From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sun Jan 16 2000 - 21:06:22 MST
GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 1/16/00 5:22:10 PM Central Standard Time,
> rowen@technologist.com writes:
>
> > If, for the sake of argument, we adopt Aristotle's distinction
> > between "final" and "formal" causes, it is possible to assert that
> > nature as we observe it appears to be the "effect" of a pattern
> > of causes having a formal property without implying teleology.
>
> Yes, and viewing evolution in this way can make studying natural science all
> the more thrilling. But "design" without teleology isn't what the theistic
> "argument from design" has in mind at all.
And you know, Greg, that the astonishment and awe felt in the
presence of these evident patterns, their beauty and intelligibility,
--their existence itself, has evoked in some of us aesthetic feelings
of such depth that one has to wonder about the character of this
compulsion to trivialize it all with gratuitous transcendental postulates.
Bob
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
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