Pointy eggs and whales (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 04, 2018, 14:11 (2054 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: Just a thought, but what seems to be missing in this thought process is 'purpose'. Evolution requires no purpose, and offers no meaning. I think something deep in humanity rejects this purposeless idea of existence. Yet we do not extend the idea of purpose beyond our own existence to say, what is the purpose of everything, not just our purpose. We can recognize the need for a designer to account for the complexity, but forget that designers do not design without purpose.

DAVID: I've constantly brought up the issue of purpose and the need for a designer.

DHW: The case for design (but not necessarily by an individual designer called God) is not an issue between us. The issue of purpose has been discussed many times, but perhaps we haven’t discussed it with Tony. Briefly, as I see it, there is a difference between what we might call micro and macropurpose. For all living organisms, there is a clear (micro) purpose of survival, while humans have many additional, personal purposes. But I think your interest lies in a macropurpose for life and the universe. Obviously if there is no God, there is no macropurpose. That doesn’t matter at all to me, since I am happy to follow my own path. I should add how delighted I am to be alive and to have the opportunity to enjoy the good, though it saddens me to observe the bad.

If there is a God, “purpose” requires an attempt to read his mind – which David objects to, unless we agree to his own reading of the mind of God, whose purpose in creating the universe was apparently to create the brain of Homo sapiens so that we can have a relationship with him although he remains hidden. (David will correct me if this summary is wrong.) In view of the astonishingly rich spectacle of an ever changing history of comings and goings – with humans clearly offering the richest spectacle of all – I have suggested that if there is a God, his purpose might have been to create an astonishingly rich spectacle of an ever changing history etc. I can’t help feeling that an eternally conscious mind would be bored to oblivion if it had nothing to do all eternity long. Whether such a God has any purpose beyond that of the spectacle will only be revealed to me if there is some form of conscious afterlife.

Tony: That assumes that there is only small purpose and big purpose and nothing in between. A person that builds a house, might be planning a neighborhood, and is certainly planning for the various elements of the house to keep it standing upright, but what about all the choices in between, that neither keep the house upright nor add to the neighborhood directly?

Your comment mirrors my statements on balance of nature which provide the homeostasis for all life.