Theology IV

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by inked

Coffehouse,

"Science, in its purest form, is only seeking knowledge to understand what and how."

That, my friend, is a goal.

Goal: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/goal

1. the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.

Synonyms 1. target; purpose, object, objective, intent, intention. 2. finish.

1. The purpose toward which an endeavor is directed; an objective.

1. the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it

2. The final purpose or aim; the end to which a design tends, or which a person aims to reach or attain.


You seem to have confused "specific answer" or "predetermined answer" with goal (op cit).

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Inked! I'm surprised that you did not read my entire post. You would then hav seen that I write as an explanation that.. "Science thus really only has one goal, to understand more, which really isn't the sort of goal that has been discussed in this thread, which comes back to your own post"

Originally Posted by inked

So the phrase "survival of the fittest" is a mere teleological anthropomorphism? In which case, randomness which eventuates in survival is the end result of material processes only. So is there an inconsistency in your understanding of "survival of the fittest"? It seems it is merely a mode of saying that which survives is best and what is best is what survives, which seems circular. And, since all is the product of randomness, why should I accept your randomness rather than my own?

That is circular logic that you must stand accountable for yourself, because it isn't what I wrote nor meant in my post! Let's see what I actually wrote and I'll try to convey my meaning once again Inked:

The terminology is what seems to confuse, and that's alright because I find it confusing too. The point, which is subtle but important, that I make by agreeing that 'Evolution is blind' is that although the process itself, by natural selection, is the survival of the fittest, which is not blind (quite the contrary) to genes, favourable and unfavourable depending on the environment, there is not a certain destiny involved. There is not a goal which species evolve towards. There is not a final stage, a target goal, where homo sapiens reach some final culmination of years of development. There isn't a pre-determined end result that is inevitable. What I am trying to convey here, in very non-scientific language, is that the process of evolution never meant to create such a fantastic variety of cats, or snakes or ants. It happened because environments changed, certain characteristics evolved due to eating behaviour, diurnal and noctural behaviour, lack of this and surplus of that.
We have a typical example in the flightless birds on the Galapagos Islands who, because of no natural enemy on the island, could walk around willy-nilly and as of today do not fly. They don't need to.
In the context of this terminology that we are discussing we can say that the parts of the bird that no longer were necessary, namely strong, working wings, seized to perform the traditional function of flying.
The evolution of birds has been the uniform development into winged flight. What is happening to this bird, is devolution. The bird's wings are seizing to perform the function that birds' wings are supposed to perform. One can therefore say, metaphorically speaking, that evolution is blind. Birds develop characteristics in the most unlikely directions, not entirely randomly, but definitely not with a conviction nor a purpose nor a reach towards a certain goal. I'll leave it at that You can disagree, but this is how I see it.

To keep this relevant to the thread I think the goalless nature of evolution shows the lack of a mover, if you will, a God or Gods. Evolution, in my opinion, is in so many ways incompatible with what is written in the Bible. An important difference, irreconciliable at that, with both the Bible and any Creationist argument, is the DNA and chromosone evolution in human beings with relation to our primate cousins, but that's another discussion!