Evolution: teleology in biology (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 04, 2022, 12:49 (749 days ago) @ David Turell

Teleology in biology

DAVID: Every living organism has the purpose of survival:
https://evolutionnews.org/2022/11/a-closer-look-at-the-science-of-purpose/

QUOTE: Then along came Darwin. As we all know, he said that creatures survived and speciated based on the random and blind — that is, purposeless — actions of a thoroughly uncaring natural world. He made it all seem so simple: survival of the fittest was all there is to it.

How can it be called “purposeless” when the purpose is survival? “Random” concerns the theory which you and I have long since rejected, that the process depends on random mutations, but that does not in any way remove the obvious fact that all life forms struggle to survive, and the struggle to survive constitutes the purpose of their actions!

QUOTE: "Today, modern science embraces Darwin, in part because biologists want to be physicists, and also because it allows them to continue to leave God out. So the myth of Darwinism, in its new guise of neo-Darwinism, endures.

Does he really believe that all biologists are atheists, and does he not realize that Darwin himself was an agnostic who, in later editions of ORIGIN not only makes many references to the “Creator” but also emphasizes that his theory should not “shock the religious feelings of anyone”. Even the Catholic Church has accepted that there is no intrinsic conflict between the theory of evolution and Christianity. What world is our author living in?

QUOTE: "The struggle, however, depends on something else that Darwin didn’t see, something more fundamental. Antecedent to it is the desire to struggle, that is, to act in keeping with the organism’s purpose, to live. […]

So Darwinism is purposeless because before you try to fulfil the purpose of surviving, you have to want to survive, and survival is the purpose. I reckon Darwin would have been as amazed as I am at such reasoning.

QUOTE: "Simply put: Teleology, the purpose-driven innate property of life itself, precedes natural selection as the primary source of agency that explains evolution. Darwinism utterly misses this elementary fact."

So apparently Darwin didn’t realize that although the purpose was survival, the purpose of survival was not the driving force behind evolution because the driving force was the desire to survive, which was the purpose. However, it’s true that the purpose of survival precedes natural selection, because obviously natural selection only decides what changes will help to fulfil the purpose of survival. I can’t see evolutionists quaking in their boots at any of this.

DAVID: so, the will to survive precedes survival itself as the driving factor. Why does that will come from? Why must it exist? If the survival struggle is so hard, why struggle? what agency implanted that drive?

Yes, the will to survive is the purpose that drives the struggle for survival, but according to our author, Darwin didn’t realize this, and nor do neo-Darwinists. Your own questions tie in with the biggest of them all: what agency created life? But that was not Darwin’s subject, which was the origin of species, not of life itself. In later editions of his book, he simply attributes that to the Creator, but presumably the author hasn’t read what Darwin actually wrote.