Since the publication of The Selfish Gene (1976), Richard Dawkins has become an increasingly prominent figure in debates about the nature and value of scientific enquiry, particularly in relation to human origins, and about the relationship between science and religion.Read more at location 450
The heyday of such speculation was the Middle Ages, when metaphysicians of each of the ‘religions of the book’ developed the field of natural theology. Three of the greatest figures were the Muslim Avicenna (Ibn Sina); the Jew Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon) and the Christian Aquinas (Tommaso d’Aquino).Read more at location 477
Drawing on the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, these and other metaphysicians of the period developed an understanding of knowledge which they characterised as ‘science’ (scientia).Read more at location 486
In the case of Aquinas’s proofs, however, the demonstration proceeds in the opposite direction: from effect to cause and more precisely from what is observable in nature to its unobservable transcendent creative source.Read more at location 494
While there is renewed interest in natural theology, most philosophers who favour theism are now inclined to think that there simply cannot be a strict demonstration of the existence of God, but only a probabilistic proof. In other words, an argument to the effect that given the world it is more likely than not that there is a God, or that God’s existence provides the best explanation of things we observe.Read more at location 497
The first charge is an old one. It is classically presented in one of the most corrosive works of anti-theistic Enlightenment philosophy, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) by David Hume (1711-76). I say ‘anti-theistic’ rather than ‘atheistic’ philosophy, since although he is often spoken of as an atheist, Hume’s true position is hard to determine.Read more at location 514
Philo, speaks as follows: ‘Is the deity willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?’Read more at location 517
St Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (11:33-34), where he quotes Isaiah (40:13): ‘Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as his counsellor has instructed him?’ Answer: no one in their right minds. These constitute spiritual reflections; but there are also theoretical treatments of the problem among premodernist philosopher-theologians.Read more at location 526
The theoretical response to the challenge of evil is formally valid but few could suppose that it is religiously satisfying.Read more at location 531
The problem of evil can be expressed by saying ‘if there is any unnecessary evil in the world then there is no God’. The theist responds by pointing out that this is logically equivalent to the claim ‘if there is a God then there is no unnecessary evil in the world’.Read more at location 532
To consider only the Western tradition: most of its greatest philosophers have also been theologically (as well as scientifically) minded. In addition to those already mentioned the list includes the following: Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), Bonaventure (1217-74), Descartes (1596-1650), Spinoza (1632-77), Locke (1632-1704), Leibniz (1646-1716), Berkeley (1685-1753), Reid (1710-96), Kant (1724-1804), Hegel (1770-1831), Kierkegaard (1813-55), William James (1842-1910), and Henri Bergson (1859-1941).Read more at location 538
think A.N. Wilson expresses very well the sense of doubt and even terror that overcame the educated classes in consequence of the naturalising project of 18th- and 19th-century scientific thought.Read more at location 553
Discussing the geologist Charles Lyell in God’s Funeral (1999), Wilson writes: ‘Lyell could show that God, if existent, could not possibly have brought the world into being, in all of its present geological formations, in six days. Darwin could make the even more disturbing discovery that Hume was right, and there was no need to posit a notion of purpose behind nature at all.’Read more at location 554
The first is of lesser significance since even in the early centuries of Christianity it was recognised by Augustine and others that the Genesis creation story should not be read literally, and by the Middle Ages that thought was common to Christian, Jewish and Islamic thinkers.Read more at location 558
Here, for example, are extracts from Aquinas’s first and fifth ways (with slight adjustments to the McDermott translation): The first and most obvious way is the argument from change. It is evident from experience, and quite certain, that some things are in process of change [e.g. in respect of location, speed, size, temperature and so on]. Now whatever is changing is being changed by something else … and if this other thing is itself in process of change then it is being changed by yet another thing; and that thing in turn by another. But this cannot go on forever or else there will be no first cause and, in consequence, no subsequent causes of change … Thus we arrive at some first cause of change which is not itself being changed by anything, and this is what everyone understands by God … The fifth way is based on the governance of nature. We observe that things in nature act for a purpose which is apparent from their acting generally in the same ways and for the sake of some good. [For example, flowers turn towards the light, birds make nests, hearts circulate blood, etc.] But whatever lacks awareness cannot act for the sake of an end except by being directed towards it by one who does have knowledge and intelligence, just as the arrow is directed by the archer towards its [i.e. the archer’s] target. Therefore everything in nature is directed to its goal by one with knowledge and intelligence, and this we call God.Read more at location 583
Very broadly speaking, arguments from the world to God come in two forms corresponding to Aquinas’s several proofs. First, those that reason from the existence of something that might not have been or which is not self-explanatory, to the existence of something that is necessary – these are grouped under the heading cosmological arguments.Read more at location 594
Second, those arguments that reason from the orderly character of things to the existence of a designer. These are classified as teleological arguments.Read more at location 597
Consider standard forms of (a) cosmological and (b) teleological arguments: a) 1. Some things change. 2. If any things change then there must be an uncaused cause of change. 3. Therefore there is an uncaused cause of change. b) 1. Some things exhibit regularity. 2. If any things exhibit regularity then there must be an uncreated designer. 3. Therefore there is an uncreated designer.Read more at location 606
The idea that regularity or order in nature might be the product of blind chance had a devastating impact upon 19th-century theologians and intellectually sophisticated believers. Darwin gave up his own religious belief,Read more at location 637
the arguments of the Cambridge don and Anglican clergyman William Paley (1743-1805) seemed modern, scientific and supportive of belief.Read more at location 643
Paley later identifies biological examples which he argues are analogous to mechanical systems such as the watch.Read more at location 652
It was the genius of Darwin (and others) to conceive of how the same effects could have resulted from random mutation operating over multitudes of generations.Read more at location 658
In his Principles of Geology (1830-34), Lyell set out sound methods and results which showed the Earth to be millions of years old and to contain fossils of long extinct species (current estimates date some rocks to 3.8 billion years).Read more at location 661
It was previously judged inconceivable that the natural world could be anything other than the product of intelligent design – something that in his Natural History of Religion (1757) even Hume appeared to concede.Read more at location 664
I am concerned instead with certain philosophical difficulties. First, there are features of human life whose adaptive utility is difficult to demonstrate.Read more at location 672
Second and more generally problematic, however, is the fact that the very process of evolution seems to require non-evolved features.Read more at location 678
Michael Behe, an American professor of biochemistry. In Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996),Read more at location 681
One of Behe’s favourite examples is the bacterial flagellum.Read more at location 686
Behe’s conclusion is evident. The theory of evolution ultimately relies upon elements which could not themselves be products of natural evolution.Read more at location 700
c) 1. Some things in nature exhibit irreducible systemic complexity. 2. If any things in nature exhibit irreducible systemic complexity, then ultimately there must be an uncreated designer. 3. Therefore there is an uncreated designer.Read more at location 708
a second argument against the adequacy and completeness of evolutionary theory as a general account of the origins of life – a longer presentation and defence of this is given in Atheism and Theism (1996 2nd edition, 2003), a debate between me and the philosopher J.J.C. Smart.Read more at location 720
Responding to the lack of adequate fossil evidence to support the thesis that the formation of new species is the result of accumulated mutation, some theorists have proposed the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’. The late Stephen Jay Gould argued that evolutionary change may occur quite rapidly after long periods without significant development. Even so, no one supposes that one species simply evolves from another by a single step. Rather the idea is that there is ‘cumulative selection’:Read more at location 723
Evidently this supposes that there is already in place some form of reproduction possessed by the original and successor generations. Yet reproduction is an adaptive feature to be explained by selection no less than are others. But how can it be? Selection operates over generations, and successive generations only come into being through the replicative powers of their ancestors.Read more at location 727
In the face of the anti-religious triumphalism of Dawkins and the marginally lesser presumption of Wilson, I have argued that there is life in the old arguments for the existence of God.Read more at location 738
