The intrinsic purposefulness of life must have an extrinsic source

The title plays on a remark that Rope Kojonen made in a recent workshop on New Perspectives on Evolution, Teleology, and Theology, 28-30. September 2026 at Helsinki University: 

Intrinsic teleology with an extrinsic source.

For elaboration of what is meant by intrinsic and extrinsic teleology see my previous blog post. 

Kojonen's remark covers exactly what I describe in the following excerpt from "Chapter 6 Evolution and Purpose" of The Imagined Conflict:

Thomas Aquinas’s Fifth Way

Aquinas combined Aristotle’s thoughts with a Christian worldview. He also gave an explanation for why there could be intrinsic purposefulness in all of life. He did not accomplish this by stating that purposefulness was directly imposed on all things by a deity, as in Platonic thought. In a clever way he justified Aristotle’s idea of intrinsic purposefulness by saying that there must be a reason for such ubiquitous purposefulness. This is the topic of the last of the five ways (see chapter 2*), known as “the teleological way.” Since this argument about purpose is often confused with the argument that complexity points toward God, it is worth quoting in full here:

We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

Two kinds of purpose or teleology: Intrinsic and extrinsic

From The Imagined Conflict, chapter 5 "Philosophy of Science"

If you think of why a carpenter makes a dinner-table, Aristoteles's four explanations are: 

1. the wood which is the material cause, 
2. the idea or blueprint which is the formal cause, 
3. the carpenter who shapes the wood and this is the efficient cause. 
4. The final one is that the table is being made because someone ordered a table for a big feast. This is the final cause, which has to do with purpose or intention. 

Explanation in terms of final causes is called teleology.

Biology’s Parallel to Dark Matter

Hubble image showing arcs of blue light which are
distorted images of remote galaxies behind the cluster.
The collective gravity of all normal and dark matter 
warps space-time affecting light traveling toward Earth.
 NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)

In The Imagined Conflict, chapter 6 "Evolution and Purpose", ends like this:

Newton’s law of gravitation was a breakthrough because it united the large and small. It could describe everything from how stones fell on Earth, to the stability of planetary orbits. The world seemed to work like a clock, just like the early mechanical clocks. The prime example is the one from 1386 in the cathedral in Salisbury, England, which is the world’s oldest functioning clock. This mechanistic view of nature took over from the more organic view that the Medieval Age had from Aristotle. It played a crucial role during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, when Laplace also came up with a description of how a planetary system could form. In principle, everything could now be calculated, if the initial conditions were known. It was believed that these laws not only described nature but also explained why nature works. They had forgotten the insight of Newton, Boyle, Kepler, and Galileo that the laws were just describing how, not the why of the universe.

The Myth of Galileo's Proof and the Inspiration from Christian Scientists over the Last Centuries (YouTube)

Without knowing it, during a typical day, we all encounter many of the most important natural scientists from history. Surprisingly, the Christian faith meant something personal to many of them, as illustrated by their own words in this talk. 

Among them is Galileo about whose personal faith we don’t know much. But a persistent myth is that he had proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. Galileo himself knew very well that he had not. Scientifically Tycho Brahe's geoheliocentric model was held to be the correct one long after Galileo had passed away. It is therefore impossible to comprehend the Galileo affair without understanding Brahe's model.

The Myth of Galileo's Proof and the Inspiration from Christian Scientists over the Last Centuries

The 3 best science-based arguments for faith in God

Do you want to hear what I consider to be the 3 best science-based arguments for faith in God? Then watch my Cambridge lecture from last week, at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. 

It's all based on the book "The imagined conflict".

Press the image for link to YouTube.

The Genesis view in Haydn’s oratorio "The Creation"

Image from Naxos

The Appendix of The Imagined Conflict lists five main positions for reconciling science and the Bible. In order to understand them, it is important to grasp the historic context of their origins. One of the ambitions of the The Imagined Conflict has been to provide that context for these views:

1. Young Earth creationism (YEC): Solar day theory
2. Old Earth creationism (OEC)
• Chaos-restitution interpretation 
• Gap theory
3. Progressive creationism: Day-age interpretation
4. Guided evolution
5. Planned evolution

There are in fact two more also listed: Deistic evolution and Atheistic evolution, but these views are not really about reconciliation as they ignore the Bible as a source of knowledge.

Sometimes these five views are presented as a menu to choose from, but they have been developed in a dialogue with the development of science. They are best understood in a history of science context. 

A scientist evaluates the Galileo affair

Page 86 from "The Imagined Conflict"

A persistent myth is that Galileo's observations (see image) were proof that the Earth revolves around the sun. Galileo himself knew very well that he did not have a very good case scientifically for this hypothesis. He tried to advance an erroneous argument based on the tides, but his "Tidal proof" convinced few at the time and is actually incorrect.

In chapter 3 of “The Imagined Conflict” (Wipf & Stock, 2025), a major part is entitled “Galileo was right and so were his critics”* (pp. 85–102). My claim is that this chapter has one of the most accessible and comprehensive accounts available about the science at the time of Galileo. Unique for the book in this genre is also that it has 41 figures and illustrations, 11 of which are in chapter 3.