Philosophy of Religion: Covers A Great Deal of Ground Including
Philosophy of Religion: Covers A Great Deal of Ground Including
Philosophy of Religion: Covers A Great Deal of Ground Including
•How are science and religion related? Are they naturally opposed,
complementary, or independent bodies of beliefs?
•
•We will concentrate on:
•Cosmological Argument
•Ontological Argument
Philosophy of Religion
•First Up:
How much of the questions marks can Gilligan fill in? To what specificity?
Philosophy of Religion
Inductive argument
William Paley
Philosophy of Religion
Inductive argument
Why should it excite wonder? Suppose
turtles did “stick out like sore thumbs,”,
like the watch does on the deserted isle;
and we were asked to think analogically
about turtles’ origins, as Gilligan is forced
to do:
William Paley
Philosophy of Religion
Analogical Arguments are stronger when the two things being compared
share higher numbers of known properties, weaker when these numbers
are low. So, lets find the disanalogies. How are the turtle and watch
importantly different, and how do these differences throw doubt upon the
analogical argument Paley presents?
Philosophy of Religion
Distinctive Features of thoroughly known case (The Watch or Distinctive Features of partially known case (the turtle or similar
similar item) item)
•Materials (metals) •Biological materials
•Known to be Artificial •Origins not known
•Humans witnessed design and construction •Humans did not witness origins
•One purpose “imposed” •Several purposes? Any “imposed”?
•“operates” according to some basic physics. No self direction •“operates” according to complex biochemical laws. Self directed
as well
Distinctive Features of thoroughly known case (The Watch or Distinctive Features of partially known case (the turtle or similar
similar item) item)
•Materials (metals) •Biological materials
•Known to be Artificial •Origins not known
•Humans witnessed design and construction •Humans did not witness origins
•One purpose “imposed” •Several purposes? Any “imposed”?
•“operates” according to some basic physics. No self direction •“operates” according to complex biochemical laws. Self directed
as well
Distinctive Features of thoroughly known case (The Watch or Distinctive Features of partially known case (the turtle or similar
similar item) item)
•Materials (metals) •Biological materials
•Known to be Artificial •Origins not known
•Humans witnessed design and construction •Humans did not witness origins
•One purpose “imposed” •Several purposes? Any “imposed”?
•“operates” according to some basic physics. No self direction •“operates” according to complex biochemical laws. Self directed
as well
Features of thoroughly known case (Aircraft Features of partially known case (the turtle or
Carrier or similar item) similar item)
Philosophy of Religion
Features of thoroughly known case (Aircraft Features of partially known case (the turtle or
Carrier or similar item) similar item)
•Multiple purposes/multiple systems •Ditto
•All coordinated for one overall purpose •Ditto
•Navigation aids allow it to detect outside •Ditto
world and navigate/eliminate threats
•Product of centuries of development
•Ditto
•Trial and error learning and explicit planning
•????
using engineering principles
•Designed by teams
•????
•Subsystems designed by teams
•????
•Constructed by teams, distinct from designers
•????
•No one person has all knowledge of the
•????
vessel and its design
Philosophy of Religion
Theistic Non-Theistic
Darwinian Stochastic
Modern
theories pre-
Punctuated Steady state Ancient DNA
equilibrium gradualism atomism discovery
Agent Naturalistic
Based
The traditional
If you take into account monotheistic
the apparent
explanation has
imperfections in
organisms, all of these a hard time
theories, except one,have explaining
a relatively easy way to these.
explain them.
Naturalistic-based explanations of organisms
Agent Naturalistic
Based
A better
Example: The sea-turtle is example that
not well designed for
hits us closer to
terrestrial travel, and is
very vulnerable when home:
doing so. An all-good, all-
knowing, all-powerful
designer would have
Naturalistic-based explanations of organisms
Agent Naturalistic
Based
A better
example that
hits us closer
to home:
Human Teeth.
Naturalistic-based explanations of organisms
Agent Naturalistic
Based
A better
How does traditional monotheism example that
account for or “allow” the hits us closer
existence of flaws, pain, to home:
suffering, and imperfections in
the designed objects? That is our Human Teeth.
next lecture!
Naturalistic-based explanations of organisms
Agent Naturalistic
Based
What is
Features more,known
of partially othercase
examples cited
(DNA/Cellular by Dembski
‘machinery’)
only work because they bear a stronger
analogical relationship to the things with which
we are already
•Instruction familiar, than do cells and DNA.
code, machines that translate into physical actions.
•All coordinated for construction of objects (cells/organisms)
We leap in his direction in such cases as the
Rosetta
•How long didStone or DNA
it take for Mount Rushmore
to come into being?only because
we and
•Trial have previous
error experience
learning and of using
explicit planning human beings
engineering and IT
doing the sorts of arrangements or modifications
•Designed by teams spread across space and time
of the very sort of natural objects that we find in
•Subsystems
those cases, designed by teamsthere is in this case of
whereas
molecular
•Constructed bymachinery
teams, can be significant disanalogy in
distinct from designers
precisely
•No one personthat regard. about everything involved
has knowledge
Well, mybyfine
•Designed teamsAmerican friend,
spread across space that’s going to
and time
take somedesigned
•Subsystems convincing.
by teams By your 21st century
models (soby I’m
•Constructed teams,told)
can bethe universe
distinct is somewhere
from designers
between 13has
•No one person and 15 thousand
knowledge million..oh
about everything involved I
mean billion years old, and Earth around 4500
million..er.. 4.5 billion. You mean to tell me
Now, How might
that isn’t enough time to hit the jackpot at
least once? Hard to believe my non-wigged
friend.
Hume respond to
all this?
Philosophy of Religion
Let me explain with an analogy:
Because I speak
So, there is something the
English?
functionality of which you are
acquainted with quite apart from
the particulars of the event you
witness in that room (or the
objects you see) So, aside from
the low probability, it is this
functionality or expression of
meaning that tends you toward
this inference to intelligence.
Philosophy of Religion
The situation with the building blocks of DNA
(nucleic acids and such) is like this
analogical case, but involves much larger
improbabilities. You must take into account
not only the possible combinations of the four
base pairs, but, the arrangements of these
combinations along the double-helix spine in
millions of places, slots or steps along that
ladder. These are akin to letters. There are
many more possible sequences of groups of
these amino acid base pairs than there are
letters of the alphabet. A vast majority of
such sequences, like our first string of
letters, don't do anything at all. Only a very
few sequences of the many that are logically
and physically possible are also functional,
and can code for and build organisms from
materials found in their environs, or brought
into the environs. (This does not include
probabilities of random origin of the protein
machines and amino acids that are their
bases). Addition of these reduces the odds
even more. The chances that functional cell-
building, self-replicating sequences having
occurred by chance are vanishingly small,
even given the age of Earth and universe.
Philosophy of Religion
Returning to the sentence in the classroom example,
let’s generously assume that someone set about using
the random drawing method to generate the
meaningful sequence. For each draw of 16, the chance
of hitting the jackpot is 1 in 479615345916448342016.
Now, suppose also that we make a 16 character draw
once a second. Suppose that we do pick a total of
479615345916448342016 times. We can expect, so
probability calculus tells us, to draw the magic combo
once in that set of draws.