NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Argument-from-design is done in by paleontology straight up, not evolution. Every dead end, cross up, atavistic reemergence, divergence, and those critters which spring up out of nowhere that we've found under our feet are harder to square away with the means to an end argument from design than celestial Shakespeare composing itself in a void. It doesn't have a solid answer for extinction.
Ultimately, it goes awry by the contrivance that we can claim to know the designer's purpose beyond the instructions and condescension he gives to man.
Why presuppose that the Good Lord's purpose is perseverance and patience or edification for all that is created and especially man, all done out of a divine love&mercy? I wouldn't doubt any of those bits in the general, but all the mercy in the world still doesn't give us any insight into the ends to why a sloth survives but not a mastodon.
We've now dug up enough to make it unlikely that nature reveals a certain, plain teleology to us that some hoped it would; especially one centered around a fixity of animal types with a harmonious proportion of endowments ensconced in nice environments in which they had to live.
excellent points.
somewhere in all this we bang into the fatalistic, dictator version of god which dictates the flight pattern of every sparrow and fall of every leaf.
free will and the power of choices are made real in evolution.