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THE WATCHMAKER AND THE WATCH
Natural Theology
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Natural Theology
Drawing of inferences and proofs regarding God from the natural world.
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John Ray (1627 – 1705)
The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation:
“There is for a free man no occupation more worthy and delightful than to contemplate the beauteous works of nature and honor the infinite wisdom and goodness of God.”
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William Paley (1743 – 1805)
Natural Theology (1802)A watch implies a watchmaker.This is a dangerous argument.
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The Argument from Design
From a Christian perspective, just proving the existence of God is no big deal.
A corporate God? An apprentice?Is a watch like an organism that reproduces
itself?Does God work like a human?Can we distinguish real design from our ideas
about it?There is no way to measure degrees of
design.It’s an appeal to ignorance – God of the gaps.
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Intelligent Design, the Modern Design Argument
Intelligent causes have a crucial role in the origin and design of the universe and of life and its diversity.
Design is empirically detectable in nature.
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William Dembski
“Instead of arguing for the existence of a designer … intelligent design asks how positing an intelligent cause to explain such objects offers fresh scientific insights … the point is to see what a designer helps explain. The point is not to establish the existence of the designer.”
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Dembski Again
“Intelligent design begins with features of the world that are inherently inexplicable in terms of natural causes – not merely features of the world that for now, lack a natural cause explanation, but rather for which natural causes are in principle incapable of providing an explanation.”
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Naturalism
Methodological naturalism: We should appeal only to natural causes for explanations.
Philosophical naturalism: Nature is all there is.
Philosophical naturalism entails atheism. Methodological naturalism does not.