Natures wonders: squid eye lens focuses exactly (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 15, 2017, 11:38 (2655 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: An all-powerful God may have deliberately created a mechanism which would of its own accord produce the great higgledy-piggledy bush, because what he wanted was a great higgledy-piggledy bush. But he could have dabbled at any time, and maybe the human brain was the result of a dabble. In this part of the discussion I am challenging your interpretation of your all-powerful God’s purpose and method.

DAVID: The bush provides the balance of nature which provides the food for life to continue. Everyone has to eat, because the complex life forms must have a continuous supply of energy. We've covered this before, although you always try to discount this obvious truth.

Of course it’s an obvious truth, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with your God’s sole purpose being the production of the human brain! It simply means that all life needs energy! Life went on without the human brain, and it can continue without the human brain.

dhw:The question of God’s existence is a different topic. I find all the hypotheses (chance, God and panpsychist evolution) equally difficult to believe. That does not disqualify me from challenging the logic of your anthropocentric interpretation of a possible God’s evolutionary motives and methods.

dhw: And the reply is look for purpose in the biology of life:
https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/the-universe-has-no-purpose-but-we-can-pretend/

QUOTE: "Teleology and Aristotelian metaphysics came roaring back in the early 20th century with quantum mechanics and relativity. And quantum mechanics is not the most striking example of teleology in science. Biological science is simply not possible without constant invocation of teleology.

And I keep agreeing that there is purpose in the biology of life, but you refuse to accept any purpose other than the production of the human brain. As above, life goes on, and staying alive is a purpose in itself, and improving one’s chances of staying alive is a purpose in itself, and every living cell serves the same purpose.

QUOTE: No explanation of nature — not in biology or physics or in any natural science — makes sense without recourse to final causes. Final cause – teleology — is the cause of causes."

And there’s the crunch. “Teleology” is a loaded word, because rightly or wrongly it has come to be associated with a final or first cause, which for some people is a supernatural, sourceless, all-knowing, all-powerful being they call God. But if I agree that my legs serve the purpose of holding me up and enabling me to walk or run, I’m afraid that does not mean there must be a God. Lots and lots and lots of things serve a very clearly definable purpose, and yes there has to be a first cause, which may or may not be a conscious being or unconscious energy and matter. That’s as far as we can go, unless we shut our minds and jump to faith in one explanation or the other.