I posted a smidgen of a thought on a different thread but I decided to make a separate thread to address this.

Teleology, as I understand it, is the idea that there is some kind of purpose behind something (a telos). So a washing machine's telos is to wash clothing. It was built to do this. Now, the washing machine itself is not an inscrutable object (i.e. WASHING MACHINE), it is made of all these different parts that allow it to function. The telos of the washing machine is not inherent, it is placed upon it by humans. As the washing machine itself exists independently from our projections, so to does it exist independently from its telos.

Regardless of this, a teleological object is an object that was designed.

More often than not, the biology has been the centerpoint for arguments for design, i.e. teleology. However, with the phenomenal success of evolutionary theory and natural selection, it seems as though this route is basically dead.

But I want to address a different observation of nature.

Imagine our daily lives. We live in a world that is filled with technological marvels. The Internet, space shuttles, computers, nuclear warheads, submarines, ballpoint pens, flashlights, toothpicks. These are all made from the creativity and labor of mankind.

But why are these technological marvels even possible?

I find it quite remarkable that the universe can even have the potential of hosting something as complex as the internet. It's difficult to explain, but it is quite weird that an unconscious universe without any real order or purpose would even be able to host these artificial contraptions.

It looks like the universe might have some kind of design to it that allows humans to manipulate the universe itself to create useful tools.

What could be the explanations for this?

I don't find the god-hypothesis to be very convincing. In fact, if we were to actually suppose a deity designed the universe so that it could be used, this merely begs the question of why this god made it so damn difficult and oftentimes treacherous to explore technology. For example, gravity is one hell of a bitch when it comes to constructing buildings, bridges, rockets, etc. Additionally, this god could not be omnibenevolent and omniscient, for they would have forseen the consequences of our meddling with the universe (i.e. weapons, environmental problems, etc).

Furthermore, to say "god did it" is merely god of the gaps reasoning. It places the explanation outside of the realm of observation. It is to postulate something transcendent without knowing if the truth value is transcendent. In other words, it's bullshit meant to satisfy our anxiety at the face of the peculiar.

Even if god is not a convincing argument, I still find the infinitely large potential of the universe to be transformed into technology to be remarkable. It's funny how wide of a variety of ways, how rich and colorful matter can be construed, if there isn't any reason for it to be. And it's even more intriguing when we see how much of technology works on our level of existence, just how flexible matter is for us to screw around with.

From an existential perspective, I consider myself more or less a philosophical pessimist depending on how angsty I feel and how much sleep I've had. The world is not a nice place, generally, and this is why we need technology to begin with.

I also find myself in much agreement with the ancient Greek Cynics, in that modernization is harmful to the peaceful way of life. Being surrounded by a concrete, urban jungle is not natural, and we feel much angst because of it.

But regardless of the existential implications of technology, the fact of the matter is that matter is filled with potential to be used in an infinitely large amount of ways. Even more peculiar is the apparent synonymy between our scale of living and the scale of technology. There is a median between the two extremes (unimaginably huge and microscopic) that we find ourselves in, and it happens to be the place that technology manifests.

I understand that technology is man-made, but that does not really address the observation that this technology is rather magical in comparison to the natural, unconstrained world. There clearly is a difference between the two.

Or is there? Since we are part of the universe, anything we do would be, technically, natural. So I think the key difference here is that of processes that occur without the influence of a conscious entity and those that occur with.

The anthropic principle surely would be the go-to answer for these questions. It's more of an agnostic position than it is one of positive affirmation. But it is not a very satisfying answer (not very many agnostic answers are it seems). I want answers, goddammit!, and I want them now!

So I'm torn between two sides of a coin, that of whether or not teleological thinking is rational.

Does the nature of the universe, such as the potential for technology of wildly surprisingly fashions, give credit to an idea of design? Is an argument from design coherent without hypothesizing a deity? (I think Nagel argued for this in his book Mind and Cosmos, although I haven't read it)

Or, is it that teleological thinking is an irrational leftover from our evolutionary past? To hear a stick crack in the forest and associate this with a predator would be beneficial to the survival of the organism. False positives would be encouraged. So is teleological thinking the result of a civilized organism that struggles to deal with the leftover survival anxiety when facing phenomenon they cannot understand immediately? Do we associate purely natural phenomenon with an outside force simply because we cannot come to any other explanation and require this to soothe our anxiety?