Del Ratzsch on design arguments and the ID debate

Here. 

We will not pursue that dispute here except to note that even if the case is made that ID could not count as proper science, which is controversial,[24] that would not in itself demonstrate a defect in design arguments as such. Science need not be seen as exhausting the space of legitimate conclusions from empirical data. In any case, the floods of vitriol in the current ID discussion suggest that much more than the propriety of selected inferences from particular empirical evidences is at issue.

The Firing Squad Argument and fine-tuning

Defended against Elliott Sober, here.

The fine-tuning argument

This is presented here. Interesting quote:

Analogically, the fact of the fine-tuned universe means the universe is life-allowing rather than life-prohibiting. This is very imporbable on atheism. This is not improbable on theism.


The main atheist objection to this is: multiverse theory. “If there is only one universe,” British cosmologist Bernard Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.” (Discover, December 2008)

Is there an argument from beauty to God

A redated post.

Mark Wynn, following up on F. R. Tennant, thinks that this is so. It is a type of design argument.

Hambourger's design argument

Hambourger argues that even if there is no evidence of interference by a designer in the course of evolution, we have to consider the fact that living creatures are made up of genetic material that reproduces after its kind, but not exactly. We could have reproduction that only produces exact duplicates, in which case evolution would be impossible, since there would be no variation. We could also have genetic material that changes very rapidly, in which case speciation would be chaotic, and evolution would also be impossible. That fact that genetic material changes gradually is the only scenario that makes evolution possible. But why did we happen to have genetic material that mutates at just the right pace? Doesn't that imply a background designer?

For some critical comment, see here. 

Evolution and its impact on Christian theism

There are two aspects of evolution that raise issues for religion. One is the obvious conflict between the theory of evolution and the traditional literal reading of Genesis. If, as traditionalists assert, the Bible gives us a comprehensive genealogy of the human race, then the age of not only "the earth" but also the heavens can at least approximately be calculated, and it comes to about 4004 B. C. (at least, that is what Bishop Ussher thought). That, of course, conflicts with evolution, but it also conflicts with garden-variety astronomy, which teaches that distant stars can be a million light years away. This site attempts to answer that question on behalf of the traditional reading of Genesis.  But such a reading of Genesis was rejected not merely by moderns who have been shown the problems with this by modern science. It was rejected by St. Augustine, hardly someone running scared from modern science.

The other, and more serious issue, is that evolution attempts to provide an explanation of speciation which replaces design with a trial and error process without design. At least in theory, you should be able to get to any level of sophistication in the engineering of the human body through genetic replication, natural selection, and, of course, enough time. So we can't go as easily as believers would like from what looks like the tremendous engineering of the human body to an intelligent designer, much less a creator. What looked to even our eighteenth century forbears like overwhelming reason to believe that there was an intelligence behind our universe (even for deists, who claimed that God created and designed the universe, but did not interfere in its operation, and did not incarnate himself as Christ to save the world). Even Hume, depending on how you read him, seems to cave in to a very denatured form of the design argument at the end of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. But ever since Darwin, the sledding has been tougher for arguments from design to a Designer of the world. Some of the most popular forms of the design argument today make an end run around evolution, and look at the cosmic constants in place at the Big Bang, which, by definition cannot be products of an evolutionary process. 

Does science presuppose a theological world-view?

In the ensuing three hundred years, the theological dimension of science has faded. People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they come from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as a lawlike order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.



Physicist Paul Davies "Physics and the Mind of God"

Why IS the universe not absurd, if there is no God? Why don't the laws of nature change from one week to the next?

A Robin Collins paper on design.

Should the existence of an understandable, law-governed world surprise us?

At least, apart from theistic assumptions? Einstein called the order in nature a "miracle."

“a priori one should expect a chaotic world which
cannot be grasped by the mind in any way...
[T]he kind of order created by Newton’s theory
of gravitation...is wholly different. Even if the
axioms of the theory are proposed by man, the
success of such a project presupposes a high
degree of ordering of the objective world.... That
is the “miracle” which is being constantly
reinforced as our knowledge expands.”

--Albert Einstein, Letters to Solovine (New York: Philosophical

Library, 1987), 131.
HT: Angus Menuge

William Lane Craig on the Anthropic Principle

I heard Craig give this paper back in, I think, 1987. It is in response to the John Barrow and Frank Tipler book from that time.

William Lane Craig on the Anthropic Argument

Roger Peck on Design Arguments for God

Some discussion of the fine-tuning argument for theism

This is a discussion of the fine-tuning argument for theism, which is William Lane Craig's second argument in his debate with Douglas Jesseph

Hume on religion

Hume on Religion
The Case for Agnosticism
I. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Hume’s most systematic work on religion was published after his death. This may have been because, earlier in the 18th century, someone did jail time for writing a book critical of Christianity.
This is the link to the text of that work:
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
II. The Three Characters in the Dialogues
Cleanthes, the defender of the argument from design.
Demea, a defender of cosmological arguments but sometimes sounds like a fideist (one who believes on faith).
Philo, a religious skeptic who, for the most part, speaks for Hume.
III. Why Hume reject a priori arguments
Reason alone can establish nothing concerning matters of fact.
You will remember that Aquinas overcame the “who made God” problem by saying that God is a necessary being, while other beings exist contingently.
But according to Hume, necessary existence has no meaning. What can be necessary are relations of ideas. Whatever we can conceive of as existing, we can conceive of as not existing.
IV. Causal arguments
Hume maintains that we cannot use the principle “Every event has a cause.” Causal inferences occur when we perceive spatial contiguity, temporal succession and constant conjunction. When these conditions obtain, our natural habits of mind lead us to conclude that there is a causal relation. But with God’s causing the cosmos, this doesn’t meet these criterion. So we are extending causal reasoning beyond its legitimate boundaries. We know only one universe, and we have not seen a constant conjunction between universes and the activities of universe-makers.
V. The argument from similar causes (the design argument)
One might argue for theism as follows:
Similar effects have similar causes.
The universe is similar to various things that have intelligent causes (like a watch).
Therefore, (probably) the universe has an intelligent cause.
Arguments of this type were very popular in Hume’s day, and they are sometimes used today.
VI. Hume’s first objection
From a finite effect you cannot conclude an infinite cause. So if the argument works it only proves the existence of a being powerful enough to create our universe, not an all-powerful being.
VII. Hume’s second objection
We can’t assume that the cause is perfect. After all, the cause of the universe didn’t produce a perfect universe, so on what basis do we say that the cause is perfect? There are lots of things in it that could be better (tornadoes, floods, terrorists, Bush, the Arizona Cardinals). Consider how we grade car manufacturers. We grade them on how good their cars are. So how should we grade universe-makers? And when we grade whoever or whatever made the universe by this standard, how does the universe-maker come out? Less than perfect maybe? (This is the basis of what is by far the most popular argument against theism, the argument from evil).
VIII. Objection three: What if the universe were perfect?
Even that wouldn’t prove that the universe-maker was perfect. After all, he could have honed his or her universe-making skills through eons of practicing.
IX. Objection four: Why only one God?
If we are going to use the analogy of human contrivances, then we must recognize that many human contrivances have many makers. So why not be a polytheist, and say that the universe was put together by a committee, or an assembly line.
X. What does the universe resemble?
A watch you say? How about a vegetable, which is not produced by intelligent design. Or an animal, which is produced by sexual reproduction. Let’s see, the universe is like an animal, like effects produce like causes, so….that would be the big bang theory now wouldn’t it?
XI. Hume and evolution
Hume, in one passage, considers the possibility attributing the complex, design-appearing features of the universe to an evolutionary process, though he does not endorse this explanation. Full-blown atheism was rare in Hume’s time, and Hume was not an atheist.

Contemporary atheist Richard Dawkins wrote:
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 6