From: lking@athena.mit.edu (Loren King)
Subject: Systems and telos (was Question for Creationists)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 02:27:30 GMT

_________________


In article <1992Sep10.102351.26933@city.cs>, lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) 
writes:

|> btd@IASTATE.EDU (Benjamin T Dehner) writes:
|> >	One thing I don't like about christianity is its racial inferiority
|> >complex; the idea man is evil and bad (or fallen) and totally worthless and 
|> >can't get anywhere with the help of this 'God' person.  Methinks I would be
|> >in better company with Einstein and Ghandi in hell then with many of the
|> >christians I've seen on this net in heaven
|> 
|> You are getting mixed up with evo thoughts again!
|> Man, in his fallen state is _sinful_. Man as created by God was in
|> God's own words, `very good'. It is not God who says man is `totally
|> worthless'. In fact God considered man so worthwhile, and loved him
|> so much that He sent Jesus to die in man's place to atone for man's
|> sins. Is that good enough to dispell your `racial inferiority
|> complex' idea?

  I doubt it's good enough for Benjamin; it certainly doesn't convince me. 
Further, I didn't like the initial question: "what is the purpose of human life"
or something to that effect.  Part of the problem I have with most religious
explanations of the questions that interest me is that matters like this
are important, i.e. purpose, or *telos*, is essential to the explanation given.
  The questions with which I deal concern the processes involved in
the development of (a) organizational complexity, and (b) introspective and
rational behaviour, in biological and social systems.  I like developmental
models adapted from evolution research because they avoid, as best as possible,
the problem of teleological (i.e. purpose-centered) accounts of nature and human
life.
  That is, the question "What is the purpose of the whole system?" is postponed
until *after* we have considered the questions: "what are the parts of this
system like? how do they interact? how do the parts of the system behave over
time? what are the purposes of these parts *relative to each other*, and relative
to their behaviour over time?" 
  Once we have treated these questions, then we can worry about the system as a
whole.  In my experience, religious systems reverse this methodology; they are
concerned with grand, speculative, and unverifiable issues of systemic purpose,
and then consider the parts in terms of their systemic, teleological assumptions.
 To my mind, this approach amounts to explaining everything with an all-purpose
assumption, i.e. "why are we here? To honour God."   I don't know about anyone
else, but if someone asks me "why are we here?"  and I have a choice between:
1) sitting back and trying to content myself that these mysteries will be answered
with faith and an after-death redemption; or 2) attempting to explore the parts
of the puzzle, i.e. the historical development of life, the development of
languages, the evolution of ideas and patterns of social order ..... well, I'd
take the latter ... far more interesting.

__________

Loren King
Dep't of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology