Peairtach
Puritan Board Doctor
This occured to me through reading David Stove's excellent "Darwinian Fairytales". No doubt it's not original but has occurred to others and hopefully been published.
(a) Darwinists say that there is an overall purpose in the natural world, i.e. biological world, of plants, animals and Man, which is the survival of the fittest or that various possible entities - there is confusion among Darwinists where this purpose centres - are dominated in their structure, actions, etc, by the purpose of surviving as long as possible and propagating as many of their genes as possible.
Darwin traditionally centred this purpose of competition with all other life for survival and propagation, in the individual plant or animal. Later Darwinists broadened it to be focussed on the family or tribes' survival and propagation. In "The Selfish Gene" Dawkins locates the centre of survivability and propagation on the genes themselves.
(b) I very much doubt whether any Darwinist was saying that animals or plants consciously had a purpose of survivability or propagation, or that Dawkins is seriously saying that the genes want to survive and propagate but that it is a purpose which shapes the forms and instinctual behaviour of the entities.
(c)So where did this overarching purpose/goal/teleology that Darwinists say is in flora and fauna and genes and Man come from?
(i) If this purpose that Darwinists see in the natural world is just a construct that is in the mind(s) of the Darwinist(s) then it is them that are imposing a fantasy of their own on the natural world and what they observe there. In that case evolution is false. The purpose the Darwinists speak of is just in their brains and nowhere else.
(ii) We've already seen that it cannot be seriously argued that the overarching purpose of survival and propagation can be consciously in the plants and animals and genes themselves. Someone could try to do it, and Dawkins has in "The Selfish Gene" but I'm sure he'd have difficulty if he was asked if he believed that genes consciously wanted to survive and propagate. Some men's main conscious purpose in life is to survive as long as possible and have as many children as possible, but as David Stove shows, they are a vanishing small number, which further contradicts the theory.
(iv) Could such overarching teleology have arisen by random chance in the early development of life? But atheistic random chance and/or determinacy isn't teleogical.
(iii) The only conclusion therefore, by a process of elimination, is that such an overall teleology in life that is trumpeted by evolution, if evolution is indeed true, was put there.
If the theory of evolution is indeed true as atheists almost to a man claim, there must be a Designer that gave evolution its teleology.
Of course, I don't believe in the theory of evolution, but if I did, I would be compelled to believe in a God.
I don't know if presuppositionalists or other philosophers could refine this argument? Probably.
(a) Darwinists say that there is an overall purpose in the natural world, i.e. biological world, of plants, animals and Man, which is the survival of the fittest or that various possible entities - there is confusion among Darwinists where this purpose centres - are dominated in their structure, actions, etc, by the purpose of surviving as long as possible and propagating as many of their genes as possible.
Darwin traditionally centred this purpose of competition with all other life for survival and propagation, in the individual plant or animal. Later Darwinists broadened it to be focussed on the family or tribes' survival and propagation. In "The Selfish Gene" Dawkins locates the centre of survivability and propagation on the genes themselves.
(b) I very much doubt whether any Darwinist was saying that animals or plants consciously had a purpose of survivability or propagation, or that Dawkins is seriously saying that the genes want to survive and propagate but that it is a purpose which shapes the forms and instinctual behaviour of the entities.
(c)So where did this overarching purpose/goal/teleology that Darwinists say is in flora and fauna and genes and Man come from?
(i) If this purpose that Darwinists see in the natural world is just a construct that is in the mind(s) of the Darwinist(s) then it is them that are imposing a fantasy of their own on the natural world and what they observe there. In that case evolution is false. The purpose the Darwinists speak of is just in their brains and nowhere else.
(ii) We've already seen that it cannot be seriously argued that the overarching purpose of survival and propagation can be consciously in the plants and animals and genes themselves. Someone could try to do it, and Dawkins has in "The Selfish Gene" but I'm sure he'd have difficulty if he was asked if he believed that genes consciously wanted to survive and propagate. Some men's main conscious purpose in life is to survive as long as possible and have as many children as possible, but as David Stove shows, they are a vanishing small number, which further contradicts the theory.
(iv) Could such overarching teleology have arisen by random chance in the early development of life? But atheistic random chance and/or determinacy isn't teleogical.
(iii) The only conclusion therefore, by a process of elimination, is that such an overall teleology in life that is trumpeted by evolution, if evolution is indeed true, was put there.
If the theory of evolution is indeed true as atheists almost to a man claim, there must be a Designer that gave evolution its teleology.
Of course, I don't believe in the theory of evolution, but if I did, I would be compelled to believe in a God.
I don't know if presuppositionalists or other philosophers could refine this argument? Probably.