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Contrary to what atheists believe, it is impossible to do science in the first place without presupposing purpose on some level. Moreover, atheists live in denial of the purpose seeing that is built into them:
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? October 17, 2012
Excerpt: Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find. The article describes a test by Boston Universitys psychology department, in which researchers found that despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose ,,,
Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....65381.html
Children Act Like Scientists October 1, 2012
Excerpt: New theoretical ideas and empirical research show that very young childrens learning and thinking are strikingly similar to much learning and thinking in science. Preschoolers test hypotheses against data and make causal inferences; they learn from statistics and informal experimentation, and from watching and listening to others. The mathematical framework of probabilistic models and Bayesian inference can describe this learning in precise ways.
http://crev.info/2012/10/child.....cientists/
Children are born believers in God, academic claims 24 Nov 2008
Excerpt: Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxfords Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....laims.html
Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds May 2011
Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscie.....-geometry/
Geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection from the mind of God. That mankind shares in it is because man is an image of God.
Johannes Kepler
As well, biology is replete with teleology, i.e. with purpose. In fact, it is impossible to do biology without using words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design.
Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails Ann Gauger June 2011
Excerpt: Im a working biologist, on bacterial regulation (transcription and translation and protein stability) through signalling molecules, ,,, I can confirm the following points as realities: we lack adequate conceptual categories for what we are seeing in the biological world; with many additional genomes sequenced annually, we have much more data than we know what to do with (and making sense of it has become the current challenge); cells are staggeringly chock full of sophisticated technologies, which are exquisitely integrated; life is not dominated by a single technology, but rather a composite of many; and yet life is more than the sum of its parts; in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biologywe simply cannot avoid them.
Furthermore, I suggest that to maintain that all of biology is solely a product of selection and genetic decay and time requires a metaphysical conviction that isnt troubled by the evidence. Alternatively, it could be the view of someone who is unfamiliar with the evidence, for one reason or another. But for those who will consider the evidence that is so obvious throughout biology, I suggest its high time we moved on. Matthew
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....nt-8858161
The Mental Cell: Lets Loosen Up Biological Thinking! Stephen L. Talbott September 9, 2014
Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors.
Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness1.
One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic and thoughtful as life itself.
http://natureinstitute.org/txt.....ell_23.htm
Of supplemental note,
Bruce Charltons Miscellany October 2011
Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
http://charltonteaching.blogsp.....-wife.html
Jerry Coyne on the Scientific Method and Religion Michael Egnor June 2011
Excerpt: The scientific method the empirical systematic theory-based study of nature has nothing to so with some religious inspirations Animism, Paganism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Islam, and, well, atheism. The scientific method has everything to do with Christian (and Jewish) inspiration. Judeo-Christian culture is the only culture that has given rise to organized theoretical science. Many cultures (e.g. China) have produced excellent technology and engineering, but only Christian culture has given rise to a conceptual understanding of nature.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....47431.html
The truth about science and religion By Terry Scambray August 14, 2014
Excerpt: In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature.
The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....igion.html
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? October 17, 2012
Excerpt: Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find. The article describes a test by Boston Universitys psychology department, in which researchers found that despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose ,,,
Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....65381.html
Children Act Like Scientists October 1, 2012
Excerpt: New theoretical ideas and empirical research show that very young childrens learning and thinking are strikingly similar to much learning and thinking in science. Preschoolers test hypotheses against data and make causal inferences; they learn from statistics and informal experimentation, and from watching and listening to others. The mathematical framework of probabilistic models and Bayesian inference can describe this learning in precise ways.
http://crev.info/2012/10/child.....cientists/
Children are born believers in God, academic claims 24 Nov 2008
Excerpt: Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxfords Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....laims.html
Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds May 2011
Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,,
http://www.wired.com/wiredscie.....-geometry/
Geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection from the mind of God. That mankind shares in it is because man is an image of God.
Johannes Kepler
As well, biology is replete with teleology, i.e. with purpose. In fact, it is impossible to do biology without using words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design.
Life, Purpose, Mind: Where the Machine Metaphor Fails Ann Gauger June 2011
Excerpt: Im a working biologist, on bacterial regulation (transcription and translation and protein stability) through signalling molecules, ,,, I can confirm the following points as realities: we lack adequate conceptual categories for what we are seeing in the biological world; with many additional genomes sequenced annually, we have much more data than we know what to do with (and making sense of it has become the current challenge); cells are staggeringly chock full of sophisticated technologies, which are exquisitely integrated; life is not dominated by a single technology, but rather a composite of many; and yet life is more than the sum of its parts; in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biologywe simply cannot avoid them.
Furthermore, I suggest that to maintain that all of biology is solely a product of selection and genetic decay and time requires a metaphysical conviction that isnt troubled by the evidence. Alternatively, it could be the view of someone who is unfamiliar with the evidence, for one reason or another. But for those who will consider the evidence that is so obvious throughout biology, I suggest its high time we moved on. Matthew
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....nt-8858161
The Mental Cell: Lets Loosen Up Biological Thinking! Stephen L. Talbott September 9, 2014
Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors.
Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness1.
One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic and thoughtful as life itself.
http://natureinstitute.org/txt.....ell_23.htm
Of supplemental note,
Bruce Charltons Miscellany October 2011
Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?
http://charltonteaching.blogsp.....-wife.html
Jerry Coyne on the Scientific Method and Religion Michael Egnor June 2011
Excerpt: The scientific method the empirical systematic theory-based study of nature has nothing to so with some religious inspirations Animism, Paganism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Islam, and, well, atheism. The scientific method has everything to do with Christian (and Jewish) inspiration. Judeo-Christian culture is the only culture that has given rise to organized theoretical science. Many cultures (e.g. China) have produced excellent technology and engineering, but only Christian culture has given rise to a conceptual understanding of nature.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....47431.html
The truth about science and religion By Terry Scambray August 14, 2014
Excerpt: In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature.
The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished.
http://www.americanthinker.com.....igion.html
