(August 11, 2019 at 9:43 pm)Grandizer Wrote: An acorn alone does not have the potential to become a mature oak tree. An acorn can remain an acorn without ever becoming a tree or be a crushed acorn or eventually grow into a tree, and this all depends on what the surrounding conditions happen to be.That's right. But that's not an argument against final causes. The potential is there, and various things are required to get to the thing the acorn points toward.
In fact this is all a part of the Christian argument. A human being has the potential to be a great deal. The good is what supports that. The bad is what works against it.
