You: There cannot be understanding of purpose without an understanding of the original intentions. Take the case of a careless man who picks up a loaded shotgun. If the gun goes off, killing the man, we would not say that he committed suicide because we know that he did not intend to die. The police, finding his body and lacking information about his motivations, may not be able to tell if he is a suicide or the victim of an accident. If he is not a well liked man, they might even suspect that he was murdered.

Unless we know the man's original goals, we cannot know if he is working with purpose or not. For all we know, he may just have been curious about the gun and not really had any purpose in mind when he picked it up.

With that in mind, take the case of a man who is killed by a falling rock. We know even less in this situation, because we cannot be sure whether the rock was thrown at the man or whether it fell without human intervention. In this case, we cannot know if there was a purpose to the falling rock unless we know that it was thrown by someone.

The natural world is like the second example. Since we have not proven that there is a God, we cannot assume that natural processes are a sign of his will.

Aaron: That is an interesting, if convoluted, argument. You would be perfectly right if all natural systems were as simple as a falling brick, but they are not.