Teleological Science?

I'll take us back to the beginning and go for what Quetzal was wanting originally. The easiest place to look would be in the "missing links" that IDists continue to perceive as missing. For instance, the fact that Tiktaalik and his predecessors, like Panderichthys and Eusthenopteron, had all the correct bones to form fingers and long bones in the legs and arms of vertebrates before arms and legs existed could be seen as teleological in nature.I would refute this on the grounds that the bones necessary to create the yaw and roll of the wrist did not exist in these organisms (the pitch, however, was apparently present in Tiktaalik), and that Tiktaalik's wrist and forearm bones seem to have pivoted in a manner quite different from ours.However, if some trait could be shown to have only one use, and to have evolved before the organism in which it evolved could take advantage of that one use, this might be trouble for evolutionary theory. So, if it could be shown that feathers were only useful in flight (and not in thermoregulation or mating displays), than the feathers on the non-flying dromaeosaurs would be a problem for materialistic evolutionary theory.This has the potential to unleash some very adamant IDists. Everybody read up on your transitional fossils and stuff.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

I've had a couple of hours to think since I posted this, now. The fact that nothing we see in nature is really stuck in a specific function is a good support for evolutionary theory. If a penguin can make a wing into a flipper, and a panda can make a random bone in its wrist into a thumb, clearly, nature's adaptability is astounding.It would be quite a task to locate a trait that couldn't be modified into something else. That's why irreducible complexity is a flawed concept. In fact, my statement is very similar to Behe's favorite Darwin quote (that his theory would be utterly destroyed if one system was found that couldn't have evolved gradually). I think they would have to go further and say that the trait isn't merely not useful, but somewhat debilitating, before they could actually use it as evidence. Something that has neutral usability may not be selected against, and genetic drift could fix it in the population.Maybe, then, another teleological trait in nature could be the sacrifice of some beneficial trait that facilitates a future development of greater benefit. For example, a bird sacrifices flight to later evolve hands. This is kind of like the Phorusrhacid (terror bird) Titanis, which is believed to have developed the manus of its vestigial wing into a meat-hook, presumably for killing its prey. I don't think the teleology quite works here, though: you'd have to prove some kind of link between the loss and the later trait.Edited by Bluejay, : Grammar; addition to last sentence.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Clearly, you are more eloquent than I. I think it serves as good evidence for evolution that traits don't predict the future: the future molds the pre-existing trait to its altered conditions. So, only bears living in the cold north have thick fat and heavy coats; and birds that like to eat fruit only live where there is fruit to eat. Carnivorous plants only live in nitrogen-poor environments, where they need to eat bugs to get nitrogen. Elsewhere, they do not eat bugs.Now, if someone found a carnivorous plant in a desert (where nitrogen is not the limiting factor), this would be difficult to explain. Particularly if, a thousand years later, said desert was transformed into a peat bog.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Just to clarify all the thick, scientific stuff in that last post: populations can continue to experience the effects of selection in a different environment after they've moved on to a new environment. I'm not sure I've articulated it properly, but, that's my fifth try, and I generally just move on after five.An example of what I think he's saying: A species of land-based reptile learns to fly, becomes a bird, then returns to the land. It has not lost all of its land-based adaptations during its tenure as a flying organism. This is why, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, large flightless birds (like the Phorusrhacids I mentioned in an earlier post) transitioned easily into the top carnivore niches in many ecosystems around the planet, hunting like the dromaeosaurs ("raptor" dinosaurs). This also may be stretching the analogy a little bit, though.All this stuff about teleology that we've been discussing is, of course, a thin membrane of nonsense, that could easily be broken if we stretch it too far. Just like the analogy I was trying to create with that sentence.I would tentatively put forth the notion that no biological trait is so restricted in its adaptability that it could not take on multiple functions. The vertebrate limb, for instance, is useful as an implement for running, grabbing, digging, flying, swimming, killing and climbing (possibly others). Yet, interestingly, all vertebrate limbs have similar bone structures (the manus, or hand region, is the least conserved portion, however).

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

I'm not even going to pretend I followed all of that.The part I was calling nonsense was, however, our suggestions of "teleological developments." They are nonsense, because they have not been found. If they are ever found, I will assault them from every possible angle until every possible angle that I can assault them from has been disproven. Then, I will no longer refer to it as 'nonsense.'

Maybe teleology could be found in the immune system. The existence in an evolutionary lineage of antibodies against a pathogen that the clade had not yet been exposed to could be seen as a teleological development. Of course, it could also be seen as a fortuitous coincidence, so this type of teleology would be difficult to prove.The next step in this line of reasoning would be to determine what purpose the development has in mind. Obviously, survival of the organism would be the short-term purpose. But, if it appeared in a springtail (Hexapoda: Collembola), which has very little to do with humans, it would be hard to justify the anthropic concept of creationism. Which is a good seque into my recent musings on this subject: But, teleology doesn't necessarily support intelligent design.With the model of God creating the Earth specifically for human usage, you would have to link any teleological development you found to human benefit. Otherwise, teleology wouldn't really support much of the current IDists' views. An instance of teleological development that proves God's assistance to inedible and destructive beetles would be a serious detriment to religious beliefs everywhere. Unless, of course, the development was seen as producing a parable for humans to learn from (which is always a possibility), or a mode of punishment for our sins. Of course, the claim that God favors the beetles would be equally valid until God revealed directly that it was flawed.So, teleology would only prove an "intelligent tinkerer" (which could be God, advanced aliens, conspiring CIA people, or whatever your favorite paranoia is). But, the nature of the design may reveal even scarier things than materialistic evolution theorizes, such as God's actual purpose in creating the Earth having little to do with us at all. In fact, none of the examples discussed so far actually support a human-centered plan of creation. If this kind of evidence isn't found, people may find evolution to be a more comforting thought than an all-powerful beetle-god.So, if we found enough design favoring beetles, starfish, octopus or tapeworms, people might stop trying to prove God's existence and just let us teach evolution. Join the teleology thread, guys! Disclaimer: This is not how science works, and this is not the methodology employed by evolutionists. It is, however, eerily similar to some ID methodologies out there (see Wedge Document). IDists should be glad we don't like backstabbing, cloak-and-dagger stuff like this.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Thank you, Grizz. I’m having a lot of fun on this thread. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? If we had one-on-one debates, I have to say I’d agree with you. Of course, this is the kind of thing conscientious, religious people claim to avoid (although I know a lot of people who see themselves as having very high morals who simultaneously seem to have a passionate vendetta against all things six-legged).However, I tend to agree with this quote from Quetzal: Consider human history with crop and household pests: how many species of insect have we successfully eradicated from this planet with our concerted pesticidal efforts? I can’t think of any. We’ve wiped out many peripherally by killing their food sources or draining swamps, but the ones that we’ve been explicitly trying to kill are still thriving right under our noses.So, could it be that God is, in fact, helping the cockroaches? If so, what does that say about the nature of God and our relationship to Him?On the other hand, can anyone think of anything teleological in human evolution? It seems, if true creationists want to prove their point, they’ll not only have to prove teleology, but prove teleology in our favor. Any ideas?Side-Note for Quetzal: From what I’ve been told, that sounds like a very conservative estimate. But, then again, you’re the coleopterist, so I’ll trust you.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

That's true, also. It's kind of scary to think we don't mean anything, so it's natural for a being that has the ability to imagine such philosophical concepts to avoid such thoughts.Furthermore, in our studies of science and nature, there is no way to actually discern what is and isn't God's will. For all we know, God's will manifests itself in our universe as random for some unknown reason. Under such conditions, teleology is fruitless.I, for one, cannot think of anything conclusively teleological in human evolution, so I don't buy the special creation scenario.One thing is for certain, though: it's beneficial to have people oppose us, because it makes us think things through more carefully. After my handful of posts on this thread, I feel more secure in my belief about evolution through natural selection than before.

Brad McFall, most of that went about three kilometers over my head. I would appreciate a dumbed-down version of all that. Does this mean you believe the code came before the implementation of the code, and that the code therefore did not evolve alongside the organisms? If so, I disagree: there are several known variations of the code (UGA is a stop codon in our nucleus; it codes triptophan in our mitochondrion, though).That's about all I could even conjecture a meaning for in your post. I assume, however, that at least YOU know what you're talking about. I hope this doesn't mean I'm just stupid.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

This supports the notion that the code itself is also capable of adapting and "evolving" alongside the organisms that use it. It also suggests that the genetic code is not a teleological design, as is often quoted in creationists' "arguments from ignorance." I don't know that DNA can function like this without proteins, unless you're suggesting that the microtubules might have performed the functions of enzymes and, in turn, were encoded by the DNA instead of proteins. I don't think there is enough support for this notion: the "RNA World" hypothesis seems more far more plausible to me.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : No reason given.

In this, I tend to agree with you. I believe, through my religion, that there is a God. However, looking out the world, and how evolution has formed a bushy, almost fractal pattern of descent, it's hard to see any notion of teleology at all in this world. If everything was guided toward a single, distinct purpose, we would likely see everything convergently evolving toward that one goal.However, since the outward manifestation of the process that's going on is random and branching, not convergent, we can either assume that the process is not structured for a specific goal, or that whatever force is structuring it for a specific goal is doing so in an insanely complicated manner (which may not be particularly complicated for a god, mind you).If the latter case is true (i.e. that God is guiding, but is doing so along increasingly diverse and/or increasingly spontaneous avenues), we as undivine mortals would be hard-pressed to distinguish it from true randomness.Under this case, I would submit that ID is utterly useless (even though it would be true), because our current understanding of evolution by natural selection still comes closer to describing it as a non-directed process than ID does.Edited by Bluejay, : Grammar

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

This is an interesting thought process. However, I don't like the implication in this that the initial state of the cards (their original order in the package) can be seen as their "purpose." A system based on that concept would be intolerant of change in all forms, and the advance of any goal-oriented process could not be seen.However, it does give the teleological perspective some predictive powers. For instance, if we knew the cards' "purpose" ahead of time, we could then use it to predict how the cards would land when thrown into the air from a given starting order, or how many tosses it would take to get them into that order.Here's another idea I just thought of. If there is a single purpose for the Earth as whole, would we ever see deviations from this purpose in development? Or, in terms of your example, would we ever have to throw the cards more than once?Or, for that matter, would there ever be ulterior motives going on (such as an animal developing a trait that benefits itself, but doesn't improve its usefulness to humans)? If everything was tuned for a single purpose, I would suspect that any new developments would have to contribute to that overall purpose at least as much as they would contribute to their proximate cause. That means, flight in birds would have to be at least as important to God's plan as it is to the bird's ability to find food or escape predators. How could you judge this, though?

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

No, the cards were actually a good analogy. The only problem I have with it is that the purpose of the cards was set as their initial state, as opposed to (for example) the order that produces the most winning poker hands arranged in descending point value. That's all I would add to your analogy. If you don't know the rules, you're less apt to follow them. So, if there’s a purpose to the universe, but you don’t know it, would you be able to follow a different path? Like RAZD was mentioning with predator-prey “arms races,” are they behaving/evolving/etc. according to an overall plan, or are they working towards their own ends? This is what I was getting at in message 61: even if we found teleological developments in nature, we’d have to find additional evidence linking these things to the purpose we ascribe to God: namely, the salvation, exaltation, or other benefit of humans, in order to make ID a legitimate theory.In response to the “survival” line of reasoning coming up, maybe we could use this segment from Genesis 1 to support evolution as teleological:

quote:

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22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

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So, in relation to the animals, God’s purpose seems to be reproduction.

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There was a point to this [post], but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind. -modified from Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

Teleology doesn't necessarily have to be determinism, though. Just because there is an overall purpose, does there also have to be zero tolerance for peripheral, individual goals? I would submit that, because we humans are allowed to hold a wide range of belief systems, any god that exists does allow ulterior motives to persist. That's the question I was asking a few posts back: Would the birds (or we) have to develop in the way that would best suit the purposes of God? Or, could they (we) develop in a way that suits them (us)? If there is a single, overarching purpose to everything, such peripheral developments would only be expected to develop within given bounds (i.e. they would be expected to contribute more to the overall purpose than to the "ulterior motive")

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There was a point to this [post], but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind. -modified from Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams

Teleology only implies that each development arose for a predesigned reason. It does not necessarily say that all developments arose for the same predesigned reason (e.g. God caused millipedes for one purpose, and cows for another). It also doesn't say that all developments have to follow a set pattern (i.e. not everything had to develop eyes). This is very good support for the concept of evolution by natural selection. The salamander doesn't need eyes, so why should it bother with them? This example shows that animals' developments do not always seem to converge on a single purpose: rather, they seem to follow patterns that would suit themselves.So, I submit that ulterior motives for developments in nature are observable. The fact that the salamander has undeveloped eyes (as opposed to no eyes) indicates that it adapted to the dark from seeing ancestors, and wasn't created de novo. So, assuming teleology, the atrophy of its eyes would have to be attributed to (a) the overall purpose of God, (b) an "ulterior motive" of the salamander, or (c) the act of a God wanting people to fall for the "evolution hoax" (as a test of faith or just to be mean).I tend to favor choice (b), because the other two don't make sense to me.

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There was a point to this [post], but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind. -modified from Life, the Universe and Everything, Douglas Adams