Jim Lesurf wrote:

Isn't it the point that everything in nature *had* a
purpose, or more
accurately reason for being?

You need to be very careful about the meanings of words
like "purpose" or
"reason" in statements like that as they can easily
mislead people.

So anything "in nature" may have arisen as a result of
previous events and
states. But the process may have been 'random' and/or no
"thought" or
"plan" or "purpose" in any sentient sense was involved.

There are some behavioural patterns. e,g when Oxygen meets
Hydrogen it
combines as H2O more easily than as H3O or HO. And that
molecule then has
its own set of properties, etc. But this is simply
behaviour in a
mechanistic sense.

And that the process of evolution will, given enough
time, design out
items surplus to requirements?

Changes can happen by essentially 'chance' processes. e.g.
by DNA molecules
being unpredictably altered by radiation. Natural
Selection simple keeps on
*tending to* weed out things which adversely affects
survival in the longer
term. You could argue that 'six legs' are 'surplus' as
others make do with
two - or none. But anything that works in context may
continue - and
continue to be the root of some other changed versions.
And in some later
set of circumstances what once was a 'poor' version may
become more
successful if it re-occurs.

There was no "purpose" so far as the radiation happening
to hit that
particular molecule is concerned. It just happened, and
then a chain of
events occurs. Equally, the chain could have been
different at any point if
some other event had occurred.


Don't you then have difficulty in finding *any* sensible
meaning for "purpose"?

Alternatively, you may view all of history as an unfolding,
a natural sequence of events that inexorably led the past,
and leads the present, towards some future state...maybe ad
infinitum, maybe not. You can see this as a plot, in which
things have a purpose to the extent that they play a
particular part. Whether you consider that plot to be the
product of a supernatural mind or simply of nature itself
doesn't matter much IMO.

Trouble is, if everything has equal purpose, "purpose" loses
meaning again, and every event is equally important. Or is
it? Looking at large-scale natural phenomena, there
generally seems to be some core processes going on, but much
of the detail appears to be random with respect to the
overall scheme. Butterflies' wings springs to mind, or the
way a galaxy appears to be a jumble until you stand a long
way back. This suggests that importance depends on where an
event is in the structural hierarchy of matter, or of
thought if you're an idealist.

I might have asked "what is the purpose of music?", but that
seemed to assume too much.

Ian