But the second law explains why when I drop and break a cup it doesn't immediately leap back up and reconfigure itself because that is a statistically implausible array of matter. — Andrew4Handel

When you add energy to a system, you decrease it's entropy. It happens all the time. The sun and the heat inside the planet adds energy to the Earth's surface allowing the continued operation of physical and biological processes.

Understand it in what sense?
As a history of our origins up to this date?
As something that should guide future human development?

There is a limit to the scope of validating (or falsifying) explanations of things that happened before we existed or developed modern technology. It becomes narrative that then quickly becomes and became ideological.

Is The theory make us stop believing in gods? Is it supposed to make us become physicalist/materialist naturalists? Are we supposed to reevaluate the status and value of humans and other animals? — Andrew4Handel

Understand it as to our origins. It's good to know where we came from. It explains so much. And the galactic amount of evidence for that process means that evolution in one sense is a fact. The explanation of how it works is the theory. And that it being fine tuned and added to constantly.

And why would it have been designed stop you believing in God? It's just a scientific theory. It doesn't say anything about God. I thought you'd be pleased to find out how He did it. Unless you think the whole shebang was zapped into existence during a six day week. In which case it's your interpretation of scripture that's being brought into question. Not the existence of God.

Survival of the fittest and animal hierarchies are perversions of evolution, not tenets. — Banno

Darwin and Wallace both used the term "survival of the fittest" to describe natural selection.

This is an elegantly presented video of the influence of racism on Science and thought. — Andrew4Handel

Here is an academic article on The Nazi beliefs on Evolution. — Andrew4Handel

This is not a winning argument. There are plenty of examples of the evil performed in the name of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and just about any other organized differences between people.

When you add energy to a system, you decrease it's entropy. It happens all the time. The sun and the heat inside the planet adds energy to the Earth's surface allowing the continued operation of physical and biological processes. — T Clark

When you shine sunlight on a broken cup it does not rebuild itself. Plants have mechanisms to utilise the sunlight, the sunlight itself is not reducing the entropy but the preexisting plant mechanisms.

As I have said life/abiogenesis has to start from scratch from non life simplicity.

What I mentioned was the statistical explanation for entropy which would prevent useful structures spontaneously creating and recreating. Order from total disorder.

Other planets have the sun shining on them and no life.

We somehow have an array of very precise parameters that allow life on this planet and unknown properties that allow consciousness. I don't see how consciousness fits into the other picture of nature as a thermodynamic or mechanistic and making us a genetic production line.

I'm am overstepping the boundary of my knowledge, but it is my understanding that saying "accidental and random" is an overstatement. Much of what happens is influenced by self-organization. Scientists think that living cells develop out of chemical/catalyst cycles that develop naturally. Don't bother to ask for details, because I'm already on thin ice. I refer you to "Life's Ratchet" by Hoffman. — T Clark

Evolution isn't random. But Gregory himself is a chance occurrence. An accident of nature. As we Ll are. Think of everything that had to happen exactly as they did for just our parents to meet. And then go back a thousand generations when all those odds are extrapolated to a virtually infinite number.

We won the galactic lottery. Say a little prayer of thanks every night to your preferred deity.

at the risk of being on topic, is there a coherent, sound argument that can be made that is sympathetic to the intuition so poorly expressed in the OP? A way to rescue teleology?

i doubt it. — Banno

My effort here

In sum, if Hume is correct that causation is an empirically unknown object of faith, then it is no more unreasonable to found your beliefs on teleology (every event has a purpose) as causation (every event has a cause), which is more elaborated in the link cited.

All domestic dogs are considered the same species. — T Clark

Extrapolate. That'll get you to where we need to go. Breed, sub species, species, genus etc.

This is not a winning argument. There are plenty of examples of the evil performed in the name of religion, ethnicity, nationality, and just about any other organized differences between people. — T Clark

That is not the argument. The argument is concerning the the harm of rejecting evolution versus the harm of accepting evolution and it being interpreted in a destructive way or as an ideology.

A theory that inspires some atrocities should surely be treated with some caution? On the other hand evolution skeptics have been harassed and told they are dangerous, should not work in certain jobs, medicine or are ignorant. Dawkins compared evolution denial to Holocaust denial.

This is like the free will arguments. If we have no free will we can't do anything about it so why bother trying to get us to believe it? If I start to believe I have a fish ancestors how is that supposed to make me act?
There is no reason for me to change any of my behaviour that I can see because of evolution. The motivation that has been manifested is to use the theory to manipulate ideology and societies not just to place the theory unvarnished on the table. To try and undermine religious belief and shore up atheism.

And on that topic even if evolution comprehensively explains life on earth we are just a tiny planet in a vast even infinite universe so we are still faced with profound mysteries.

When you shine sunlight on a broken cup it does not rebuild itself. Plants have mechanisms to utilise the sunlight, the sunlight itself is not reducing the entropy but the preexisting plant mechanisms. — Andrew4Handel

When you shine light on a plant, it grows and is eaten by a cow. The cow is then milked. Humans drink the milk. The humans then repair the cup.

As I have said life/abiogenesis has to start from scratch from non life simplicity. — Andrew4Handel

It may start from scratch, as did everything on Earth. We started out as particles of dust swirling around the proto-solar system. But it didn't develop at random.

Other planets have the sun shining on them and no life. — Andrew4Handel

How many planets have we looked at - one closely and a few at a distance of millions of kilometers or millions of light years. How many are there? Hundreds of billions.

We somehow have an array of very precise parameters that allow life on this planet and unknown properties that allow consciousness. — Andrew4Handel

If I had a well-shuffled deck of cards with 10^100 cards in it and I picked one, what are the odds I would pick an ace of spades? 1 in 10^100. What would the odds be if I picked a 5.71395609812 x 10^27? 1 in 10^100.

And then go back a thousand generations when all those odds are extrapolated to a virtually infinite number. — Bradskii

Agreed.

That is not the argument. The argument is concerning the the harm of rejecting evolution versus the harm of accepting evolution and it being interpreted in a destructive way or as an ideology. — Andrew4Handel

Is your standard of truth what gives the results you want?

When you add energy to a system, you decrease it's entropy — T Clark

Is that a fact? If I boil a pot of water, is its entropy decreased?

I don't see our position as insignificant. — Andrew4Handel

I don't feel that I am. But the universe could care less about me. Do you know there will come a time when someone has the last ever thought about you. It'll be as if you never existed. Make the most of your 3 score and 10.

The universe apparently doesn't know it exists — Andrew4Handel

Well we are parts of the universe that has developed an ability to contemplate our own existence.

our individual consciousness that allows to imagine concepts such as infinity and allows us to see and experience a huge range of phenomena.

As with Descartes Cogito ergo sum I can only be certain that I exist. Everything else is filtered through individual consciousness.

But you seem to have highlighted the theories need to denigrate the human position. Evolution does not explain consciousness — Andrew4Handel

It is an evolved ability. Random access memory. And by the way, you can't imagine infinity. You have a brain that has evolved to calculate the arc of a thrown rock. To contemplate the distance to the next hill. A million years is meaningless. As is a light year. As is the size of just this small galaxy. I think the problem here is that you don't actually appreciate how insignificant we are in terms of time and size.

And the galactic amount of evidence for that process means that evolution in one sense is a fact. — Bradskii

Everything is classed as evidence for evolution.

Some things are seen as puzzling to evolution such as exclusive homosexuality since it is an evolutionary dead end for genes ( I can say that for certain as an antinatalist gay man) which then leads to theories to explain it. Anything a gay person does has to be interpreted through an evolutionary lens to see which of our behaviours are seen to be advantageous.
Are we the worker bees of the species. Are we the generous uncle or aunty who looks after our nieces and Nephews? Are our Mothers fecund?

I am more skeptical of scientific theories about the past and our past and deciding what ramifications they have.

And by the way, you can't imagine infinity. You have a brain that has evolved to calculate the arc of a thrown rock. — Bradskii

I thought Calculus involved infinities?

We can imagine infinity because we can always imagine a larger number than the previous large one we created. We can imagine going into space hitting a brick wall and imagining what is behind it (I had this thought at around 7yrs old)
We can imagine dividing things until they get smaller and smaller ad infinitum so we ended up with the theory of atoms (a surprisingly long time ago with Democritus). We can imagine a time before the hypothesised big bang. And so on.

As child in a religious household I also wondered that if God created the earth a few thousands years ago what was happening in the time before then?
And what was he doing in the infinite past before he decided randomly to create us. Why did he decide to create us at a random time.

But According to Dawkins I am just a giant lumbering gene machine and according to a lot of science adjacent theorists I also am a mechanism with no freewill who is not responsible for my own thoughts.

In reality I am just an agnostic skeptic.

Is that a fact? If I boil a pot of water, is its entropy decreased? — Wayfarer

If I add heat to the water, it is heated and the water molecule increase in kinetic energy. Since it is confined by air pressure, it's pressure increases (PV=NRT) and it's entropy decreases. When I add enough, the kinetic energy of water molecules overcomes air pressure, it boils, its volume increases, it's temperature goes down, and the entropy increases. Water at room temperature and ambient pressure won't do anything. Except a little evaporation.

Everything is classed as evidence for evolution. — Andrew4Handel

Not everything. But the vast majority of universal characteristics that we possess have survived for a very long time indeed. So they are part of the process itself.

'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'. Theodosius Dobzhansky. And here's another:

'(Evolution) general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.' That from a Jesuit priest, Pierre Tailhard de Chardin.

But the second law explains why when I drop and break a cup it doesn't immediately leap back up and reconfigure itself because that is a statistically implausible array of matter. — Andrew4Handel

Nothing ever goes backward. Except religionized politics.

Is your standard of truth what gives the results you want? — T Clark

Is your standard of truth divorced from morality or ethics?

If something is a fact it is a fact. If something inspires bad behaviour I would want to know what mechanism caused that behaviour. I do believe science has an ethical dimension. We don't randomly shoot babies to see what the results will be or as Frankie Boyle put it see how many pastilles it takes to choke a Kestrel. We have proven we can split the atom but at the cost of the survival of life. It is a question of what the questions we ask, might imply or be how they'd be enacted socially.

All that aside Natural selection and survival of the fittest is more value laden than most scientific theories just like theories about Intelligence quotients, Gender ideology, Sex differences and people Like Dennett and Dawkins have made it become tied heavily to atheism and antitheism like Galton etc tied it to eugenics and social Darwinism and class divides.

But what has it got to do with our future decisions? As I say you can't get an ought from an is.... but you may induce depression in someone by belittling their status and belief values to prove our evolutionary status. I had this experience when I spent years battling anxiety and depression and arguing on atheist forums looking for a more hopeful prognosis on existence.

Darwin and Wallace both used the term "survival of the fittest" to describe natural selection. — T Clark

Indeed. It was used before being misused.

But biological principles are not derivable from chemical principles, e.g. if you know chemistry, you can't derive biology. — T Clark

I'm not sure what that means. What would be a specific aspect of biology that is not derivable from chemistry?

One point that Apokrisis stresses is that higher levels affect, constrain, lower levels as much as lower levels constrain higher levels. — T Clark

I think this is absolutely true. There is bottom-up causation, and there is top-down causation which makes things more complex than just bottom-up, but that doesn't preclude derivability.

Perhaps, but evolution by natural selection, which is what Darwin and Wallace studied, is primarily biological. — T Clark

No, selection happens at all levels. All that is needed for selection to occur are things that can interact or affect and be affected by other things in an environment or space. The selection process emerges out of complex interactions, and the probability distribution of all the possible interactions determines what gets selected. That is what selection is in general at any level, biological or otherwise.

In particle physics the laws and constants of the universe constitute the selecting environment for fundamental particles and atoms. In chemistry the way molecules form (organic or not) is due to a selection process in an environment of interacting atoms. In cyberspace software evolves through programmer design and user selection like products in a market space. Each space or environment develops it's own emergent selection criteria which is more complex than the one it emerged from.

Darwin and Wallace both used the term "survival of the fittest" to describe natural selection. — T Clark

Ahem. Survival of the fittest was introduced by Herbert Spencer in an essay on the principle of natural selection - Darwin later approved and adopted it (I think it was even in later editions of his book).

Interestingly, Wallace broke from Darwin over the publication of the Descent of Man. While agreeing with Darwin's account of the common ancestry of h. sapiens with respect to the anatomical features, he fundamentally disagrees with the idea that the biological account determines the abilities of human kind, concluding his chapter in a very similar vein to the OP (refer to the attached for what he adduces as evidence):

Those who admit my interpretation of the evidence now adduced - strictly scientific evidence in its appeal to facts which are clearly what ought not to be on the materialistic theory - will be able to accept the spiritual nature of man, as not in any way inconsistent with the theory of evolution, but as dependent on those fundamental laws and causes which furnish the very materials for evolution to work with. They will also be relieved from the crushing mental burden imposed upon those who--maintaining that we, in common with the rest of nature, are but products of the blind eternal forces of the universe, and believing also that the time must come when the sun will lose his heat and all life on the earth necessarily cease--have to contemplate a not very distant future in which all this glorious earth--which for untold millions of years has been slowly developing forms of life and beauty to culminate at last in man--shall be as if it had never existed....

As contrasted with this hopeless and soul-deadening belief, we, who accept the existence of a spiritual world, can look upon the universe as a grand consistent whole adapted in all its parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of indefinite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole purpose, the only raison d'être of the world--with all its complexities of physical structure, with its grand geological progress, the slow evolution of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the ultimate appearance of man--was the development of the human spirit in association with the human body. — Darwinism Applied to Man, Alfred Russel Wallace

If I add heat to the water, it is heated and the water molecule increase in kinetic energy. Since it is confined by air pressure, it's pressure increases (PV=NRT) and it's entropy decreases. — T Clark

I googled it, what I find is the opposite:

Entropy increases as temperature increases. An increase in temperature means that the particles of the substance have greater kinetic energy. The faster-moving particles have more disorder than particles that are moving slowly at a lower temperature.

----------------

'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'. Theodosius Dobzhansky. — Bradskii

Dobzhansky (an Orthodox Christian) wrote a book endorsing Du Chardin's ideas, called The Biology of Ultimate Concern, which addresses 'ethical, ideological and philosophical implications of evolution.' The introduction can be found here.

Some writers restrict the word "evolution" to biological evolution only. This seems to me gratuitous. The universe has had a historical development; so had life, and so had mankind. This historical development did advance to life from absence of life, and did ascend to man from non-human ancestors. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

Dobzhansky (an Orthodox Christian) wrote a book endorsing Du Chardin's ideas — Wayfarer

Teilhard de Chardin had religious/mystical notions, like the ultimate "Omega Point" toward which all things progress. How's that for an evolutionary principle?

I've resisted reading De Chardin, one of my lecturers described his prose as 'turgid'. But I was interested to learn about the book by Dobzhansky, he is one of the principals of 'the modern synthesis'. I'm just perusing the intro to his book, and he seems much more willing to consider spiritual perspectives than do many of the pop intellectuals who use evolutionary theory to bludgeon religious belief.

All that aside Natural selection and survival of the fittest is more value laden than most scientific theories — Andrew4Handel

Now that is abject nonsense. Value is a human construct. Do you think nature values an organism over another? You make your own value in life. Family, friends, a worthwhile job, children, a loving wife, interests in life...they are all valuable.

I just had my son call over to pick up his daughter. They are, as Dawkins said, making an obvious point, in some ways just a collection of genetic information. Which, in both my case and my son's have served their purpose. They have been passed on. We are no longer required by nature to serve any evolutionary purpose. Gee, so I don't love my sone or my grandaughter anymore? Now they have no value?

Gimme a break.

who use evolutionary theory to bludgeon religious belief. — Wayfarer

Perhaps that should be 'fundamental religious belief.' In which case I would agree.

seems to me the manifest purpose of this site. Says a famously "God-intoxicated" thinker:
Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
~Spinoza — 180 Proof

I'm tackling this title. But I've already encountered many Spinozist aphorisms that seem decidely more religious than anything that you present e.g.

I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh: but with regard to the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise. For without this no one can come to a state of blessedness, inasmuch as it alone teaches, what is true or false, good or evil. — Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg, November (1675)

I think there's a kind of lineage from earlier Jewish mysticism to Spinoza, but I'm still investigating.

I might, also, except that it too easily comes across as a kind of secular fundamentalism. Most of the so-called new atheists - they're no longer new - fall into that trap.

I might, also, except that it too easily comes across as a kind of secular fundamentalism. Most of the so-called new atheists - they're no longer new - fall into that trap. — Wayfarer

Fundamentalism strikes me as springing from absolute certainty. I'll use the term 'certainly' in common parlance but push me and I'll back away from it pretty quickly. As Voltaire said 'Doubt is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is absurd.'

I reckon the usual atheist suspects would all concur.

Here is my criticism of natural selection

I don't see what the relevance of the "selection" process is for explaining an organisms traits.

For example there are two rabbits being chased by a fox.

The faster one survives and goes on to have lots of offspring.
That story does not explain why the surviving rabbit was able to run faster. It explains why it survived which is a trivial observation.

But is seems what needs to happen is for the long legs to evolve somehow by genetic mutation alone , already exist and then be selected which means the key process is the beneficial mutation and why that happened.
The capacity for legs to evolve would require preexisting emergent properties available in biochemistry which would not be explained by evolution it self.

For example how would a polar bear survive in the North pole if it did not already have lots of body fat and White fur etc. It is not going to be competing against green and red and thin bears.