Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Biology’s Divorce from Teleology

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

Alan takes notice of a cultural trend to reject teleological language when describing human anatomy and shows how this explains modern thinking on sex and sexuality.

What are some of the consequences of rejecting the idea that body parts have an intended design? Well, that's what I want to talk to you about on this October 2021 episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schliemann. Can you tell the difference between the following two sentences? Okay, here's sentence one. The heart is pumping blood. And here's sentence two. The heart is made to pump blood.

Okay, now I know they sound similar, these two sentences, but I would suggest to you that they are worlds apart. You see, the first sentence is descriptive. Alright, it's basically how an observer might describe what the heart is doing. And the second sentence is prescriptive, and what you have there is, the sentence sort of presupposes the heart is designed to do something, and that is to pump blood. Now, the medical community has historically presupposed that all human organs were designed

to perform a function. In fact, this is the study that we call teleology, right? It's the study of design. And they, you know, historically have believed that all organs were designed, right? So the heart is designed to pump blood, for example, or the eye is made to see, or muscles are meant to move joints, right? So every part of the body is intended to do something in particular. to do something in particular. Now, following on this thought, I would say that proper medical care entails recognizing the teleology of human anatomy. So in other words, doctors are trained

to assess the heart's function when it fails to operate in the way it was intended, which of course is to pump blood and to pump it efficiently. When doctors, you know, recognize this, they notice there is a disease state, and then they try to provide treatment to return that organ, in this case the heart, to its optimal function. So notice though the language that's being used here. Words like intended or disease or function, right? All of these words presuppose that body parts have a prescribed function.

Now this notion of teleology, which again is the study of design, it has a second implication. And that is if body parts have an intended function, then using them in a way that violates their design will cause damage. So, for example, there are multiple orifices. Okay, like an orifice is an opening. There's multiple orifices in the human head. So, right, you have the nose, you get the mouth, you get the ear, right?

And each orifice is engineered a certain way. The nose, for example, is made to draw in air. The mouth can accommodate air and food and fluids, right? The ear is only able to receive sound waves, right? And so these orifices are not interchangeable. If you were to use the ear in a way that it was not designed to function, you would cause damage. So, for example, putting French fries in your mouth would be fine, but jamming them in your ears would cause damage to your ear, your eardrum, right? Now, though this thinking seems common sense, right, we are seeing a shift in culture and even some doctors are abandoning this view.

In fact, a professor of psychiatry recently told me that the medical school where he teaches in California is abandoning teleological language. And what I mean by that is they no longer describe human organs as being designed to perform a specific function. Rather, organs simply just do certain things. You know, the heart, for example, is not designed to pump blood. Rather, it just happens to pump blood. And if it only happens to pump blood half as efficiently in your body as the heart in someone else's body, well, you might not like that, right? That's not maybe something you desire. And though a doctor can help you change how well

your heart ejects blood from its chambers, the goal is not to restore the heart's function to some sort of ultimate intended design. Of course, abandoning teleological language makes sense in a society that is jettisoning the Christian worldview. Because the only way to have designed organs that function a certain way is to have a designer who engineered them. And so once you abandon the designer in favor of an undirected process like evolution, well, then organs lose their teleology. I mean, they may have evolved to do certain things, well, then organs lose their teleology. I mean, they may have evolved to do certain things, but they were never intended to do so. Right?

I mean, hearts currently pump blood in most humans, but no one ever intended to create one to fulfill that function. And so the implications of this shift are legion. Because throughout the history of human medicine, it was understood that if you used an organ in a way that violated its function, you were abusing that body part. Men who had sex with men or women who had sex with women were viewed as violating the intended purpose of their sex organs. And psychologists diagnosed a desire

that drove a person to engage in such actions as a disorder. But of course, with the rise of secular thinking and the abandoning of teleological descriptions of human anatomy, such assessments were deemed outmoded. And so in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted. And by the way, when I say voted, I don't mean to suggest that they voted based on some sort of new medical data. But they voted to say that homosexuality was no longer a mental disorder.

And of course, that makes total sense if you don't believe organs have any kind of an intended design. Now, a similar shift has occurred with biological sex. See, it's been understood in the past that people with XY chromosomes are male and those with XX chromosomes are female. But an increasing number of people today

believe that because chromosomal variations like XXY or XYY or XXX, because these kind of variations can occur, they suggest that the sexual binary, the notion that only two sexes exist, you know, male and female, they suggest that the sexual binary is a fiction. And if you read, so, I mean, if you reject the teleological nature of humanity, then of course it's easy to see why variations from the norm are not seen as disordered, right? But rather as equal and sort of valid expressions of a different sex, right? So this is the new world we live in, right? Because by abandoning the Christian worldview and the designer who designed

all things, we're basically left with a world that's bereft of teleology. Things just are, and they aren't supposed to be a certain way, which of course is a perfect backdrop to bully people who hold to what society says are archaic standards of sexuality. Now, I don't mean to imply that we should sort of play the role of a victim, okay? Rather, we ought to play the role of a prophet by calling our culture to adopt a view of reality that makes sense. Abandoning teleological language won't only lead to a culture that's permissive of an anything-goes ideology, but it'll also prevent people from recognizing the designer

behind what is made, the evidence that Romans 1 so eloquently asserts can be clearly seen. Well, that's all I have for you today. If you enjoy my thoughts on these topics of apologetics and theology, be sure to rate or review my podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And otherwise, thanks for listening. And I will talk to you next time.