How do Christians present the teleological argument for God's existence in an era where abiogenesis and evolution are so widely accepted?

Faith & Science Conversation
, ,
41

There’s the thought I was trying to get into words!

Even without nuclear decay measurements we can say that the Earth is at least millions of years old just from the physical properties of various rocks, and hundreds of millions from chemical analysis – and the only other option is that God is lying, which is a big reason why people reject Christianity when people insist that YEC has to be true. So even without the methods YECists love to dismiss the age of the Earth cannot be less than around a half billion years.

I wish Dr. Oles from the university geology department was still around; he had very pointed things to say about how uniformitarianism must be the default Christian view – though not the classical version that didn’t take catastrophic events into account.

Including glaciology. And volcanology. And oceanography. And forestry.

Let me think – what other science courses did I take that ‘had no room for God?’ Oh, yeah–

anthropology
psychology
sociology

Does statistics count? probability? Surely probability ought to have God in it, right?

Until someone delivers us a Divinometer, all science appears to be “godless”.

Heh – somehow I wriggled out of the requirement of anatomy and physiology for graduation, so all I can say is that my sister’s ultrasounds never showed God in her womb.

I remember one meteorology grad student commenting that “weather forecasting is magic”, to which another responded, “No, just a form of gambling”.

Not even the “dust of the ground” passage does even if taken literally – it just says God formed us, not how.

It’s fascinating how Richard can totally deny the central Christian doctrine that salvation is through Christ alone with the assertion that Islam and more are all valid, yet he gets up tight about how we were created.
Oh – for what it’s worth, Islam denies that man was made in God’s image; it calls that blasphemy. Sorry, Richard, but “you cannot have both!”

1 Like
42

LOL

Absolutely! and that applies to many physics students as well.

Five rings for the YEC kings…

That brings to mind some grad students in ecology laboring over a set of linear algebra equations (with matrices and such), determined to find “one equation to rule them all”, or at least one that brought their three or four together.

Yep. As my first geology professor put it, God does the painting; we study His brush strokes.

1 Like
43

By your measure, my biology professor with two B.S., two M.S., and one PhD in biological sciences didn’t understand evolutionary theory, either – or my botany professor or her husband the botany department head at a different university.

Not actually. It all comes down to carbon chemistry, and arguments have been put forth that an upright bipedal warm-blooded creature with sensory organs near the top and with bilateral symmetry and two limbs with manipulative appendages at the ends was the inevitable form for intelligence. A zoology professor whose classroom was next door to our botany classroom made that argument (he was an “interested agnostic”, for what it’s worth). I’ve seen the same idea pop up off and on since then.

And thereby exclude all science.

2 Likes
44

Dawkins, along with the many ID and YEC who echo his claims, erroneously present evolution as removing the teleological argument. Multiverse ideas get similar misuse. Abiogenesis and evolution merely tell us about how to get from a mix of chemicals to life and how to create new kinds of life from the existing ones. They tell us nothing about the origin of the earth or the universe.

The basic question is where does everything come from. So what if there is some sort of multiverse, such as envisioned for Narnia? That does not answer the question of why the laws of physics are such as to produce a multiverse, including at least one universe suitable for complex, intelligent, biological life. Similarly, abiogenesis and evolution are physical processes happening in accord with existing natural laws.

“Where does science come from?” can’t be answered by science. Arguing that it seems likely to have ultimate origin in the intentions of a Creator or that it seems likely to just be chance functioning of random processes are appeals to the hearer’s judgement of plausibility.

3 Likes
45

The first time alphago defeated a professional go player, he might have thought it was a fluke, but after only one defeat in 74 games against top professionals in 2016 (using this early version of alphago), nobody thinks any such thing anymore. AND this AI program uses random number generators. Yeah chance is involved but no there is no fluke. Evolution works by the same principles with random processes involved in a system which learns how to do things better than anyone can imagine or design.

It is crystal clear that the person who does not understand evolutionary theory is YOU!

Wrong. I assumed nothing. I simply asked you a question.

But if God didn’t build everything individually, and God did not include illness and biological flaws just to torment people – if God does not control everything – then what are the flaws and illnesses, some kind of fluke? LOL

I believe it is there as well.

But the point of science is the focus on the parts which are not a matter of God’s participation but the parts which result from natural law. The participation of God, which we have no way to measure or prove, must be left to theology for the methods of science are useless for such questions.

No I do not. I simply asked questions. Though I certainly refute your anti-science gobble-dee-gook.

Well it does say God breathed life into what He formed. But what does the passage mean? Since it says dust rather than organic molecules does this mean they had to be golems dust and bone? Does God breathed have to mean magical animation when even the Bible uses these words for something different? Since when does 2 Timothy 3:16 “scripture is God breathed” have to mean God exhaled scripture out of a mouth of some kind? We have always taken that to mean scripture is inspired (God breathed is where the word “inspiration” came from). The fact of the matter is that there is no stuff put into people which makes them physically alive. We are alive because of the processes of organic chemistry – because of what the body is and how it works. This “life stuff” which monsters can suck out of people is a total fantasy no matter how much we like the movies which has such things in it.

I remembered what it said in Ezekiel, where it says God would bring dry bones back to life with His breath. But even though it says the dry bones represent Israel and so it is obviously talking about the inspiration of God bringing a spiritually dead people back to faith in God (for that is the clear context of it), some people insist on understanding all this magically like some kind of zombie horror flick.

1 Like
46

All or nothing? Is that your mantra? Who said Islam was any more perfect than Christianity? (But you think the opposite)

You really have no idea! Science is about understanding God’s world. That implies God whether He is named or not. The point about Evolution is that it is used to deny God or userp Him. And that is what you fail to understand. The theory does not pass Paul’s letter to the Romans. It not only excludes God but denies His input. It makes God a spectator not a creator.

ROFL

Are you kidding?

There is no reason to think that intelligence requires a specific form, Dolphins? (And virtually every Science Fiction creature) That is just unbelievable rhetoric. You are basically claiming that the human form is the ultimate being. We may as well be Gods. All roads lead to humanity (Or is that Rome?)

I guess you are taking that from the basics of the Universe that seem to have certain “rules” in the way they work, so life will always ultimately create a human!

If that were the case there would only be humans. Well, I guess, if we wanted to we could make that happen

It would appear that you have a special meaning for random that overides chance.

(Or maybe you believe that chance does not exist? that would change everything)

Whatever, by denying the “Cosmic Fluke” accusation you are claiming a direction and control that ToE does not have.

Richard

47

You would compare a game to creation? The parameters of a game are limited and the algorithms to cope with it would be comparitively simple. The number of options etc.

You also seem to have a different definition of chance.

You understand the numbers involved in DNA sequencing? The number of valid sequences and the number of invalid ones? The statistics are mind boggling, as are the probabilities. And the old chestnut of time does not cut it. ID and IC aside, the probabilities of accidentally producing even an amoeba are enormous and the numbers would increase exponentially. Alright statistics can be beaten, but how many times ?

that assumes an intelligence within the system. Random deviations are not connected, therwise they would not be random. The golden rule of evolution is that there is no intelligence guiding it Evolution cannot learn, it cannot build, it cannot aim for a goal. each change is self contained and stands or falls by its imediate effects. ANd, as those conditions are perpetually changing, not only atmospherically but in relaltion to other unconnected deviations the mechanics become unfathomable. Evolutionary theory simplifies it and gives it an order that cannot exist without God’

Whether God sets parameters, of what can change, or in what direction, or there is some other “influence” that science will refuse to see, does not matter. What matters is that science can only read what it sees. I am just claiming that ToE cannot function without an intelligence, and you seem to think that intelligence exists outside of God. Well good luck with that,

Richard

48

The parameters of evolution are also quite simple: survive and reproduce.

What… you think other things are also important? Well so do I. Likely God had something to do with those. Evolution is just the explanation for the survival and reproduction bit.

Since there is no limit to the size of those sequences the numbers are infinite. But your implication that these are product of a purely random process is nonsensical. That is not what produces DNA sequences.

AI demonstrates a good portion of what we have always called “intelligence” is a lot simpler than we thought. Basically a random number generator and criterion for success it all it takes, given enough time or fast enough computer. Then it learns rules for being successful according to those criterion.

In the short run that is true, but in the long run it is not. It really only remains true of viruses. Everything else learns to limit deviations to areas of DNA which are more fruitful – to areas of code which are not quite so critical for survival.

It most certainly does cut it when your lies about the randomness of the process are dispensed with.

That seems to be a fabrication of yours. I looked it up. There is no such thing.

Besides, it is like saying there is no intelligence guiding the learning process of AI programs. “Intelligence” is the effect of the learning process not the cause of it. A two year old does whatever random idiotic thing which pops into his head. There is nothing intelligent about it. But the result is that the two year old learns what things are dumb to do and what things are not – becoming more intelligent as a result of it.

There is only reproduction and survival. Those are the filter. And because of this it finds millions of solutions which happen to include building, and setting goals, among many other things.

It most certainly can learn, which is just to say that it stores (in DNA) what works better than what does not work.

But it has been conclusively proven that this is not the case in evolutionary algorithms. It most certainly does function without an intelligence. That doesn’t mean it can or has achieved what it has accomplished on the earth without some intelligence playing a role.

I think intelligence is a very complex combination of many different abilities some of which (some very crucial parts of it) we have demonstrated only takes a set of instructions mindlessly followed by a mathematical computer. You can believe (as I do), God had to set it up the same way we had to set up AI programs to work, but it does not logically follow.

The days are numbered for magical notions of intelligence as they have already expired for magical notions of creation. And some might quite easily equate magic to the trickery of a magician. It is only magic because of the parts which are hidden from us. As we learn more, the con men have a harder and harder time using such tricks to scam us. Yep this goes for the con men using religion too.

I very much agree with you on this. From the above you can see I don’t think intelligence requires much at all.

If you say this to everyone then it becomes rather clear that the person with the “special meaning for random” is you. Have you had any probability theory in college?

Wrong! Control and cosmic fluke are not the only choices. The examples in everyday life of the creators of life are farmers, shepherds, teachers, and parents. The results in these are neither control nor cosmic fluke. Making their own choices is what it means to be alive, but this doesn’t require these choices to be made in a vacuum and doesn’t exclude the existence of the farmer, shepherds, teachers and parents who have their own role in what happens. AND it doesn’t mean that we cannot focus on the part of the process where these helpers are not involved. Just because Biology studies the chemical and biological process by which the plants grow doesn’t make it any more godless than any other science which seeks to understand the natural processes involved in things.

1 Like
49

Only by people who don’t understand the science.

No, I’m quite aware of that. But I don’t let what ignorant people think guide my judgment.

Nope. Unless there’s a Divinometer, no branch of science can exclude God. Science can only rule out what it can detect/measure.

No, people have really argued that.

Why would you say that? Since you mentioned science fiction, don’t forget Klingons and Vulcans and Kardassians; then there are Kzinti, the whole array from Babylon 5, and the tall blue ones from Avatar – those are all aliens with their own plausible biological baackground

“Random” does not apply when there is a system for sorting between possibilities. Natural selection overrides chance, just for starters.

Nope – but I’ll leave that to the actual biologists here.

The algorithm was “Did this choice lead to a win?” As for the parameters of Go . . . no, there’s nothing “simple” about it; compared to Go, chess is a kid’s game.

I thought we were talking about evolution.

Nope, it only assumes that failure to survive is a dead end.

LOL

That’s exactly what genetics does!

2 Likes
50

Just like the problem-solving robots that fascinate me – the initial choices were randomly chosen, but the ones that didn’t achieve anything got eliminated.

Heh – so do puppies. The process of training a service dog comes down to reinforcing the non-idiotic things. Though puppies are fun in part due to the “random idiotic” choices (Knox made a couple hilarious ones today).

2 Likes
51

OK I will invite @T_aquaticus to review the last few exchanges.

I was always taught that ToE has no intelligence controlling it so that ic cannot plan, build (As in pregessively create something like a wing to enable flight) or learn and that random has no parameters guiding it. If there are parameters they have to be built into the system which implies a creator.

IOW ToE does not assume that God started or guided it in any way.

To include God is TE.

Richard

PS I cannot see how AI can be associated with ToE as AI is artificial intelligence created by humans

52

1pig0u

Please read more carefully: the only “intelligence” involved was “Did this move lead to a win?” That’s the same criterion as “Did this organism survive and reproduce?”

It was even fuzzier with the learning robot; it only had to decide, after engaging in a random movement, if something useful happened – it had to build its own definition of “useful”! And with just that – random movements and its own guess at whether a movement was “useful”, it learned to gather items, assemble a ramp, find a block, find another block, and set the second block on top of the first one.

1 Like
53

Science has not and never will demonstrate how viable life arise naturally from inanimate matter (abiogenesis). To do that, someone would have to actually produce viable life from inanimate matter - there’s ZERO chance of that ever happening.

As for evolution, scientists can believe they know how it happened, but they can’t prove that their belief is any more than that, a belief.

54

How can there be intelligence in evolution? There is no connections. It is not as if there is some corporate intelligence that sits under all creation so that we are all connected somehow. Each deviation is stand alone, in the context of the zygote involved. There is not any evidence to suggest that two zygotes within the same womb (or nest) are aware of the others let alone any DNA changes. which must occur at conception.

It would take an outside observer / influencer to coordinate changes which would also make them specific and not random. There is just no way a zygote could be self aware enough to change in order to fulfil some need or adaption. Even we cannot change our DNA by the power of the mind alone, let alone a single cell.

Richard

PS Star Trek’s characters are based on the human form because that is what the actors look like, except for minor parts like the silicon burrower or may the dominion (except they interact as humans) However if you review “The War of the Worlds” for instance the creatures are totally alien. More interesting was the Voyager episode with the Advanced Dinosaurs who fled the destruction on earth. Now that was creative and interesting. Furthermore, in “the Chase” Star Trek suggested that all the known life had been seeded by a single bipedal race.

Whatever, there is no reason on Heaven or earth for intelligence and sentience to be limited to bipedal human lookalikes.

55

That is shorthand for “the process of evolution is indistinguishable from a process where no intelligence is involved”. Of course, this also applies to nearly all of the scientific theories you already accept.

Just like every other theory in science that you already accept.

Training AIs uses a process of random change and selection to develop its algorithms. It is an example of how these mechanisms can produce something that is functional.

2 Likes
56

We have plenty of evidence.

5 Likes
57

Why would self awareness be required? If we are talking about substitution mutations in humans, it only takes a few hundred million births to produce all possible substitution mutations. The genetic distance between us and other apes is well within what we would expect from the observed mutation rates. It’s as if you think a lottery has to be guided by an intelligence in order for someone to win.

You act as if mutations don’t happen at all. They do. Each person is born with around 50 to 100 mutations.

2 Likes
58

That is not the pint.

The point is people are trying to say that there can be intelligent development in ToE.

And that “random” has some sort of direction or can be governed by circumstance. So that a deviation is due to known needs.

Which also means that a change(s) can be gradual with a specific end in “mind” (Whose mid?)

Surely you can confirm that there is no intellgence visible (possible) in ToE?

Richard

59

Why do you have a problem with this?

I can confirm that there is no scientific evidence for the involvement of an intelligence in the history of biology. That is why theistic evolution is often described as a faith based position. I find it odd that you won’t allow for faith based beliefs. Even I, as an atheist, will not point to the lack of evidence for an intelligence in nature as a valid reason for claiming that God does not exist. I have seen many, many Christians claiming that God has blessed them in one way or another, and what they describe are completely natural processes with no evidence of an intelligence nor expectation of there being such evidence.

I also find it difficult to believe that you require God to act supernaturally within nature. In reading many of your posts, you expect to not find evidence of supernatural activity in nature. This is why I am puzzled as to why you have such a difficult time treating evolution in the same manner that you treat the rest of science. If I were to guess, you struggled with people claiming evolution somehow disproves the existence of God, and you have somehow cemented your views of evolution. I could be completely wrong, however. Internet psychiatric diagnoses are not my specialty.

2 Likes
60

That is the point. ToE does not allow for intelligence with in the development.

If intelligence is involved it becomes TE

That is not what I am arguing. i am saying that if they want to call it ToE there can be no intelligence. If they are claiming intelligence then they are not promoting Scientific ToE.

Stop generalising. I only expect God to be part of his creation. I do not expect science to “see” Him. The difference being “how” god is interacting (or not) With the weather the process is set inplace so there is no need to "interfere, but with evolution there is no mechannism that would do what evolution claims, because evolution is based on random chance, rather than order., but it has a very specific destination (humanity)
Logic would dictate that you cannot produce a specific result from chance, therefore if evolution is based on chance, either there is no God, or the God who set it in motion is not the God of Scripture. (I hope that makes sense)

Not from a scientific perspective. Why should they? God is not identifiable or visible within their specgtrum of vision (idiomatically)

Because I think that science has not got it completely right. I do not claim they are completely wrong (Like YEC do), only that they are missing part of the story due to the inability to identify any sort of outside intelligent influence (AKA God). IOW there are “gaps” in the theory (as opposed to "gaps in the timeline) And, if I am right, science will never be able to complete the timeline without God. (but they think they can)

Unfortunately “God of the Gaps” has left a certain viewpoint when talking about any sort of gap. God of the gaps implies a periodic adjustment as opposed to an overall supervision (which is what I see TE to be) But identifying that supervision would be beyond the ability of science.(instead it is seen as chance)

Richard