Badger3k
Posts: 861
Joined: Mar. 2008
|
| Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ Feb. 09 2010,17:19) | | Quote (Joy @ Feb. 09 2010,17:30) | | Quote | | So you have no thoughts whatsoever on abiogenesis then? Not even to say telic intervention was required? What was your original purpose over at TT then? To argue against TT? |
My only thought on abiogenesis is that I would like to believe life is intentional rather than accidental. |
It strikes me that to ascribe the origins of life on earth, and/or the evolutionary directions taken by life over the last ~3.5 billion years either to "intent" or "accident," is a category error (or category mistake).
It is defensible to ascribe to persons and perhaps a few other higher organisms intent to engage in behaviors, which are therefore called "acts." To do so is to ascribe to them the ability to represent behavioral options prior to behaving and hence "intend" a given behavior. As a component of this ascription, we say that for them it is possible to exhibit "accidental" behaviors or results. A person may "accidently" knock the cup from the table. Or may do so intentionally.
An earthquake, however, neither behaves intentionally nor causes results "by accident." It may cause many cups to fall from many tables, but these are neither accidents nor not accidents. They are not "acts" at all. Such an ascription is simply inappropriate for a natural event such as an earthquake, and represents a category error.
It is similarly inappropriate to ascribe either intention or lack of intention ("accidents") to other natural phenomena. Hence, within a naturalistic framework, the origins of life and course of evolution are neither accidental nor non-accidental, because both ascriptions commit a category error. However these phenomena originate, it is unlikely to be by means of "actions" analogous to human actions, because the capacity for "acts" (versus mere behavior) appears rather clearly to be a culmination of long evolutionary history, not its beginning.
Interestingly, it IS possible that God created life accidently. An eternal divine entity possessed of agency may create deliberately - but as an intentional being may also enage in acts that have unintended consequences, and hence may be regarded as accidents. It is an interesting question for believers in such beings to contemplate: perhaps there is a God, but this universe and/or the life within it are accidental. Could explain a lot, because the God of the bible seems such a bungler.
Absent such a being, the universe is neither accidental nor not accidental. Ascriptions along that dimension become category errors when the processes so described are natural processes, absent agency. The only circumstance in which a universe and the life within it can be "accidental" is if there IS a God and that God created this universe. Only believers need be concerned with that possibility.
(Remember to recycle).
[Edit for fragrance] |
Well said. That also applies when people say "well who created the universe" - by putting the "who" they are automatically leaving out the more basic "what", along with the implication that "creation" carries. Creation can refer to the result of natural process without intentionality (cold weather and water can create ice, for example), but most people think of an active agent. Same sort of error, no?
--------------
"Just think if every species had a different genetic code We would have to eat other humans to survive.." : Joe G
|
