The Problem with Final Cause

September 6, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Irony permeates the evolution-ID debate. Even so, I’m amazed that I did not catch this one sooner.
The whole argument for preventing ID from entering the education system is that it is religion. It is religion because to test any ID question assumes that there may be an intelligence beyond all matter and energy that imposes purpose upon the cause-and-effect world that we experience. A designer is thus a possible cause of matter, or energy, or its manipulation; and intelligence suggests the manipulation has purposive direction.
The whole reason for the inception of Darwinian evolution was to find a way to explain the diversity and complexity of life, including all cause and effect for it, without dependence upon a cause outside the material system—no outside cause; no designer, no purposive direction. Assigning “designer” due to final cause is not a consideration.
In order for Darwinian evolution to be the source of the diversity of life, there must be no final cause. Final cause implies some force, pre-existing condition, and/or purpose that inevitably draws a process in some fixed direction, which would then be the final cause. In order for final cause to be avoided, all biological change, including mutation, must be either random or based purely upon circumstances resulting from previous randomness. No conception of future outcomes can ever be a factor for what happens in the present or what happened in the past.
Here is the irony: Darwinists object to ID because it investigates the possibility of final cause, but the objection itself is based on final cause.
Let’s review that slowly:
1. ID looks for final cause.
2. Darwinists say that considering final cause is not science; it is religion.
3. Darwinists object to ID because of where it might lead.
4. Where something might lead is a final cause consideration.
5. The Darwinian objection to ID is a final cause consideration.
6. The Darwinian objection to ID is not science; it is religion, based on their own definition.

Posted in Science and faith | No Comments »