Perhaps you did not see the link to the article that argues WHY Darwin possibly held certain creationist (which is considered ID today) views.
I am open to anything that calls my ideas into question, stop lying.
Now how about those arguments and at least some form of response to show you actually have clue about the subject of materialism when tout it so much as the backbone of modern science…
I think you misunderstood my intent – I’m sorry for giving the wrong impression.
My bad 
I won’t engage any further with Teleological on the present matter because he is neither open to anything that calls his ideas into question, nor does he actually know his oats anywhere near as well as he would have his Punch-and-Judy act suggest.
Understandable. You deserve an award for patientence. 
Lead by example, Father. : Start with the above.
Thanks, but what I really deserve is a bit of ribbing or worse for being silly enough to allow myself to be drawn again into an entirely predictable situation, one that we have seen all too often before.
'Luthon64
tele, your link is a bit short.
darwin started off giong to church, being xtian, but the older, and wizer, he got, he started to veer away the church.
i see the teleogy people like to pin darwin as a ID because he said :To suppose that the eye […] could have been formed by
natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. (The Origin of Species(1859)
darwin freely admits that some things still boggled his mind, and that it’s beyond him to understand it all:
the respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I [should] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can (letter to Asa Gray, 1860)
he continues to doubt ID as ge grew older
I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came from and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty (In a letter to a correspondent at the University of Utrecht in 1873)
September 1881, darwin had a guest in the form of Freethinker Doctor Ludwig Büchner
in discussions after dinner Darwin asked his guests:
"Why do you call yourselves Atheists?" they responded that they "did not commit the folly of god-denial, [and] avoided with equal care the folly of god-assertion" Darwin gave a thoughtful response, concluding that "I am with you in thought, but I should prefer the word Agnostic to the word Atheist." Aveling replied that, "after all, 'Agnostic' was but 'Atheist' writ respectable, and 'Atheist' was only 'Agnostic' writ aggressive." Darwin smiled and responded "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind? It is all very well for educated, cultured, thoughtful people; but are the masses yet ripe for it?"
i find darwin quite happy to equate agnosticism and atheism. atheism being the militant wing of agnosticism. his choice being, to be the guy to pushes the flower into the barrel of the gun. and not pushing anybody into anything they are not ready for. i can totally respect and follow that.
he published his autobiography, and initially his wife and son left out his more religious views, trying not to tarnish his reputation after he had died.
In 1958 Darwin’s granddaughter Nora Barlow published a revised version which contained the omissions
"The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws." (p.87)
"At the present day (ca. 1872) the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons. But it cannot be doubted that Hindoos, Mahomadans and others might argue in the same manner and with equal force in favor of the existence of one God, or of many Gods, or as with the Buddhists of no God...This argument would be a valid one if all men of all races had the same inward conviction of the existence of one God: but we know that this is very far from being the case. Therefore I cannot see that such inward convictions and feelings are of any weight as evidence of what really exists." (p.91)
"Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps as inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake." (p.93)
so
wheras darwin might have started off believing in god, and that god had designed nature as it is, he had been faced with evidence as his years of research passed, and as an old, wizened man, he knew the truth, and he was not shy about saying so.
darwin died not being a teleologist. he died an agnostic, not believing in the church, an afterlife or heaven. and i tend to attach a label to someone’s last word. the fact that he made a point of making it clear that he didnt give credit to ID, in his autobiography of all things, tells me that he very much wanted his kids, grandkids, and the future to know that religion is bogus, as is ID, and the church.
maybe then stop making him out be something he isnt.
Erm… it’s clear that Lennox uses the term ‘teleological’ quite differently than, say, Aristotle. Lennox defends himself from Ghiselin by conceding he doesn’t use the term teleological in the traditional sense.
As for the creationist claim. Erm… yeah. Evolution /= abogionesis. Even if Darwin was an creationist wrt abiogensis (which he most certainly wasn’t - again, he was an agnostic), that doesn’t make him a creationist wrt evolution.
A very informative post, GCG.
Beyond what Darwin might have privately believed, the salient issue is his work on natural selection. Nobody who grasps the basic processes at work as described in The Origin of Species can possibly confuse it with teleology. Obfuscating the issue by bringing in arguments about Aristotelian metaphysics and definitions of materialism will not invalidate this truth. When numerous people claim that Darwin subscribed to teleology, it should come as no surprise: he was probably the most challenged scientist of all time and his views remain a threat to religious concepts.
Coming back to the thread topic then: Darwin did not by himself make teleology obsolete. It had been rejected long before by enlightenment reformers such as Voltaire. Darwin played a major role in its demise, though - what many people regard as the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
Tele???
Coming back to the thread topic then: Darwin did not by himself make teleology obsolete. It had been rejected long before by enlightenment reformers such as Voltaire. Darwin played a major role in its demise, though - what many people regard as the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Yup - sort of. The person who came closest before Darwin was David Hume (see Dennett’s superb Darwin’s Dangerous Idea on this), but the problem is there was no proper alternative to teleological thinking before Darwin. (Lemarck was unsatisfactory for a whole bunch of reasons). A lot of people (including Darwin in his youth) found Paley’s Natural Theology extremely convincing. It was natural selection that finally showed the watchmaker could be blind…
Darwin’s topic was evolution by natural selection. Voltaire ridiculed teleology a century before. I see Candide by Voltaire is available on kalahari.net for a mere R49,26. If you have not read this hilarious satire on teleology, this is your chance.
Candide is just wonderful… I should re-read it one of these days.
There you go.
Busy re-reading it myself, he has a very dark sense of humour doesn’t he? >:D
@ muffles.
Do you have father issues?
@ GCG
I don’t think you properly understand why others say Darwin may have held creationist (as in ID today) reservations. It has to do with the origin of life.
Darwin died an agnostic, not an atheist or a theist. It is not incompatible for an agnostic to hold teleological views. Darwin made no claims to being a teleologist or not one. What we have is his work and his particular view of natural selection and whether it is compatible with teleological views. What we clearly see though is that Darwin’s views are incompatible with Paley’s teleology.
@ Michael
Lennox is of course using contemporary discussions and understanding about teleology and final causality as per Aristotelianism. I don’t see a problem, it has been discussed extensively Gotthelf and Lennox’s “Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology", especially Gotthelf’s treatment of of “Aristotle’s conception of Final Causality”. Also read “Functions: new essays in the philosophy of psychology and biology By André Ariew, Robert Cummins, Mark Perlman”, especially Andre Ariew’s “Platonic and Aristotelian Roots of Teleological Arguments”.
With regards to Darwin’s alleged creationism/ID and his agnosticism. I don’t see how those are incompatible. Creationists/IDers might be agnostic and think of ET life as the designers (SETI and all etc.).
@ Hermes
At best, Darwin made Platonic and/or Paleyian teleology obsolete. Voltaire in his book (as just about everyone during his time) you allude to (Candide) never really interacted with what Aristotle and the Scholastics actually argued for and instead (tongue in cheek I guess) drew straw men caricatures of the actual arguments. See if you can see it in the first chapter (hint, distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic teleology).
@ Michael
In essence, Darwin’s conception of natural selection paints it as a “teleological force”. Again, read Ariew’s chapter and more recent work on the subject on why it is argued.
This discussion will probably end up with a few accepting some restrained form of teleology in science, especially biology, while the hardened materialists (those who actually know what it entails anyway) and/or naturalists (the mechanical kind :P) will try and fight it with tooth and nail.
facedesk. i give up.
@ Teleological
No thank you.
Seconded.
seems most post that tele starts end up in flame wars.
hey cy, im learning from the master
Ooops! No. Remember - it’s YOU wot has father issues. Big daddy in the sky watching over poor lil Phroners, keeping him safe, writing down all his deeds in the judgement-day ledger, providing lekker rules ‘n’ things for him to live by, watching him masturbate ( do you think mother Mary sneeks a peek? ). Hehe! 
Yes, that’s the price of the elusive subtlety in using a capital “F” and a rolly-eyes emoticon… :o
'Luthon64
Telly, I think we all know that that is not the case. Creationists and IDers all believe that it were God what did it. Creationists are upfront about it, while ID is just a weasely public relations campaign by some creationists to try and get creationism taught in science class. Instead of where it belongs, in religious instruction, with all the other nutty myths and fables.
That’s a lie.