Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote:Do you think that Calvin's declaration that the chief end of man is to give glory to God is a cosmogony?

I think it is a cosmogony, a theory of the origin of the universe, in that Calvin’s catechism assumes a number of definite attributes to reality and our origins.

This is going to sound like splitting hairs, but I disagree. To me, a cosmogony must be an explanation of origins - an account of cause and effect. It may be true that the doctrine of man's purpose was justified by a cosmogony, but that doesn't mean it is one.

The statement on the face of it gets us into what it means to give glory to God. Maybe it also gets us into the reason why that is our chief end, but it seems to me to have stepped beyond an assertion that "because God created us for his glory, that is our purpose and function." Even if that is intrinsic to the statement, in my view, the statement is more a theology (analysis of the nature of God) than a cosmogony (account of the causation of all).

Robert Tulip wrote:Firstly, Calvin assumes that the universe was deliberately created by God for his greater glory, which means that God is a unified intelligence, a directly cosmogonic claim. In the Christian orthodox schema, God is imagined as outside the physical universe, whereas the scientific cosmogony is agnostic on this point,

Well, people who are hung up on religion tend to see every statement about God through the lens that fascinates them. I am sure I am no exception. But an implicit cosmogony does not seem to me to make a statement into a cosmogony.

The assertion that DWill and I were discussing was, basically, that statements of purpose or telos reduced to cosmogony, before Darwin. That is, all "why's" were "hows". Since I am interested in the development of religious accounts of life's purpose, I tend to focus on the "what is fulfilling?" parts of the statements of purpose, and to see social function of defining values rather than pseudo-scientific function in them.

Socrates/Plato makes that pretty explicit. "The unexamined life is not worth living" is very directly a statement of values.

Robert Tulip wrote:Revising the ‘glory of God’ idea to make it compatible with evolution does seem to involve a marked difference in thinking.

A difference in mode of reasoning, perhaps, but maybe not in content. If we see God as "the principle of the Good" as, one could argue, process theologians do, rather than "the creator of all that is", then the glory of God is explicitly a values issue. Furthermore, interlacing it with evolutionary understanding becomes an intriguing intellectual issue.

I had noted in the preface Dennett's mention of Stuart Kauffman, known as a complexity theorist. This reminded me of my flirtation with Kauffman through his 2008 book Reinventing the Sacred. I found Kauffman's ringing endorsement of purpose, agency, and "doings" (as opposed to just happenings) in the universe, inspiring. Dennett (1995) would have been reacting to Kauffman's earlier work, of course, but I would assume that the book I read was an elaboration of the earlier ideas. I did not go really far with Kauffman at the time, unfortunately. Dennett includes Kauffman with those authors whose books were "the most difficult I have ever read" (p. 12). If Dennett had problems with him, imagine mine.

I had almost all of Kauffman's preface underlined. Whereas Dennett gives us mainly a defense of reductionism, Kauffman wants to bring out its inadequacies:

"In this book I will demonstrate the inadequacy of reductionism. Even major physicists now doubt its full legitimacy. I shall show that biology and its evolution cannot be reduced to physics alone but stand in their own right. Life, and with it agency, came naturally to exist in the universe. With agency came values, meaning, and doing, all of which are as real in the universe as particles in motion. 'Real' here has a particular meaning: while life, agency, value, and doing presumably have physical explanations in any specific organism, the evolutionary emergence of these cannot be derived from or reduced to physics alone. Thus, life, agency, value, and doing are real in the universe. This stance is called emergence. Weinberg not withstanding, there are explanatory arrows in the universe that do not point downward. A couple in love walking along the banks of the Seine are, in real fact, a couple in love walking along the banks of the Seine, not mere particles in motion. More, all this came to exist without our need to call upon a Creator God" (p. x).

Although I'm not sure on this point, it seems that Kauffman might be thinking differently from Harry and Robert, in that purpose is not something that can be merely grafted onto evolution in a non-contradictory but non-essential manner, but is a product of it, in some way that I can't conceive without going toward mystery.

Dennett devotes considerable space to Kauffman later in the book. Maybe after that I will be ready to try Kauffman again.

Harry Marks wrote:It may be true that the doctrine of man's purpose was justified by a cosmogony, but that doesn't mean it is one.

Christians believe that the meaning and purpose of life are a direct result of the facts of our origins in the actions of God. This direct entailment is more than what you call a justification. It means the theory of origins contains the whole sense of divine purpose or teleology, with God making the universe for the purpose of being glorified by humanity. The cosmogony and teleology are intimately bound together in the religious view.

Harry Marks wrote: If we see God as "the principle of the Good" as, one could argue, process theologians do, rather than "the creator of all that is", then the glory of God is explicitly a values issue. Furthermore, interlacing it with evolutionary understanding becomes an intriguing intellectual issue.

Yes, enmeshing theology with evolution is a good way to approach ontology, the study of what exists. My view is that evolution is primary, so any coherent concepts about God must derive from and be entirely compatible with scientific knowledge about evolution. The stable patterns that enable evolution can be seen as good, providing the niche within which any concept of the divine can have meaning.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote:It may be true that the doctrine of man's purpose was justified by a cosmogony, but that doesn't mean it is one.

Christians believe that the meaning and purpose of life are a direct result of the facts of our origins in the actions of God. This direct entailment is more than what you call a justification. It means the theory of origins contains the whole sense of divine purpose or teleology, with God making the universe for the purpose of being glorified by humanity. The cosmogony and teleology are intimately bound together in the religious view.

Well, obviously I think the intimacy of that binding together is very suspect. The point I was making was that cosmogony and purpose are quite separable intellectually, that is, one can consider each issue separately and an account of the "how" of creation is simply not the same thing as an account of the "what for" of our purpose. But I take it much further in simply ignoring the doctrine of creation, as well as providence.

I believe the factual truth of what we call God is found in the caring about purpose that comes with a social, self-conscious existence. It makes sense to find creation and providence to be stories that capture the essential transcendence of "the ground of being," i.e. the process of self-aware existence which is inescapably prior to any subject/object split. As such we are not meant to "understand" them or to treat them as "data" in any sense. Thus, for purposes of analytical discussions, they are self-excluded: no honest response to creation and providence can treat them as part of an analysis.

Fortunately for Christian practice and self-understanding, we can still get by just fine with an understanding of purpose which is a priori, that is, not pinned to any account of "why" it is our purpose (or "how" it came to be our purpose). The idea of the good is as pure as the idea of the logical, or the idea of beauty, and we can always do the analysis of it from first principles while still remaining totally within a context of faithful response to God.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: If we see God as "the principle of the Good" ... rather than "the creator of all that is", then the glory of God is explicitly a values issue. Furthermore, interlacing it with evolutionary understanding becomes an intriguing intellectual issue.

Yes, enmeshing theology with evolution is a good way to approach ontology, the study of what exists. My view is that evolution is primary, so any coherent concepts about God must derive from and be entirely compatible with scientific knowledge about evolution. The stable patterns that enable evolution can be seen as good, providing the niche within which any concept of the divine can have meaning.

I'm sorry to say I find that view repugnant. I have no problem with arguing that concepts about God must be compatible with science, including evolution. But the meaning of God does not derive from the process of evolution. It may have roots in it, like mathematics or logic do, but it is like an epiphyte (such as an orchid) in not drawing its sustenance from its substrate.

I would rather take a poetical view and argue that midway in the journey of life (not a time related to years of age, Dante notwithstanding) we find ourselves in a dark wood. The discernment of the best path from the obscurity in which we find ourselves is, in my view, the very nature and purpose of human life.

DWill wrote:I had noted in the preface Dennett's mention of Stuart Kauffman, known as a complexity theorist. This reminded me of my flirtation with Kauffman through his 2008 book Reinventing the Sacred. I found Kauffman's ringing endorsement of purpose, agency, and "doings" (as opposed to just happenings) in the universe, inspiring.

Thanks for underlining this. It sounds like I may enjoy going to that material to fill gaps in my understanding. Yes, I quite agree that "doings" are not just "happenings" and that is the essential quality of awareness from an existential perspective.

DWill wrote:I had almost all of Kauffman's preface underlined. Whereas Dennett gives us mainly a defense of reductionism, Kauffman wants to bring out its inadequacies:

"In this book I will demonstrate the inadequacy of reductionism. Even major physicists now doubt its full legitimacy. I shall show that biology and its evolution cannot be reduced to physics alone but stand in their own right. ...This stance is called emergence."

Dennett grows strangely rhapsodic when, in (I believe) section 3 he begins to address reductionism. Good reductionism is contrasted with evil reductionism in a metaphor which can only be accepted as poetic license. His distinctions struck me as valid and important, and whetted my appetite for more on the subject.

DWill wrote:Although I'm not sure on this point, it seems that Kauffman might be thinking differently from Harry and Robert, in that purpose is not something that can be merely grafted onto evolution in a non-contradictory but non-essential manner, but is a product of it, in some way that I can't conceive without going toward mystery.

Well, I am open to persuasion on the point, but it seems to me that emergence implies that purpose must be consistent with biology, and its controlling processes of evolution, but may not be a "product" of it in the sense that laws of evolution shed any light on the dynamics of purpose. Is the content of our mathematics controlled by the way that we evolved to be smart? I don't think so.