THE WATCHMAKER AND THE WATCH

Natural Theology

Natural Theology

Drawing of inferences and proofs regarding God from the natural world.

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.”

William Paley (1743 – 1805)

Natural Theology (1802)A watch implies a watchmaker.This is a dangerous argument.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.