the two category fallacy-theistic evolution debunked

Soul Winner

Dades wrote: »

You realise that you are trying to apply goals and objectives to something non-sentient?

I was merely responding to the below comment. I never applied goals to anything. I merely pointed out something that is observed in nature, that there are goals and objectives therein. I never attributed them to anything. But if Natural Selection is the efficient, necessary, primary and sufficient cause (as skeptic griggsy points out) then why have these goals if Natural Selection is the goalless "non-sentient" catalyst through which they live, breath and have their being?

skeptic griggsy wrote:

Why violate the Razor when natural selection not only is the efficient cause but also the necessary, primary and sufficient cause. It is the sufficient reason.

Mine was an "If that's so then why this?" kind of response.

Dades wrote: »

Natural Selection is just the name given to occurance that sees less favourable genetic traits disappear over time, and more favourable ones survive. There is nobody at the helm.

You might as well ask what's the point of water boiling at 100°C.

That is a much better explanation than the afforquoted skeptic griggsy quotation.

Soul Winner

robindch wrote: »

As I was going to say in the previous post, you're making a basic mistake in thinking that things must have a "purpose" in order for them to happen. They need not.

Never said that either. Just because I observed that things in nature have purposes does not mean that I think that things should have purposes. Read my reply to Dades (above) for a more detailed explanation as to why I got involved in this discussion. I have no problem with Natural Selection per se but calling it the ”efficient, necessary, primary and sufficient cause” is a bit of a jump isn’t it?

Dades

Perhaps griggsy was being a little verbose in his description of natural selection, implying (unintentionally, I would imagine) that there is more to natural selection than just a process that occurs.

Soul Winner

Dades wrote: »

Perhaps griggsy was being a little verbose in his description of natural selection, implying (unintentionally, I would imagine) that there is more to natural selection than just a process that occurs.

Perhaps, but I doubt it. It reads very intentional to me. In any case Dades old boy, let’s not squabble about it

skeptic griggsy

;)Robindch, that is the point! In " What Evolution Is," Ernst Mayr shows powerfully that :" Selection is not teleological [goal-directed]. Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation. The frequency of the extinction of evolutionary lineages, as well as their frequent changes in direction, is inconsistent with the mistaken claim that selection is a teleological process.Also there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes Orthogenesis and other goal-directed processes have been thoroughly refuted.":cool:
This, notes my philosopher friend Paul Draper, is the weight of evidence, and thus not only a philosophical point as Eugenie C.Scott would have one erroneously think.
From this fact, I derive the atelic argument against the teleological one, that God need not apply for work as guiding evolution. Now, selection, as William Provine so notes, does have natural bosses as Robindch notes. Thus my point that natural causes and explanations- the presumption of naturalism- holds.:)
. As noted in the current edition of Skeptic, if the meteor had not indirectly caused the demise of dinosaurs, thereby keeping us from arriving, there would have been no such intelligent beings! That is, with randomness involved, there can be no direction. Again, teleology begs the question that there is a goal. :eek:
Coming into contact in posting with hard-core victims of their own invincible ignorance, I am now arrogant in my humble ignorance!
Discerning intelligence behind natural causes is a pareidolia as in seeing Yeshua in a tortilla. In the end, all theism rests on faith, the we just say of credulity.As Clifford Richard Dawkins notes in '"The Blind Watchmaker,"'Climbing Mount Impossible" and "' The God Delusion," selection in a step-wise process makes for what is not a pareidolia- complexity.
That Existence has no purpose and has none for us, it is a sorry non sequitur to bray that we are forlorn! We ever make our own purposes. This one life, human love and our own purposes indeed do suffice! Braying for a future state and divine love and purpose for us, as shown in Albert Ellis's'The Myth of Self-Esteem," is a hazard. Robert Price in "The Reason-Driven Life," notes how we can live abundant lives without a divine shepherd.In the end theism rests on the argument from angst , to paraphrase Augustine, God, we are ever restless unless resting in your bosom. Nay!:mad:

Soul Winner

skeptic griggsy wrote: »

;)Robindch, that is the point! In " What Evolution Is," Ernst Mayr shows powerfully that :" Selection is not teleological [goal-directed]. Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long term goal. It is a process repeated anew in every generation. The frequency of the extinction of evolutionary lineages, as well as their frequent changes in direction, is inconsistent with the mistaken claim that selection is a teleological process.Also there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes Orthogenesis and other goal-directed processes have been thoroughly refuted.":cool:
This, notes my philosopher friend Paul Draper, is the weight of evidence, and thus not only a philosophical point as Eugenie C.Scott would have one erroneously think.
From this fact, I derive the atelic argument against the teleological one, that God need not apply for work as guiding evolution. Now, selection, as William Provine so notes, does have natural bosses as Robindch notes. Thus my point that natural causes and explanations- the presumption of naturalism- holds.:)
. As noted in the current edition of Skeptic, if the meteor had not indirectly caused the demise of dinosaurs, thereby keeping us from arriving, there would have been no such intelligent beings! That is, with randomness involved, there can be no direction. Again, teleology begs the question that there is a goal. :eek:
Coming into contact in posting with hard-core victims of their own invincible ignorance, I am now arrogant in my humble ignorance!
Discerning intelligence behind natural causes is a pareidolia as in seeing Yeshua in a tortilla. In the end, all theism rests on faith, the we just say of credulity.As Clifford Richard Dawkins notes in '"The Blind Watchmaker,"'Climbing Mount Impossible" and "' The God Delusion," selection in a step-wise process makes for what is not a pareidolia- complexity.
That Existence has no purpose and has none for us, it is a sorry non sequitur to bray that we are forlorn! We ever make our own purposes. This one life, human love and our own purposes indeed do suffice! Braying for a future state and divine love and purpose for us, as shown in Albert Ellis's'The Myth of Self-Esteem," is a hazard. Robert Price in "The Reason-Driven Life," notes how we can live abundant lives without a divine shepherd.In the end theism rests on the argument from angst , to paraphrase Augustine, God, we are ever restless unless resting in your bosom. Nay!:mad:

My Lord I'm sweating after that. Any chance you can use clearer grammar? I'm sorry, this is not a slur but I find your style very different languageish. Citing and multi-citing, please give me your own words. I really want to know what you think, not what Dawkins and others think, I already know their thoughts on these matters, well some of them anyway. Natural Selection is not strictly an elimination process, it is also a non eliminating process. If it has no goals then why are some traits eliminated and others not? There must be a purpose for keeping the 'better' ones? Better for what? Even if its to merely make adaption to new environments easier or to simply survive, both are goals, and you cannot get away from it.

5uspect

Soul Winner wrote: »

Natural Selection is not strictly an elimination process, it is also a non eliminating process. If it has no goals then why are some traits eliminated and others not? There must be a purpose for keeping the 'better' ones? Better for what? Even if its to merely make adaption to new environments easier or to simply survive, both are goals, and you cannot get away from it.

It is simply an elimination process. Dawkins used the idea of Mount Improbable but I don't quite like this analogy. Unfortunately most discussion of evolution is described in a language about how an organism adapts when it should really be how an organism failed later than the rest. This seems to confuse readers somewhat. (Of course this language makes sense once you get the basic concept)

Natural selection is a nice fancy way of saying that everything dies eventually and those that survive longer just so happen to have more offspring. Consequently their genes are more frequent in the gene pool.

There is no purpose for keeping better traits. Once again this error results from the language used. The traits that survive are simply those, through mutation, that help organism X have more offspring than organism Y. The consequence is more of X than Y. Just as a river will take one path rather than another because the soil erodes easier.

Just because the river(s) all eventually pool in the ocean doesn't mean the ocean is a goal, just a consequence of the laws of nature.

Dades

For the record, griggsy has a unique style of verbalising his thoughts that unfortunately is not entirely under his control. He had accordingly been given leeway in the past where other posters would be told to sort their grammar out!

Soul Winner wrote: »

If it has no goals then why are some traits eliminated and others not? There must be a purpose for keeping the 'better' ones? Better for what? Even if its to merely make adaption to new environments easier or to simply survive, both are goals, and you cannot get away from it.

I see a difference between "elimination", and simple failure to survive and reproduce. The former presupposes a purpose, whereas the latter does not.

If a trait offers an advantage to an organism, that organism has more chance of reproducing and passing on that trait to it's offspring. On the flip side, if a different trait appears in another of the same species that proves to be a hindrance, there is more chance that organism will not get to reproduce and pass on that trait.

Accordingly helpful mutations are statistically are more likely to be passed on the next generation, thus resulting in the organism evolving.

skeptic griggsy

Thanks Dades, my cortical defects do wreak havoc.
Thanks fellow naturalists for setting the record straight. The atelic argument overwhelms teleological ones, which beg the question of finding us wanted rather than effects of mindless selection and other mindless forces. If the meteor had not caused the demise of dinosaurs, no other intelligent being would have arose, and again no teleology to have brought us forth [ See the current issue of Skeptic.]. Teleology here is just a pareidolia like finding Mary on a stain glass- there is no there there.:eek:
With William Provine, I observe that selection has natural bosses. Note what Dawkins has to say about Eugenie C. Scott.

skeptic griggsy

Yes, to conflate a natural, non-directive cause with purpose does indeed contradict each other ; to postulate the latter is nothing but depriving the former of original power as though it were merely passive.
Evolution is indeed creative. Mother Nature is creative: she is the "goddess," the no-mind god of pantheism, to which as a Dr. Quinten Smith one, I adhere poetically.
We see functions, not directed-purposes to make a distinction., betwixt function and purpose.
Please do read the new thread the presumptions to that more abundant life so as to see why Nature rather than God is the creative power.