What is the Purpose?

[Lord Privy Seal]

It exhibits teleology, "about-ability" (within the limits of its perceptual abilities,...

Wrong. When you say exhibits that means you are assigning theleology to the chemical process that just happens to do the things you describe.

No, I am attributing teleology to the whole-system of the bacterium, which is greater than the sum of its chemical parts. In the same way that you attribute teleology to your god as a whole rather than fretting that you can't find it all in some particular cubic centimeter of the spirit-stuff he's made of.

You seem to be very hung up on things like chemistry and extreme reductionism. OK, instead of a bacterium, let's talk about the ghost
of a bacterium, it's beautiful sparkly little soul. Now that there's no nasty chemistry involved, how does this change anything? How are we now suddenly able to talk about purpose and intention and "about-ability" instead of morosely complaining that there's nothing but deterministic spiritual processes that just are? "There's nothing here but the brute interaction of spirit particles following the Paths of the Sephiroth! Nooooo! It's all meaningless! Meaningless, I tell you! All is vanity! Sound and fury, signifying nothing! Woe! Wooooooe!"

You make a good point. It deserves more reflection.

Thank you for your open-mindedness and consideration.

Wrong again. Teleological concepts, are just that - concepts. And they are concepts assigned by one deterministic chain reaction on to another.

Why is this a problem, and why do you think that monotheism solves it? An omniscient god cannot be surprised. In a Universe with such an entity, everything is necessarily deterministic (or predestined, if you prefer that term). A Universe without such an entity at least offers us the prospect of quantum indeterminacy.

Second, a causal chain has no definable start or end point. This means that you must arbitrary select one cause as the point where intention occurs and arbitrary select one effect as its desired end. For example, take the following causal chain:

A ---> B ---> C---> D ---> E- ---> F

Which effect is the desired end of cause A? If you say it is F, why isn't it D? And why isn't F the desired end of C and not A? Only an oustide observer can designate the start and its desired end.

Why an outside observer? Why not just ask the person doing the desiring? Also, what is the relevance of this? How does adding a god help?

And you cannot say that one causal chain, like a human electro-chemical reaction, applies it to the electro-chemical process of the bacteria. Why? Because now you are saying that one meaningless physical process is transferring meaning it doesn't have onto another.

You're mis-applying reductionism. A tire can't drive anybody anywhere. Therefore, there can't be such things as cars, unless "driving" is defined as a supernatural act. How does substituting "spiritual-miraculous" in place of "electro-chemical" make a difference? As far as I can tell, teleological operations are substrate-invariant. If a particular calculation is performed using the beads of an abacus, the gears and cams of a Babbage machine, the microchips of an electronic calculator, electro-chemical reactions in a human brain, or in the soul of an angel, it makes no difference. It's the same calculation, and if performed accurately, generates the same result, and can accomplish the same purpose. The only difference I can see is that you have a positive evaluation of "spirit" (or whatever word you use to denote god-stuff) and a negative evaluation of "chemical reactions."

Given what we now know about quantum mechanics, a sub-atomic particle is at least as wondrous and magical as any ancient writer's conception of "spirit." BTW, a lot of those ancient writers believed that the rainbow-sparkly spiritual realm could be quantified mathematically in terms of Number and sacred geometry. The elegant determinism of the spiritual realm that made it possible to reduce the entirety of the Mysteries to the diagram of the Tetraktys was what made it so wonderful, in comparison to the messy, gritty material world that never quite managed to behave with the sublime coherence and predictability of pure mathematics or shape itself to match the geometric precision of immaterial Form. It seems to me that if you had been born in ancient Greece, you might have scoffed at the Pythagoreans and argued that the material world was ever so much better than the spiritual world, because the things here transcend the limits of what can be deterministically constructed from the vesica piscis using a compass and ruler.