RECIPROCAL CAUSATIONʹ, THE BIOSPHERE, AND THEISTIC PROOF
RECIPROCAL CAUSATIONʹ, THE BIOSPHERE,
AND THEISTIC PROOF
Virgil Warren, PhD
The following observations evaluate the possibility of general evolution in the organic realm, particularly in the animal kingdom. They address features of living reality that highlight reciprocal causation, its necessary accompanying features, and its implications in contrast to all forms of straight-line causal series.
PART I
Question #1
Can nature unaided put in sequence the origin of reciprocating parts that each together produce all the effects that are necessary for the viability of the whole and of each other? [system level per kind]
Simplified example: the heart pumps nutrients to the lungs, which provide oxygen to the
heart.
Embedded implications somewhat overlapping and variously noted
The given: LIVING BODIES comprised of real living, acting interdependent parts
The process has to address a given known
All parts operational from the first; no “becoming” of parts or the whole
All parts connected from the beginning
All parts originating simultaneously
All parts functioning sequentially
No part functionally first; every part receiving from all the other(s) what it needs in
order to live and to supply what is necessary for them
Every part capable from the beginning for producing what it produces before
receiving from the others (capacity), but
unable to keep producing without receiving the others’ ongoing
enablements (operation)
All parts producing in sufficient degree what the other necessary parts need in order
to live and to produce their necessary effects
Every part operating in the circumstance of entropy (death)—the “viability limit”
Different kinds of parts contributing different kinds of results, all of which results
are necessary for the viability of the whole and each other.
Brief time for originating the initial entity and its necessary parts; viability of the
whole limited to an order of minutes without oxygen (lungs) and nutrients
(heart)
All the effects of all the other necessary parts must come back around to affect “this
one” (reciprocation)
All parts necessary (“irreducible minimums”; reciprocality shows why even the
most complex set of minimums is irreducible in the whole.)
Nothing detrimental or lethal in the operational context of the system or its parts
Ongoing process, active and progressive, not coming to a “dead end,” stopping,
halting
Producing something other than itself; not “shedding” or rubbing off
Each part receiving what is other-in-kind from what it itself produces
Continuing to have ongoing, productive functionality (A needs B in order to keep
being A; B needs A in order to keep being B; likewise with C, F, G, T, etc.)
No alternative source for what each necessary part produces
Accompanying instincts and behaviors for feeding and self-preservation
Hierarchical levels of reciprocating sets and levels of sets from cells to organs to
the whole
The complete set of reciprocating parts are in addition to any straight-line processes
that are involved.
Accounting for all bodily systems and what enables them: sensory, nervous,
musculature, ambulatory, skeletal, endocrine, digestive, circulatory,
elimination, reproductive; hence, high-level complexity comprised of reciprocation in addition to various types of straight-line causality
Involving more than straight-line causal series like
Domino effect (direct and indirect)
Echo effect (even something that increases the number or degree of what went out;
as in feedback between a guitar and amplifier or as in the warming feedback
loops in climate-change theory)
Static interdependence (as in attached row houses)
Dead-end formats, straight-line and combinational, even where what combines
produces a different result from the components
Hegelianism as a kind of open-ended, mutually adjusting combinationalism
Gestalt (a whole that is more than the sum of its parts; completing, dead-end)
Symbiosis, parasitic (the host dies from the parasite);
commensal (both entities benefit but may exist independently);
mutual (alga is not enabled by fungus but together produce lichen)
(bees and plants pollinated only by bees)
Concluding comment: living organisms cannot originate from any form of straight-line causation, nor do they continue functioning that way, at least in the animal kingdom. All living organism “kinds” must have originated as fully functioning, internally reciprocating sets.1
So the answer to Question #1 is “No.”
Can nature then produce complementing variants of Question-#1 entities that can reciprocally interact to replicate both variants intergenerationally? [individual level within kind]
Embedded implications
The given: TWO SEXES, variant and biologically complementary for reproduction
Deals with organisms above the fission level of reproduction; applies to the fusion
reproduction level
Same point of origination in time and place for both variants
Operational only between the paired variants of each kind; bounded bisexual
interbreeding units amidst an astronomical number of other kinds
Diverse bodies in a reciprocating-combinational set (cp. in a different connection
“woman from man and man by woman,” 1 Corinthians 11:11-12)
Accompanying instincts and behavior for reproduction and parenting
Nothing detrimental or lethal in the context of operation between the paired entities
Ongoing intergenerational perpetuation
Every generation operating in the context of entropy (death)
Concluding comment: The individuals in all living entities must come from a “parent” that has relevant instincts and behaviors for providing everything necessary for the offsprings’ development into independent living entities (DNA) and for providing the temporary circumstance in which those entities can do so (womb, pouch, egg).
So the answer to Question #2 also is “No.”
The impossibilities in Question #1 plus #2 combine to highlight more than one hierarchical level of impossibility for explaining the biosphere by causes within living nature. With reciprocal causation’s eliminating irreducible minimums at the level of the whole in living entiti3es (on top of internal compenetrating systems and irreducible complexities within biochemical building blocks), the origins issue changes from statistically unlikely to inherently impossible. Impossible in this matter contrasts with improbable as further noted in PART II.
PART II
If causes internal to the natural order are inadequate for explaining everything in it, then nature itself requires external causation to account for itself—because the realities are givens that cannot be avoided or put on hold. An eternal natural order is eliminated even in the form of a pulsating universe as a kind of perpetual motion machine. Appealing to the “super”-natural must happen, and that appeal must be to adequate external cause. That point amounts to a theistic proof. Theistic proofs historically have made it more sensible to believe in God than not to do so. The argument from design and purpose (teleological) as well as necessary source of beginning (cosmological) are claims about probability, not necessity. The origin-design-purpose set has become “apparent” instead of necessary in the minds of evolutionary theorists, because the form might come by chance from environment and such a form may suffice to accomplish a result—but it can be an apparent result since a “result” can come without a purpose to cause it and therefore without a god to purpose it.
The theistic proof implicit in Question #1 and #2 leads to necessity, not just probability. Arguments from irreducible minimums or complexities frequently take the form of xnth 2 or sheer mystery. Though the proposed number is unimaginably astronomical, it still offers improbability, not actual impossibility. It is imaginatively possible for you the next day to find on Baker Street, London, the wedding ring you lost overboard in the mid-Pacific. You would need to postulate as yet unknown natural processes to make that happen—like processes for distant discovery in water and darkness and processes in speed of travel. Those postulated processes are conceivable because they are increases in degree for processes already known. So, no matter how improbable, the atheist and agnostic may prefer to claim that virtually boundless time and space make the improbable even necessary.
This study, however, posits that reciprocationʹ at the level of the whole makes infinite space-time irrelevant. Lengthening the time and broadening the area for straight-line causation does not gain the essential feature in living bodies: reciprocalityʹ, a causal pattern parallel in kind to straight-line causality. There is observable reciprocality from any beginning point back around onto that point for what is necessary for an entity’s life and functions; such a system originally cannot come-to-be in sequence by steps because any originating part itself could not be living; it could not be living because it would not have what it had to get from elsewhere in order to be alive and produce what the other parts needed. Real reciprocalityʹ within a living physical entity in the material realm eliminates external material contribution.
The real issue is what makes the result able to occur; time is not a cause; neither is space; they only make room for a cause. We know from scientific observation that the organs in a living body can produce what they produce. We know from scientific observation that what each organ produces can meet the need of the other organs all the way around the loop back to itself and crosswise in all the ways each produces its effects. We know from observation that the biosphere has sets of causal series that include direct and/or indirect reciprocalityʹ. It remains only to observe that all the living loops and parts in the loops are necessary from the start (simultaneous origin; cosmological). That in turn requires adequate external cause since internal cause has already been judged inadequate, which is the same as theistic proof. This “proof” cannot be just apparent proof, because there is no other possible source around internally besides reciprocal ones. The apparent proof would be a kind of straight-line causality. So this theistic proof establishes necessary existence of “god,” not just probable existence. It seems more than a stretch to call merely “improbable” the accidental/random/natural/chance confluence of myriads of reciprocating parts, compenetrating, and interdependent all the way from the base matter in cells up through the levels of organs to the whole entity. Time (a few minutes) and death (inexorability) preclude improbability as a description. The result has to be instantaneous and impossible in step-by-step format.
The pattern of thought here can be considered a kind of teleological argument, but it is a teleological argument built on reciprocal causation, not on straight-line causal series, as traditional formulations seem to be. The reciprocatingʹ process inside nature requires reaching outside of nature to get sufficient cause. That differs from origin-design-purpose from First Cause, which may be conceived of as inside the same realm as its derivatives (non-transcendence). Such would be the case as in pantheism, panentheism, or eternal materiality. Reciprocal causationʹ removes that option.
Suffice it to say, this theistic proof is akin to the others in being able to imply only some characteristics of “god”: eternality, aseity, intelligence, volition, transcendence, imminence, sufficient (omni)potence, sufficient (omni)science, personhood(?). It is not likely, though, that we can reason love and interpersonalism into it, requisite features of the Judaeo-Christian Yahveh. The rest of God’s characteristics must come by special revelation experienced in history.
Endnote
1This theistic process could have two variants, one in which God created each kind “from scratch” and another where he created the next kind out of a previous one in the tree of life. The second scenario appeals to external cause in place of evolution’s postulated intermediate forms in getting from one point in the tree of life to the next; the second variant is a kind of progressive creationism.
To help avoid confusion, we have become accustomed to using “progressive creation” to indicate external cause by God conceived of as taking place over extended time. “Theistic evolution,” then, is reserved for the idea that God created base matter with the internal capacity to evolve into all the forms that arose. It is the kind of format implicit in the expression “God used evolution to create.” In everyday speaking, however, people may talk about another arrangement where, for example, the car evolved from a Model A to a Cadillac. The cause for the changes lies outside the realm of the car and in (the realm of) the designer. So it is phenomenological language to speak of the car as evolving. “Theistic evolution” could be used similarly. The main thing is to keep the realities distinguished in speaking about the process that describes the origin of the biosphere.
2Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution: Free Press, New York, 2006. The complexity level in straight-line causality in the direction of smallness is evidently not limitless (Behe, Darvin’s Black Box, p. 13), which is what we would expect in a space-time reality. As in time the mind rejects an infinite regress, so in size the mind rejects an infinite finitude. The regress must end at an eternal “starter”; hence, finitude must end at a base-level start-up. So, it does not matter how complex or simple the reality is, reciprocal causation eliminates straight-line causality as an ultimate explanation of the biosphere and therefore of reality as a whole.
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