Yes, the real problem with orthogenesis is whether or not it suggests a supernatural cause of the progression. I agree with Julian Huxley that it is all natural, but that science needs to change to admit the religious experience. Other folks who believed in progressive evolution include Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Bergson.
Another problem with creative evolution is the realization of deformities and extinctions. It would be difficult to blame these things on the actions of a God.
My problem with Iamb is his concern for what can be said as opposed to what actually is said. Every argument by me is twisted back into his narrow agenda.
This topic deserves more space than that. It has been discussed by theists and atheists.
The reason being that I can almost never understand your point because [for me] it is often encompassed in language that is defined and defended only by other language up in a cloud of abstractions.
Over and over and over again “in the past”, I have asked you to brings those points out into the world of actual human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments…relating to that which is of most importance to me: connecting the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then. Your own ethical/spiritual equivalent of Ierrellus’s progressive Christianity.
Go there and see if I don’t respond.
Note to Meno:
See what I mean? He complains that I don’t focus enough on what is said but he refuses to take what progressive Christians themselves say out into the world where those on any number of other God and no God “paths” say very different things. Not only about what can be said and what is said but, what, according to them, must be said if one wishes to be thought of as moral here and now and wishes to attain immortality there and then.
Let him note what Julian Huxley and Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Bergson themselves say about the conflicting goods that have rent the human species now for thousands and thousands of years.
Actually what he says can be completely reversed. and spin ed an objective morality for an immortality. for a transcendent one and this kid. will agree. The only difference is a dynamic rotation of topical to dynamic structuring.
Chardin and Bergson do not violate substantial Christian Doctrine, nor Kierkegaard, he just raised an aesthetic into the realm of the Thetic.
Biggy, I just have attained the religious validation without reliance on Church Doctrine, and incidentally Luther beat me to that punch.
It’s a reducted logical rotation , in essence.
Any arguments and counter arguments fail on the here
and now imminent level , parrying on the difference of pure and transcended objects.
Of course, a “reducted logical rotation, in essense”. 
Note to others:
Did he just make that up or, philosophically, is it an actual thing?
Here’s what you get when you Google it: google.com/search?source=hp … 6UQ4dUDCA0
Only Google changed it to “reduced logical rotation”
Not changed you get this: google.com/search?q=reducte … 42&bih=597
But, sure, if it is an actual technical component of philosophy, I can only challenge him to use it in an assessment that pertains to his own experiences with respect to “morality here and now and immortality there and then”.
Or perhaps one of you could attempt it.
The confusion may be do to the example given by You in a literal interpretation of the technical or system oriented logic.
It is the difference between modal and. deontic systems is what is of concern here, amd generally that holds up in context of that argument.
Mathematical analysis is used figurraively to exemplify the basic calculus of circular motion, vis. left or right.
The application is appropriate, however. And it is simply based on the hypothetical mentioned above, whose objectivity may range between the theoretically remote to the practical recent.
Note to others:
Come on, tell me this isn’t the post of someone intent on mocking those who post things like this. Dense intellectual mumbo jumbo that can’t possibly have anything to do with the actual lives that we live.
Something along the lines of the Sokal hoax: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
Sokal entitled his article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”
That can also be reversed to show indifferently charged levels of intended non involvement on a level not considered for reasons as unknowable as the original thesis’ itself.
And what does a manner of writing like this entail? A reserved attitude
Incidentally this is the thesis:
1.Genetic evolution is deterministic and creative.
2. The experience of genetic evolution translates into myth.
3. A prevalent myth from experience of genetic evolution is the existence of God.
Note to Ierrellus:
Just out of curiosity what do you think he is imparting to us here. And how might a progressive Christian react to it…just in general.
I hoped we would be discussing the possibility of orthogenesis, not the progressive Christian take on the matter. That is my opinion; it does not further the discussion. Did Darwin believe in progressive evolution?
No religious assumptions can be made without resolving the issue of teleology in evolution. I suggested that this is a possibility since evolution is deterministic and creative. See Dowd’s “Thank God For Evolution” if you have to have a progressive Christian take on the matter of evolution as purposeful and personal.
So how does this discussion apply to Dick and Jane on the Street? It is a message of hope that can resolve conflict and remove the anxiety about how one is to spend an afterlife. It is recognition of existence in a biosphere where all belong. It is not a rumination of the past and present examples of man’s inhumanity to man. It is a possible solution for that.
You may enjoy Leibniz’s Theodicy. He’s not quite on your camp, but it’s good reading.
He does attribute, in a sense, every extinct creature directly to God’s design. But, well, for one thing Leibniz is of the traditional religious view that animals aren’t really nearly as important as humans, and their extinctions really say nothing about God’s excellence, because the point of God’s creation is its admiration and honoring, which only man can do. What he says is that God set things in motion with such godly precision, that everything we today know as natural evolution and then was known as cause - effect was put in motion by Him to coincide perfectly with the direct divine creation of the soul. So that at the same time everything is directly created and a product of evolution. His calculations are so perfect, that even freedom of will coincides with this chain of causes. Those that led to man are so perfect, that the entity that ended up as man is perfectly fitted to admit the Holy Ghost and employ freedom of will, because freedom of will is what gives the possibility of excellence which is God’s ultimate goal. The question is not whether the state of things reflects God’s divinity, but whether we become excellent enough to be able to notice, admire, and emulate the perfect divinity of God’s creation. In a sense, to not have the arrogance to critique God’s work, but the humility to find the excellence of it, which is there, and will itself by its revelation reveal also the perfect divinity of God. Divinity, according to Leibniz, is findable. God put, in a sense, a drop of the Ocean of perfect divine excellence in each man and woman. So we do have access to it, it is only that it is but a drop, and He is the Ocean.
Leibniz has an interesting take, which I think is the only tenable one if you believe there is One God, and that that God is Good and All-Powerful.
That this is the best of all possible worlds. The task of the religious man is not to wonder if it’s true, which would entail a willing lack of faith, but to find out how it’s true. To look fearlessly into the world seeking only God’s goodness.
Thank you for your reference and fine post. I’m glad someone understands what I’m trying to say here. I think Meno does also.
Well, you know, I was bred a Catholic, so even cause and effect has a ring of blasphemy to it. Catholics are more hardcore than Leibniz, which is that what God wants you to know he will have you know, and to sit in perfect gratitude of being part of his World, doing your best to follow what divine inspiration you suspect. You may call Catholics followers of the law of precedent, to Leibniz’s constitutionalism.
Leibniz says: if you look at it, you will find it is good.
Catholics say: why would you even look at it wondering about its goodness? You know already that it is good.
Anyway, that question you pose bothered me for a long time. Teleology in evolution is a problem even if you are not a monotheist. I found Leibniz’s solution extremely elegant.
I ended up following a trail that Dawkins introduced to me, which is: what is it actually that evolves? You could call this in a sense the secular search for the soul I think. He posits that it may not be animals, or groups of animals. He suggests the gene itself, but then abandons even that and chooses the phenotype. Ultimately that answer did not satisfy me either. What interest has a phenotype in projecting into the future?
In any case, once you allow that even the question of what it is that is the subject of evolution is not settled, you strangely find that even the very mechanisms of evolution start to shift before your eyes. Is it really fitness for survival? How could it be, in the case that particular animals are not what evolve?
I try to always keep Leibniz’s postulation of the best of all possible worlds, though. I find, if you are going to search for something in this life with earnestness, why not that? Not a strict rule so much as a compass.
Thanks for your post.
I read two of Dawkins’ books and have come to think that the gene is an evolving tool. It is only one aspect of the animal totality. I was raised in the South (USA). My father was a fundamentalist, Methodist preacher. We took no thought of evolution back then, but if asked would declare that God did it. I came to believe in panenthism in my early college years and have kept that belief all my life. I’m now 78 and still believe God does it. Finding evidence of the evolution of ideas, especially of the idea of God in much reading, I don’t question what it was so difficult for me to learn–that our notion of God has changed over the millennia. Also I have had two personal experiences of the presence of the Whole. As for Leibniz, remember that the OT God pronounced His creations Good. The idea of original sin was invented by Augustine. So the progression of evolution is purposeful and good. I tend to describe evolution as personal and purposeful, making it as real in experience as are hands and feet. The Chain of Being defines belonging.
I expressed my thesis in terms I thought could be acceptable to both theists and atheists. After that I tried to show how the thesis could lead to spiritual awakening. My thanks to those who have respected my point of view. Carry on.
This is how I see it too.
“Personal” can be very tricky for people to understand. It simply means “the point of view of the person,” which is the container of evolution we are, which is the point of view of whatever evolves.
In my opinion, whether you have read them or not, this puts you in the company of the very greatest philosophers ever wrote books. For it is not which books you read that makes good philosophy, is it?
I feel like I should say or contribute more, and I will probably do in the future. But it is nice to meet someone that arrived at this same conclusion, simply off the evidence.
Okay the possibility of orthogenesis – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis – and not the progressive Christian take on the matter.
And what matter might that be? If orthogenesis explores the extent to which ‘organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or “driving force”’, let’s continue the exploration in regard to human behaviors in a particular set of circumstances in which moral and political and spiritual “goals” come into conflict. Not only in regard to ends but in regard to means as well.
And if Darwin did believe in progressive evolution, with respect to what behaviors? And how did he connect the dots between progressive behaviors here and now and the fate of “I” there and then?
You note the context.
So, what you do is to presume that this teleology revolves around progressive Christianity and/or orthogenesis. And deterministic and creative in what sense? Where does human autonomy enter into it accept in the manner which you embrace this teleology “in your head”. Nothing ever has to be demonstrated beyond what you think is true. Or, rather, nothing has yet been demonstrated to me.
As for Dowd, the same thing. You bring him into the thread in regard to a particular context in which goals come into conflict pertaining to moral and political and spiritual paths at odds.
No, this is your message of hope to Dick and Jane. Many other religious denominations and spiritual paths will insist that, on the contrary, it is their own message of hope that bring others the one true righteous path on this side of the grave and a ticket to paradise on the other side.
You simply just shrug that part away because [in my view] the whole point of your own “teleology” is to sustain the comfort and the consolation it provides you “in your head”. Then the task [the only task] is to sustain that all the way to the grave.
Just like those on all the other paths aim to do.
Of course you do. With them [and with those like Felix] the discussion can be contained in an exchange of general description intellectual contraptions that almost always avoid the points that I raise.
Understanding here revolves almost entirely around thinking you understand what the other person means by the words they use to define and defend the meaning of other words.
Still with your poetic psychologisms, I see.