Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (53 page)
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Authors: Alvin Plantinga
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Biology, #Religious Studies, #Science, #Scientism, #Philosophy, #21st Century, #Philosophy of Religion, #Religion, #v.5, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Philosophy of Science
17.
See, e.g., reviews by Sean Carroll (
Science
, June, 2007), Jerry Coyne “The Great Mutator,” (
The New Republic
, June, 2007), and Richard Dawkins, “Inferior Design” (
New York Times Sunday Book Review
, July 1, 2007).
18.
Behe,
The Edge of Evolution
, p. 218.
19.
Behe, “The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis,” in Neil Manson
God and Design
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 277. It’s worth noting, in this connection, that the probability of these protein machines given the existence of
God
(as theists think of him) seems to be considerably higher than the probability given just a generic intelligent designer.
20.
This suggestion is explored in detail by Del Ratzsch in his “Perceiving Design” in
God and Design
, pp. 124ff, to which I am heavily indebted in what follows. In this connection, see also
Design Arguments Within a Reidian Epistemology
, Ph.D. dissertation by John Mullen, Notre Dame, 2004.
21.
Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae
I, q. 2, a. 3. In the ancient world see for example Diogenes; G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven,
The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical history with a Selection of Texts
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), p. 433.
22.
Paley,
Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity
, 12th ed. (London: J. Faulder, 1809), pp. 1–2.
23.
Paley,
Natural Theology
, pp. 17–18.
24.
For an examination of Hume’s criticism of the argument, see Elliott Sober,
Philosophy of Biology
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 34–35.
25.
“Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism: a Reply to Michael J. Behe,”
Faith and Philosophy
19:1 (2002), pp. 3, 8–9. Elliott Sober (
Philosophy of Biology
, p. 30) understands it the same way.
26.
See my
God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967, 1990), chapters 4 and 8.
27.
Reid,
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
(1785) in
Inquiry and Essays
, ed. Ronald Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), VI, 5, pp. 278–79. See also my
God and Other Minds
and
Warrant and Proper Function
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chapter 4.
28.
Reid goes on:
That many operations of the mind have their natural signs in the countenance, voice and gesture, I suppose every man will admit….. The only question is, whether we understand the signification of those signs, by the constitution of our nature, by a kind of natural perception similar to the perceptions of sense; or whether we gradually learn the signification of such signs from experience, as we learn that smoke is a sign of fire….. It seems to me incredible, that the notions men have of the expressions of features, voice, and gesture, are entirely the fruit of experience.
Essays
, VI, 5, pp. 278–79.
29.
See my
Warrant and Proper Function
, pp. 65–71.
30.
Indeed, tiny babies, presumably at an age at which they form little by way of beliefs of any sort, respond to human-face-like figures differently than to figures made of the same parts but scrambled: “It also appears that some of the capacity to establish spatial relations is manifested by the visual system from a very early age. For example, infants of 1–15 weeks of age are reported to respond preferentially to schematic face-like figures, and to prefer normally arranged face figures over ‘scrambled’ face patterns (Fantz, 1961).” Shimon Ullman, “Visual Routines” in
Visual Cognition
, ed. Steven Pinker (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985), p. 99. The reference to Fantz is to R. L. Fantz, “The Origin of Form Perception,”
Scientific American
204 (5), pp. 66–72.
31.
See my
Warrant and Proper Function
, chapters 1 and 2.
32.
Again, here I am heavily indebted to Del Ratzsch; see “Perceiving Design.”
33.
Paley,
Natural Theology
, pp. 1–2.
34.
Whewell,
Astronomy and General Physics: Considered with Reference to Natural Theology
(London: William Pickering, 1834); quoted in Ratzsch, “Perceiving Design,” p. 125.
35.
George Douglas Campbell, Eighth Duke of Argyll, “What is Science?” in
Good Words
1885; quoted in Ratzsch, “Perceiving Design,” p. 124.
36.
I say this is a good way to understand Paley, but my aim here is not to contribute to Paley scholarship. I mean to explore this thought as a suggestion as to how best to understand design.
37.
Paley,
Natural Theology
, p. 2.
38.
See chapter 5 on HADD, that alleged hypersensitive agency detector device. Perhaps what Paley asks us to note is another special case of HADD. Of course that doesn’t in the least compromise this “movement of the mind,” or suggest that it is misleading or unreliable; see pp. 141.
39.
Paley,
Natural Theology
, p. 2.
40.
The dialectic of modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume overwhelmingly supports the idea that there are no good (noncircular) arguments for the existence of an external world. See William P. Alston’s landmark book,
The Reliability of Sense Perception
(Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1993). What is the connection between
perceiving
that something is designed, and
seeing
that thing
as
designed? I’m inclined to think that many cases of perceiving that a thing x has property P are cases of seeing x as having P. Perceiving that the thing before me has such and such shape and color doesn’t, perhaps, involve seeing it
as
shaped and colored; perceiving that it is a tractor, however, does involve seeing it as a tractor.
41.
Russell,
The Analysis of Mind;
see also my
Warrant and Proper Function
, chapter 3.
44.
For the biological sense of “random,” see
chapter 1
, section I.
45.
Of course cases of what look like suboptimal design (human knees, backs, the blind spot in the human eye) might provided partial defeaters for the belief that it is
God
—wholly good, powerful, knowledgeable—that has done (all) the designing; this wouldn’t affect the belief that these things have been designed.
46.
Francisco Ayala, “Intelligent Design: The Original Version” in
Theology and Science
1:1 (April 2003), pp. 17, 18, 22.
48.
Of course one might believe on altogether different grounds that the eye has been designed—one might have other grounds, e.g., for thinking there is such a person as God, who has created and thus designed the world and the various biological organisms it contains.
49.
In
chapter 7
, I proposed an example to show that the normalizability objection is misguided; I should add here that this example is perhaps better construed as design discourse than as a design argument.
50.
Behe,
Darwin’s Black Box p. 193.
51.
Cook,
What Mad Pursuit: a Personal View of Scientific Discovery
(New York: Basic, 1988), p. 138. (One imagines biologists gritting their teeth and repeating to themselves, “They aren’t designed; they aren’t designed; they….”)
52.
Shapiro,
National Review
48:17 (September 16, 1996), p. 63.
53.
Part of the problem, here, is that there is serious disagreement about the line between a just-so story and a “detailed Darwinian account.”
54.
Of course this is supposing that there aren’t any other defeaters here—no good argument, for example, that there couldn’t be a designer, or that the only plausible candidate here—divine design—can somehow be shown to be ineligible.
55.
See my
Warranted Christian Belief
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 6.
56.
See my
Warranted Christian Belief
, pp. 186ff.
1.
Russell,
The Problem of China
(Charleston, S.C.: BiblioBazaar, 2006), p. 164.
2.
Von Weizsäcker,
The Relevance of Science
(New York: Harper: 1964), p 163.
3.
Peter van Inwagen, one of the finest philosophers of our age, cites it as one of his main reasons for believing in God; see his “Quam Dilecta” in
God and the Philosophers
, ed. Thomas Morris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 52ff.
4.
Einstein in a letter to Robert Thornton, December 7, 1944. Einstein Archives 61–574.
5.
Summa Theologiae
Ia q. 93 a. 4; ST Ia q.93 a.6.
6.
Chomsky,
Language and the Problems of Knowledge
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001), pp. 157–58.
7.
Whitehead,
Science and the Modern World
(New York: McMillan, 1925), pp. 3–4.
8.
Lord’s Day Ten, Question and Answer 27.
9.
Whitehead,
Science and the Modern World
, p. 13.
10.
Josef Pieper,
Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy
(Notre Dame, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), p. 148.
11.
There is also an important contrast here between the usual Christian and the usual Islamic way of thinking about God. This is not the place to go into detail into Islamic conceptions of God (even if I knew enough to do so), and of course there are several different Islamic conceptions of God, or Allah, just as there is more than one Christian conception of God. But on the whole it seems that the dominant Muslim conception of God is of a more intrusive, unpredictable, incomprehensible divinity. Rodney Stark points out that a common “orthodox” claim was that all attempts to formulate natural laws are blasphemous, because they would limit Allā h’s freedom. See his
Discovering God
(New York: Harper, 2007), p. 367.
12.
Clarke,
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God
, ed. Ezio Vailati (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 149.
13.
Ames,
The Marrow of Theology
1623. tr. John Dykstra Eusden (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1997), p. 104.
14.
Boyle,
The Reconciliableness of Reason and Religion
in
The Works of Robert Boyle
ed. M. Hunter and E. B. Davis, 14 volumes (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999–2000), vol. 3, p. 516.
15.
Cotes,
Newton’s Philosopy of Nature: Selections fr om his writings
(New York: Hafner Library of Classics, 1953).
16.
Whewell,
Astronomy and General Physics Considered With Reference to Natural Theology
(Bridgewater Treatise), Cambridge, 1833.
17.
In Max Jammer,
Einstein and Religion
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 93.
18.
Boyle,
Notion of Nature
, in
Works of Robert Boyle
, 5, p. 170.
19.
It’s interesting to note that some contemporaries have been encouraged by quantum mechanical speculations to think of inanimate nature as in some way free, and perhaps even in some way making choices; when the wave function collapses, it isn’t determined by previous history to collapse to any particular set of eigenvalues. (Of course it’s a bit of a stretch to conclude that an elementary particle gets to decide how its wave function will collapse.)
20.
Whewell,
Astronomy and General Physics Considered With Reference to Natural Theology
.
21.
Wilson,
Consilience
(New York: Vintage, 1999), p. 4.
22.
In Gregory Benford, “Leaping the Abyss: Stephen Hawking on black holes, unified field theory, and Marilyn Monroe,”
Reason
4.02 (April 2002): 29.
23.
This is widely, but not universally accepted. For example, Bas van Fraassen, as canny a philosopher of science as there is, argues that there aren’t any laws of nature.
