Question for Atheists ( hoping for a interesting debate)
Why do Roses 🌹 have thorns?
36-40, M
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ElwoodBlues · M
@Heavenlywarrior says
(2) I'm not making the assumptions you describe, but I AM making the assumption that Occam's razor has validity: that - everything else being equal - fewer postulates lead to better theories.
(3) I'm limiting my discussion to testable hypotheses. That's why I mentioned the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's classic example of a "theory" designed to be non-testable. It's fun and easy to construct non-testable "theories." And I'm OK with them in a philosophy classroom. But science is the domain of testable hypotheses. I guess the science classroom needs enough philosophy to distinguish the testable from the non-testable.
@Heavenlywarrior says
@Heavenlywarrior says
Widening our perspective, that massive energy flow is a crucial part of our environment. And environment is what does the natural selection. Different environments select for different features. That's what Darwin noticed among the Galápagos finches: slightly different environments selected for slightly different features.
Each of the different Galápagos environments doesn't have its own goal or intention. Instead, living things interacting in that environment are differentially selected by each environment. You can, optionally, assume goals and intentions and controlling intelligence if you like, but these assumptions are not necessary to explain the world around us.
You're assuming that only material, mechanistic causes are legitimate scientific explanations — and that any suggestion of non-local organizing principles, informational fields, or non-random structure emerging from within nature must be “superstition.”
(1) I've never used the word "superstition" here; don't try to put words like that in my mouth.(2) I'm not making the assumptions you describe, but I AM making the assumption that Occam's razor has validity: that - everything else being equal - fewer postulates lead to better theories.
(3) I'm limiting my discussion to testable hypotheses. That's why I mentioned the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's classic example of a "theory" designed to be non-testable. It's fun and easy to construct non-testable "theories." And I'm OK with them in a philosophy classroom. But science is the domain of testable hypotheses. I guess the science classroom needs enough philosophy to distinguish the testable from the non-testable.
@Heavenlywarrior says
Biological systems exhibit signs of anticipatory, goal-directed behavior (teleonomy) that cannot be fully accounted for by random mutation and natural selection alone — and instead follow predictive patterns consistent with information-field dynamics, similar to self-organizing systems in physics.
Nope. No need to assume anticipatory behavior (Occam's razor applied here). In the simplified model I mentioned elsewhere, on average 32 mutations are harmful and one is helpful. There's no anticipation there; just repeated rolling of dice. And, since we know that about 99% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct, it seems that losing rolls of the dice are what every species can expect in the long term.similar to self-organizing systems in physics
I majored in physics and I'm a little familiar with Shannon's theorems. Perhaps you'll have to explain further what you mean by that, but if you're referring to crystalization, that's another phenomenon driven by energy flow (see my next comment regarding energy flow).@Heavenlywarrior says
you’re applying blind faith to the idea that blind mutation explains all order.
No, I'm not. Another major driver of order on planet Earth is the 173,000 terawatts of solar energy hitting the Earth at all times; about 340 watts per square meter. Without that tremendous energy flow onto and then off of the Earth, the "ordering" doesn't happen. Some folks try to argue that life contradicts the laws of thermodynamics; they don't realize that those laws only apply to closed systems and the Earth is FAR from closed.Widening our perspective, that massive energy flow is a crucial part of our environment. And environment is what does the natural selection. Different environments select for different features. That's what Darwin noticed among the Galápagos finches: slightly different environments selected for slightly different features.
Each of the different Galápagos environments doesn't have its own goal or intention. Instead, living things interacting in that environment are differentially selected by each environment. You can, optionally, assume goals and intentions and controlling intelligence if you like, but these assumptions are not necessary to explain the world around us.
Heavenlywarrior · 36-40, M
@ElwoodBlues 1) Fair enough — you didn’t use the word “superstition,” but your framing implies that any explanation beyond mechanistic materialism is unscientific, even if it's grounded in empirical pattern, coherence, and structure. That’s not superstition — that’s inference.
(2) Occam’s Razor isn’t about the simplest idea — it’s about the least assumptive explanation that still accounts for the observed complexity. Random mutation alone doesn’t explain the emergence of functional order — it describes a process. But processes require a canvas. Why does this canvas — nature itself — support the consistent emergence of coherent, adaptive, and mathematically patterned structures?
If particles emerge from vacuum fluctuations, why do those fluctuations follow probabilistic rules at all?
(3) The problem with claiming “only testable hypotheses belong to science” is that you’re using a philosophical rule — falsifiability — to define science, while denying philosophy a seat at the table.
We accept dark matter and dark energy not because we see them directly, but because their effects are empirically measurable. Why, then, should we dismiss the idea of an underlying informational field if it accounts for persistent, observable teleonomic patterns in biology?
If natural selection is non-directed but consistently produces functionally coherent systems, isn’t that indistinguishable from a deeper organizing principle at work?
You're invoking Occam’s Razor to dismiss anticipation — but what’s actually more parsimonious:
Believing nature accidentally produces complex, functional systems through millions of failures?
Or acknowledging that reality, like other known physical systems (e.g. fractals, turbulence, wave dynamics), may follow intrinsic self-organizing informational rules?
If it's just random "dice rolls," why do those rolls consistently generate coherent, functional, and recursive adaptations — not just noise?
You cite the 99% extinction rate as if that disproves direction — but what it really proves is selection pressure within constraints. Evolution isn’t just a pile of corpses — it’s a story of increasing structural complexity and functional refinement, even as systems go extinct. That itself suggests something more than random walk.
And if there’s no anticipation in biological systems:
Why do so many adaptations — mimicry, toxin resistance, immune systems — act in advance of environmental challenges, not merely reactively?
Where do we ever see statistically predictable optimization emerge from random failure without a framework?
If it’s truly random, why don’t we see just a chaos of failed forms, instead of organisms with layers of interdependent function?
Self-organizing systems — like Benard cells, laser coherence, or dissipative structures (Prigogine) — don’t just form because of energy flow alone, but because energy is organized along certain boundary conditions, governed by informational constraints.
In these cases, form emerges predictably when the system reaches certain thresholds. Why shouldn’t biological systems — which operate far-from-equilibrium and depend on nonlinear interactions — follow similar informational attractors?
Crystallization is not “just” about energy; it’s about how that energy gets minimized into structured, low-entropy configurations, based on rules encoded in the lattice and surrounding environment. That’s not mystical — that’s formal information theory applied to physics.
So my question to you is:
If physics accepts emergent structure via energy + information constraints, why do you assume biological teleonomy can't arise from similar embedded logic?
Isn’t it less scientific to exclude a known pattern of organization simply because it operates at a biological scale?
(2) Occam’s Razor isn’t about the simplest idea — it’s about the least assumptive explanation that still accounts for the observed complexity. Random mutation alone doesn’t explain the emergence of functional order — it describes a process. But processes require a canvas. Why does this canvas — nature itself — support the consistent emergence of coherent, adaptive, and mathematically patterned structures?
If particles emerge from vacuum fluctuations, why do those fluctuations follow probabilistic rules at all?
(3) The problem with claiming “only testable hypotheses belong to science” is that you’re using a philosophical rule — falsifiability — to define science, while denying philosophy a seat at the table.
We accept dark matter and dark energy not because we see them directly, but because their effects are empirically measurable. Why, then, should we dismiss the idea of an underlying informational field if it accounts for persistent, observable teleonomic patterns in biology?
If natural selection is non-directed but consistently produces functionally coherent systems, isn’t that indistinguishable from a deeper organizing principle at work?
You're invoking Occam’s Razor to dismiss anticipation — but what’s actually more parsimonious:
Believing nature accidentally produces complex, functional systems through millions of failures?
Or acknowledging that reality, like other known physical systems (e.g. fractals, turbulence, wave dynamics), may follow intrinsic self-organizing informational rules?
If it's just random "dice rolls," why do those rolls consistently generate coherent, functional, and recursive adaptations — not just noise?
You cite the 99% extinction rate as if that disproves direction — but what it really proves is selection pressure within constraints. Evolution isn’t just a pile of corpses — it’s a story of increasing structural complexity and functional refinement, even as systems go extinct. That itself suggests something more than random walk.
And if there’s no anticipation in biological systems:
Why do so many adaptations — mimicry, toxin resistance, immune systems — act in advance of environmental challenges, not merely reactively?
Where do we ever see statistically predictable optimization emerge from random failure without a framework?
If it’s truly random, why don’t we see just a chaos of failed forms, instead of organisms with layers of interdependent function?
Self-organizing systems — like Benard cells, laser coherence, or dissipative structures (Prigogine) — don’t just form because of energy flow alone, but because energy is organized along certain boundary conditions, governed by informational constraints.
In these cases, form emerges predictably when the system reaches certain thresholds. Why shouldn’t biological systems — which operate far-from-equilibrium and depend on nonlinear interactions — follow similar informational attractors?
Crystallization is not “just” about energy; it’s about how that energy gets minimized into structured, low-entropy configurations, based on rules encoded in the lattice and surrounding environment. That’s not mystical — that’s formal information theory applied to physics.
So my question to you is:
If physics accepts emergent structure via energy + information constraints, why do you assume biological teleonomy can't arise from similar embedded logic?
Isn’t it less scientific to exclude a known pattern of organization simply because it operates at a biological scale?