H5267: PART A: Exploration towards the Divine Mystery (cont.) (I)Ways of going towards the Divine (cont.)

(b)ORDER AND DESIGN AND SCIENTIFIC THEISM - cf. the Argument from Design, also called the 'Teleological Argument'

(A) Intuitive presentation:

: Touching the Divine Mystery in the midst of an experience of the beauty and order of the Natural World.

• Even philosophers admit that what we have here is in the way of a codification by philosophers of a reaction to the world that is deeply impedded in the human consciousness (Swinburne), originating from experiences of the beauty and order of the natural world, both living and non-living. This is one reason why even the likes of Hume and Kant show this way a lot of respect. Cf. Hume, Dialogues, Part XII, and Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic.

• A particular advantage of the argument is that the experience of wonder at the beauty and simplicity of the order of nature is perhaps strongest of all among scientists and philosophers, not only some practicing biologists but also and even especially mathematical physicists. Thus Plato, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Peacocke, Jaki, Bartholomew, Thorpe, Paul Davies, John Polkinghorne (see bibliography for latter names).

• Nowadays a lot of emphasis is placed on the rather special character of the order in the universe we happen to live in. If the fundamental laws and constants were even a little bit different, we wouldn’t be here. It seems the universe is a put-up job (Paul Davies). However, this is only one form of the argument, and probably not the strongest.

• One difficulty with this way is in respect of what exactly it can be reasonably taken as directing us towards --unless used as a complement to the cosmological approach (showing the giving of Being, the Creator-Creating, the Economic-God as intelligent and with a feeling for beauty), or to some other way such as the way of religious experience.

By itself it is probably not enough to justify belief in creation out of nothing, or in an infinite Creator, and by itself might well leave us undecided about benevolence or transcendence.

However, even the sceptical Hume is prepared to admit that a reasonable person would on the basis of the experiences accept "that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence".

But before we come to any conclusions about this, it is necessary to distinguish a number of significantly different philosophical codifications of this way relating to a number of different experiences.
 
 
 

(B)Technical details

Following on Swinburne, The Existence of God, Chs. 10 and 8, there is a need to distinguish three or four importantly different kinds of argument, corresponding to three or four importantly different kinds of experience or pre-reflective contact points.

Distinguish firstly between

• Arguments from PROVIDENCE, following on experience of order as directed to human and animal welfare or at least existence, on the one hand

• Arguments from ORDER as such, the intelligibility of the universe, beautiful in its intelligibility independent of whether directed as such to human and animal welfare on the other.

I: arguments from PROVIDENCE may be themselves be of two kinds:

(i) arguments from Particular Providence: some particular pattern of order manifested on a unique occasion in a person's life-time: discerning the Lord/Lady's guiding hand in the events of my life or in the life of my community. Most appropriately expressed as 'testimony' of one kind or another, but can still be reasonable for a person who has the experience, and to some lesser extent also for others.
 

(ii) arguments from General Providence: the fact, if it is a fact, that the general features of the world are such as to show that a good God is providing for the existence and basic needs of conscious beings.
 

• We are not necessarily presupposing divine intervention in the operation of scientific laws or that what happens can't be given an explanation in terms of such laws.

• What cannot be given a scientific explanation is why there are these particular laws and these particular initial conditions, why the laws of nature are such as to produce those features of the universe that make the world a place where there can well exist and thrive conscious beings like people and higher animals. At this point the argument joins with the cosmological argument in respect of the question, why this particular kind of world and not some other. Cf. the so-called 'Anthropic Principle' in cosmology.

(II) arguments from ORDER

-- differ from arguments from providence in that here it is not the end to which the order contributes but the order itself which counts as evidence for a Cosmic Intelligence.

This order may be of two kinds, which once again gives us two forms of the argument (though they are often combined in one):

(i) the argument from spatial order or regularities of 'co-presence' (Swinburne): tends to focus especially on the order in the biological realm, animal and plant organisms, e.g. a human eye, but even a leaf would do.

Cf. William Paley's classic argument of the watch and the watchmaker.
 

• It was the argument in this form that was supposedly undermined by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which has complex order originating from less complex orderings and eventually from inorganic matter.

•  This may not so much destroy the argument as require it to be updated --thus Swinburne, also Bartholomew, Thorpe, Polkinghorne, chance as actually quite an intelligent mechanism for exploring the potentialities of matter in different environment.

(ii) the argument from temporal order or regularities of succession:

• --The universe as characterized by vast, all pervasive temporal order, the conformity of nature to formulae, as recorded in the scientific laws we manage to come up with, laws and theories often of great beauty and simplicity.

• We get too anthropocentric in our idea of God, however, and this version of the Fifth Way of St Thomas (which is an argument from order, not from providence) may contribute to a correction, a re-direction of our concern to the Cosmic Pantocrator, the Cosmic Christ, Sophia, Logos, through whom all things were made, risen Lord of All and in All, the creative Pneuma who hovers over the waters.

C) History of the design approach in philosophy --in brief.

•  --the basic principle of the teleological argument goes back at least to Plato, Laws, Book X: see Hartshorne and Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, p. 46. Plato uses it here as a complement to a version of what we have called the cosmological argument, to determine whether the World Soul is or is not a principle of intelligence, wisdom and virtue.

•  --already in a well developed form in the works of Philo of Alexandria, also an argument from cosmic order. See Hartshorne and Reese, p. 77. Philo compares the universe to a great city.

•  --Aquinas' Fifth Way is probably also an argument from cosmic order rather than an argument from providence, esp. if we interpret it along the lines of the version in the Summa Contra Gentiles: the unconscious co-operation of different kinds of material things in the production and maintenance of a relatively stable cosmic system, rather than the benefits accruing to us from our use of certain objects.

•  --the Argument from Design, usually focussing on spatial order, was the favourite argument of both theists and deists in the 18th century, including Isaac Newton and the majority of his disciples, in Newton in a modest fashion, in some of his followers in a less modest, anthropocentric form. Also among biologists and natural historians and in popular apologetics of the time, concentrating on plants and animals. Among philosophers, cf. esp. Bishop Butler.

•  This mostly spatial order argument was submitted to a thorough examination and allegedly largely devastating critique towards the end of the century, at the hands first of Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, almost all of which (except Part IX) is devoted to it, published 1779; and then of Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Transcendental Dialectic.

Hume: the proof, considered as an allegedly scientific argument to be evaluated according to the rules of evidence which apply to arguments of this kind, proves very little: that the universe sometime arose from something like design. It shows neither the infinity nor the unity of deity and given the appearance of things has no chance of showing benevolence. Indeed given possible alternative hypotheses it may prove nothing at all.
        Hume finds it difficult to avoid the intuitive appeal of the argument, or, rather, of the experience behind the argument.  Natural good sense, he thinks (or apparently thinks) is in favour of it, and a sensible person would probably admit in spite of all their scruples aht the cause or causes of order in the universe probably do bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.

Kant: the proof, though it always deserves to be mentioned with respect, as the oldest, the clearest and that most in conformity with the  common reason of humanity, can, at most, demonstrate the existence of an architect of the world, whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of the material with which he/she/it works, not of a creator of the world. [cf. Plato's Demiurge}

• This did not stop the argument from being popular, however: William Paley's Evidences of Christianity, the watch and the watchmaker theme, is dated 1794. On the critical side, see also Voltaire, Candide, the direct target of which is Leibniz's idea that this is the best of all possible worlds.

•  --the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection knocked it on the head, or was thought to, and led to the virtual disappearance of the argument from design from popular apologetics. Strictly speaking this affects only the first form of the argument from order and may not even be devasting to that (see above).

•  --the foremost early proponent of the teleological argument this century is probably Dr F.R. Tennant: see John Hick, The Existence of God, pp. 120ff. for an extract, and E.L. Mascall, He Who Is, Ch. XII, for a commentary.

•  Alfred North Whitehead's reasons for introducing God into philosophy include also an approach along the lines of the argument from temporal order: the need to talk in terms of a principle of limitation, also of possibility and of novelty, in the course of developing a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience might be interpreted. See Science and the Modern World (1925), Process and Reality (1929). This is in fact a combination of the second form of the Cosmological Way with both the argument from general providence and the argument from temporal order. The 'primordial envisagement of eternal objects'/the divine persuasion is what determines that this world is this way rather than some other way, that it is ordered rather than chaotic, and that it is developing in the direction of more and more subtle kinds of ordering providing the necessary conditions for e.g. dolphins and apes and human beings.

• Charles Hartshorne also defends an argument from order, in his case not so dependent on the overall process metaphysics --see Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. In the Process camp, see also David Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern World, chs. 4 and 5.

 For a contemporary philosophical defence of the argument, moderately sophisticated, see Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (1979), Ch. 8. Also, Richard Swinburne, "The Argument from Design", Philosophy, Vol. XLIII, No. 5, July 1968, pp. 199-212. For an appreciation of Swinburne, see Mark Wynn’s recent article.

Swinburne also has an argument from beauty: our experience of beauty in the universe as constituting grounds for a probable argument for the existence of a God with a feeling for beauty. There are whole heaps in recent philosophical literature, a lot of it having to do with Hume's supposedly devastating critique. For some references, see bibliography in Volume II of The Doing of Philosophy in the Philosophical Works of David Hume (doctoral dissertation, Leuven 1985), in library. See also H.D. Lewis, Philosophy of Religion (Teach Yourself Books, The English Universities Press, London, 1965), Ch. 17.
 

The Design Approach, as already noted, is a strong element within contemporary scientific theism, often in combination with a version of the Cosmological Way. See people referred to under Intuitive Presentation, above, references in general bibliography. Also David Griffin, editor, The Reenchantment of Science, and works by Charles Birch. See especially Paul Davies and John Polkinghorne, and from the philosophical side, Peter Forrest, God without the Supernatural.
 

We now turn to a family of Ways which have less to do with the World Out There and rather more to do with the human world, the world of interpersonal relationships and of everyday experiences and strivings, where, it seems, God is also to be found, by some people even more readily.

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