisms) within a cellular community (organism), all cooperating with one another, just as each ant is an individual organism within a community of organisms. Please explain what else could be meant by “Every component of the organism is as much of an organism as every other part” (McClintock); “...our highest capacities...are objectively imaged in our own biological organism right down to the molecular activity of our cells...” (Lenny Moss); “...what does it mean to say that the idea of the arrangement of the whole is at work in each of the parts? For this to be true, each of the parts must have the ability to entertain an idea, i.e. mind” (Talbott - not a biologist, but you claim him as one of your favourite authors)…-dhw: ID may not in itself be a form of deism, but it allows for deism and it allows for anthropomorphism.
DAVID: It certainly allows for deism, but an anthropomorphic God is in the eye of the individual person.-Deism is also in the eye of the individual. Intelligent design (lower case) tells us absolutely nothing about the nature of the designer - that is a different subject altogether. Your author is simply imposing his own beliefs on the science. Free will allows for the possibility of your God detaching himself (deism), and design allows for the possibility that the design will reflect the designer (anthropomorphism).