Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

[Kendel]

@MarkD

Without that big picture, we risk ending up with the equivalent of a detailed description of everything about a complex machine’s operation except for an understanding of what it actually does. What, after all, is the point of knowing how life works if we don’t know what it is working toward?

@Kendel this may not be the sort of “purpose of life” you had in mind before but isn’t it interesting to see it emerge in the process of trying to understand biology more deeply?

What do we mean when we talk about meaning? For me, this is a different but related consideration, but still an interesting topic.

And a very challenging one – for me.
Frustratingly, I see two possibilities. I understand other people see different possibilities than I do. I’m frustrated by those, because I don’t comprehend them in a way that makes them seem possible.
My possibilities are, roughly:

1. an entirely naturalistic, existence that operates the way it operates, because that is how the existing material does operate. Any “rules” or “laws” that apparently “govern” it are a verbal description of the consistent processes of the operation. Its existence is inexplicable (for now); it’s functions occur because they are what happens under the circumstances in which the particular matter exists.

Or

2. an independent, conscious, sentient, will-possessing creator is responsible for all existence. If we are to talk about God (or something greater) in relation to our “meaning” or “telos” I think all three features are necessary. As I understand the term, “Telos” implies purposeful direction toward a goal. The purpose may or may not be our own, but I think the term implies there is purpose somewhere behind the trajectory. I think it’s hard to provide our own trajectory as well, popping into the game as we do at birth. So, if this second scenario is true, I don’t grasp how there could be purposeful direction toward a goal, if the one responsible had no will or awareness or consciousness.

Likewise, I don’t grasp how how a telos-providing something can arise from the natural entities that it gives that telos to, unless the telos is an imaginary telos that we provide for ourselves. This seems circular to me. And takes me back to the first option, which I think you and @Klax discussed about roughly a year ago.

So to your highlighted section/question…

@MarkD

Why, for example, should the process of protein folding to make an enzyme cooperate with the migration of cells, at scales many thousands of times bigger, to make a tissue? All these processes operate as if in thrall to some overall plan, with us as the goal. Biology looks uncannily teleological.

Why indeed? This question you highlighted is the basis for the logic of traditional Natural Theology – the working one’s way from observing these processes in nature to the deduction that there must be something/someone working from the outside. It looks like it’s going somewhere, therefore something must be driving it.

Neither possibility I described above satisfies all our felt needs and or answers all our questions.
If 1 is true, we exist without purpose, and maybe even worse, without the the external conscious recognition of or desire for our existence. Nothing exists to want us, notice us or to plan or care for or about us. We also can’t say anything definitive (I presume) about where it all comes from and how.

If 2 is true, I don’t think we can figure it out from observing nature, because there are so many good explanations that don’t involve telos, purpose, anything. We simply don’t understand the world the way the ancients did, which is view reflected in Romans 1:20

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,7 in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

I don’t mean to imply that God or any other responsible agent doesn’t exist; but that the existence of God can’t be figured out from observing nature.
However, if 2 is true, there is the possibility that something real and independent of us recognizes us and our existence, desires our existence, has a purpose or goal for our existence.

@MarkD

Yet their discomfort cannot be allowed to deter us from taking the question seriously—which means asking what all this intricacy and ingenuity of life’s mechanisms is for.

I think the author fails to notice his own discomfort here. We WANT meaning (however each of us defines it ourselves) very badly. He is assuming, THAT the intricacies and ingenuity of life’s mechanisms are for anything at all.

At the risk of appearing doddery, I repeat what I started this post with. And add another question.

@MarkD

What, after all, is the point of knowing how life works if we don’t know what it is working toward?

“What IS the point of knowing” is an interesting question and possibly satisfying pursuit. We’d like to know that all that work and effort someone (else) did has a purpose, a point. But does that desire to know what life is for - that feeling that it IS for something and is valuable - actually tell us more than just our desire for it to?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think nature helps us answer the question, either.

I’d love certainty that I don’t have. Until God reveals it, I have to take it on faith.

(Forgive me if this seems unedited and wandery. I’ve been working on it for hours, actually, but on very little sleep, living in an uncooperative body.)