4.2. Does God Exist?

The most common way for people of a Judeo-Christian culture to find their place in the scheme of things
is through a relationship with a personal God. Theism is belief in a personal God who is creator of the
world, and theists are those who believe in such a God. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one
God. Most of us have been raised to believe that the God of monotheism is an individual loving Being.
Having created the universe, He cares for each individual, actively participates in the life of each person,
and listens to and answers the prayers of individuals.

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Scientific discoveries and theories today challenge religious belief, although for some, science
strengthens belief.

This theistic concept has perhaps never been under greater attack than it is today. We live in a period
that has often pitted traditional religious concepts against the growing weight of scientific discovery. Can
we, should we, believe in the God of theism, or must we modify this belief, perhaps even abandon it in
light of what science has found? Even theologians are asking whether the believer can any longer
believe in a traditional God. They are questioning an idea that has centuries of tradition behind it and
that is a cornerstone of the lives of many people today. For many the traditional God is the basis not
only of our religious beliefs and experiences but also of our conception of ourselves and our place in the
universe.

Consider, for example, a scientific discovery that still amazes, yet has been accepted fact since 1995
when the Hubble telescope was used to count the galaxies. The visible universe around us contains
about 125 billion galaxies with billions of stars in each. Each star is a sun like our own, and many—
perhaps most—have planets like those that revolve around our own sun. And beyond the visible
universe there are undoubtedly hundreds of billions—perhaps an infinity—more galaxies. Can we even
comprehend an individual divine person who could rule over such an immense multitude of worlds? And
how are we to believe that such a God is personally concerned with each person’s daily life and
immortal destiny on our own tiny planet? All our traditional ideas of God shrink in the great vastness of
the universe that science has uncovered.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Do you believe in God? If you do, then, as best you can, explain your own reasons for thinking God
exists. Are any of your reasons for believing in God similar to any of the arguments for God in the
chapter? Are your reasons based on a personal experience like those discussed in the chapter? Do you
think you believe not because you have your own reasons for believing but because you were just raised
to believe? If so, explain the problems with that position. If you do not believe in God, explain your own
reasons for thinking God does not exist or for remaining agnostic. Are your reasons for not believing in
God similar to the arguments for atheism discussed in the chapter? Do you think you have no real
reasons for disbelieving but were just raised that way? If so, explain the problems with that position.

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For some people, proof of God’s existence is not needed, but for others, proof strengthens religious
belief.

Science has brought many of us to ask today not only if we accept the traditional concept of God, but
also if there is any God at all. Yet despite the rise of science and the decay of many traditional religious
forms, religion thrives in this country. Although science might shake the beliefs of many people, just as
many continue to hold fast to their belief in a personal caring God. And this belief continues to be their
way of locating themselves in the scheme of things. Others, as we will see, even find in science a new
basis for religious belief. In fact, the relationship between science and religion has never been one of
complete opposition nor complete harmony. Science has often called the claims of religion into
question, but at other times the claims of science have been used to support religious claims.

The Ancient of Days.© Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, UK/The Bridgeman Art
Library

The Ancient of Days.

We begin our overview of philosophy and religion with some of the arguments for the existence of God.
It is vital to recognize the purpose of these arguments: to advance the personal quest to know God.
Knowledge of God was and continues to be one of the most significant topics occupying thinkers. The
arguments advanced for God’s existence are one element in this centuries-long attempt to attain a
rational knowledge of God.

We present the arguments for the existence of God as illustrations of a traditional way by which people
have fortified their religious convictions, strengthened their relationship with a personal God, and
discovered something about that God. In reading these arguments, notice their reliance on reason and
sense experience. And keep in mind the contrasting approach, which we will also examine, of believing
on a nonrational basis. We will discuss this latter approach and how it serves as the basis for religious
belief for many people. In reading this chapter, then, you will begin to mine two rich veins in the
development of religious thought, the rational and the nonrational.

As we’ve just seen, various philosophers have pointed out what they consider to be obvious flaws in
each of the traditional proofs for God’s existence. These and other objections to the arguments for the
existence of God have led many people to the conclusion that the existence of God is uncertain.
Although agnostics have concluded that they just don’t know whether or not God exists, atheists go a
step further and decide that they know that God does not exist. Let’s look first at atheism.

Atheism

Atheism denies the major claims of all varieties of theism. In the words of Ernest Nagel (1901–1985), an
atheist himself, “Atheism denies the existence … of a self-consistent, omnipotent, omniscient, righteous
and benevolent being who is distinct from and independent of what has been created.”*

Religious people sometimes portray atheists as evil curmudgeons. But, as Nagel points out, philosophical
atheists tend to share a number of respectable characteristics. First, many agree with the idea that
sense observation and public verification are instrumental to truth and that scientific method is the best
approach to gain reliable knowledge of the material world around us. This idea is, in fact, a fundamental
belief of many atheists. As Nagel states, “It is indeed this commitment to the use of an empirical method
which is the final basis of the atheistic critique of theism.”

Second, and as a consequence of believing that sense observation and public verification provide the
only reliable basis of knowledge, atheists also tend to be materialists. As Nagel bluntly puts it: “An
atheistic view of things is a form of materialism.”

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Atheists believe there are good reasons to think there is no God. Many atheists base their atheism on
the ability of science and the scientific method to explain the material world, and so focus their concerns
on the world here and now.

Third, as a result of the view that nothing more exists beyond our material world, many thoughtful
atheists have focused their moral and social concerns on the world here and now. They have taken firm
stands against authoritarianism, oppression, and war while stressing the importance and value of the
individual. For example, the philosopher Bertrand Russell was an anti-war activist, who opposed British
imperialism, and condemned totalitarian governments. Because atheists cannot fortify their moral
positions with promises of haven or threats of hell, they must rely on what Nagel calls “a vigorous call to
intelligent activity—activity for the sake of realizing human potentialities and for eliminating whatever
stands in the way of such realization.”

But the fourth and defining characteristic of atheists is the belief that there are good reasons to believe
that God does not exist. What can such reasons look like? We have seen several objections to the
arguments for the existence of God. But even if these objections were correct, all they would show is
that we don’t have a good proof that God exists. But God might exist even though we can’t prove He
exists. So is it possible, instead, to prove that God does not exist? Here we consider perhaps the major
argument against the existence of God, the problem of evil. More than any other consideration, the
problem of evil has led many to atheism.

The Problem of Evil.

Clearly, humans and other living things continue to be beset by all kinds of evils: sickness, pain, suffering,
and death. Here are but a few examples taken from news reports:*

PHILADELPHIA—Police said that a 3-year old boy died after being tortured by the adults responsible for
his care. … Police say that he was kicked, punched and had his hands, feet and rear end burned with a
blowtorch. … 22-year old Nadera Batson was arrested and charged with murder. … [H]er boyfriend,
Marcus King, has also been implicated in the boy’s death.

PAYNESVILLE, MIN.—Fire burned through a barn at one of Minnesota’s largest rabbit farms early
Wednesday morning, killing hundreds of the animals. … The rabbits were literally burned alive in their
cages… “There were roughly 100 moms in there,” said Scott, “and they all had eight to nine babies with
them at the time.”

KATHMADU—Rescue teams began arriving in Nepal’s devastated capital Monday to help terrified and
homeless survivors of a 7.8 magnitude quake that killed more than 3,200 people in the impoverished
nation. The earthquake also triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest which killed at least 18 climbers.
Powerful aftershocks and heavy rains hampered rescue efforts. Said shopkeeper Rabi Shrestha: “I don’t
know why the gods want us to suffer like this.”

HENRYVLLE, IND.—A string of violent storms demolished small towns in Indiana and cut off rural
communities in Kentucky as an early season tornado outbreak killed more than 30 people, and the
death toll rose as daylight broke on Saturday’s search for survivors.

Are these kinds of events compatible with the claim that there exists an all-good, all-knowing, all-
powerful Creator? A Creator, in other words, who is benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent? Is not
this belief in a benevolent God at least paradoxical in the face of such events? If God is benevolent, He
would surely not want people and other living things to suffer. If God is omniscient, He surely knows
when people and other living things are suffering. If God is omnipotent, surely God could prevent any
suffering He wants to prevent. Yet the evil of suffering obviously exists. Is God perhaps not all-powerful
or not all-knowing? Or is it that God does not want to prevent suffering? But if God does not want to
prevent suffering, then God seems to have evil intentions, which certainly isn’t consistent with the
nature of a benevolent God.
In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, a discussion of the arguments for God’s existence, Hume
considers the question of evil. His conclusion, in the words of one of his characters, Philo, is that our
experience of the world argues against the existence of an all-good, all-powerful being:

My sentiments, replied Philo, are not worth being made a mystery of; and, therefore, without any
ceremony, I shall deliver what occurs to me with regard to the present subject. It must, I think, be
allowed that, if a very limited intelligence whom we shall suppose utterly unacquainted with the
universe were assured that it was the production of a very good, wise, and powerful being, however
finite, he would, from his conjectures, form beforehand a different notion of it from what we find it to
be by experience. Nor would he ever imagine, merely from these attributes of the cause of which he is
informed, that the effect could be so full of vice and misery and disorder, as it appears in this life.
Supposing now that this person were brought into the world, still assured that it was the workmanship
of such a sublime and benevolent being, he might, perhaps, be surprised at the disappointment, but
would never retract his former belief if founded on any very solid argument, since such a limited
intelligence must be sensible of his own blindness and ignorance, and must allow that there may be
many solutions of those phenomena which will forever escape his comprehension. But supposing, which
is the real case with regard to man, that this creature is not antecedently convinced of a supreme
intelligence, benevolent, and powerful, but is left to gather such a belief from the appearances of things
—this entirely alters the case, nor will he ever find any reason for such a conclusion. He may be fully
convinced of the narrow limits of his understanding, but this will not help him in forming an inference
concerning the goodness of superior powers, since he must form that inference from what he knows,
not from what he is ignorant of. The more you exaggerate his weakness and ignorance, the more
diffident you render him, and give him the greater suspicion that such subjects are beyond the reach of
his faculties. You are obliged, therefore, to reason with him merely from the known phenomena, and to
drop every arbitrary supposition or conjecture.*

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Many atheists argue, like Hume did, that if a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God existed, there
would be no evil. But there is evil. So, a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God does not exist.

Hume is arguing that ahead of time one might assume that the Creator of the universe is “a very good,
wise, and powerful being.” The natural conclusion should be that the universe He created would have
no “vice and misery and disorder.” But the universe we experience has a great deal of “vice and misery
and disorder.” So if we want to remain committed to the belief that the Creator is “good, wise, and
powerful” we will have to rationalize away this evil. We might say, perhaps, that evil is just beyond our
ability to comprehend. But suppose we were not already committed to the belief that the Creator is
“good, wise, and powerful.” Suppose that, instead, we are willing to accept whatever conclusion the
evidence around us suggests. Then our experience of the world could not support the claim that it was
created by “a very good, wise, and powerful being.” Instead the evidence would argue against the
existence of such a being.

There are two ways of understanding Hume. First, Hume may be suggesting a deductive argument that
proves that a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God necessarily does not exist. He would be
suggesting what we now call the “logical problem of evil,” which is this kind of argument:

If a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists, then there could be no evil in our world.

But there is evil in our world.

Therefore, a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God does not exist.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

In your view, is atheism more or less rational than agnosticism?

Has the existence of evil in our world ever, or even currently, made you doubt that God exists? If so,
what particular evils have you found most significant?

Do you believe in God in spite of the existence of evil? If so, what are your personal reasons for thinking
evil doesn’t disprove the existence of God? If you are not a believer, has the existence of evil had
anything to do with your belief God doesn’t exist?

The philosopher Blaise Pascal said atheism is not a good bet: “Let us weigh the gain and loss in betting
that God exists: if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. You should unhesitatingly
bet that He exists!” Do you agree?

In this “logical problem of evil,” premise (1) is supposed to express the idea that it is a logical
contradiction to say both that (A) “A benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God exists” and that (B)
“There is evil in our world.” In other words, it is impossible for both (A) and (B) to be true together. Or,
to express this in terms we used when we explained logical validity: Premise (1) says it is impossible to
imagine a situation in which both (A) and (B) are true.
On the other hand, Hume may be suggesting an inductive or probable argument that claims only that
the evidence supports the conclusion that God probably does not exist. In this case, he would be
suggesting what we now call the “evidential problem of evil,” which is an argument like this:

There is evil in our world.

The best explanation of the evil in our world is that there is no benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent
God.

Therefore, there probably is no benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God.

IconQuick Review

The “logical problem of evil” is a deductive argument based on the premise that it is a contradiction to
claim

(1)God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, and

(2)evil exists.

The “evidential problem of evil” is a probabilistic argument based on the premise that the best
explanation for evil is that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God does not exist.

This argument or “evidential problem of evil” is an inference to the best explanation. The reason why
the conclusion is only probable is because in an inference to the best explanation, it is always possible
that there is a better explanation but we just haven’t found it yet.

For many philosophers, the problem of evil is the “logical problem of evil.” J. L. Mackie, for example,
writes:

In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There
seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true
the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions:
the theologian, it seems, at once must and cannot consistently adhere to all three.*

Analyzing the Reading

The “logical problem of evil” says that statement (A) “A benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God
exists” contradicts statement (B) “There is evil in our world.” Explain why statement (A) contradicts
statement (B). That is, explain why (A) rules out (B) and (B) rules out (A)? In other words, if (A)
contradicts (B), then there is no situation in which (A) and (B) are both true; so explain why there is no
situation in which (A) and (B) are both true.

When you explained why (A) contradicts (B) you had to bring in additional information than what (A)
and (B) contain. For example, you might have had to add the idea that “A good god would not allow evil
if he could prevent it.” Or perhaps you added “An omniscient god would know about every evil as it
happens.” Make a list of all the additional claims you had to add to explain why (A) contradicts (B). Do
you think any of these additional claims might be false? Why? If one of your additional claims is false,
will (A) still contradict (B)? Why?

Mackie’s version of the “logical problem of evil” says the three statements “God is omnipotent,” “God is
wholly good,” and “Evil exists” seem to involve a contradiction yet all are “essential parts of most
theological positions.” Why does he claim the three are “essential parts of most theological positions”?
Do you agree with his claim? Could a Christian, for example, give up one of the three statements?

Mackie believes it is a “contradiction” to say “(A) God is omnipotent and (B) God is wholly good and (C)
Evil exists.” These cannot all be true, he says, because “good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a
good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing
can do.”* But is Mackie right? As we have seen, to say that (A), (B), and (C) are contradictory, is to say
that it is impossible to imagine a situation in which (A), (B), and (C) are all true. So the challenge to the
believer is to come up with a situation—even an imaginary situation would do the job—in which (A), (B),
and (C) are all true. Do you think it is possible to meet this challenge? If you could then you would have
proven that (A), (B), and (C) are not mutually contradictory.

For some philosophers, however, the problem of evil is the “evidential problem of evil.” Take, for
example, the philosopher William L. Rowe. He grants that a theist could explain evil and continue to
believe a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God exists. A theist could do this by saying that God has
to allow evil in order to achieve a greater good or prevent a greater evil. For example, believers might
say God permits suffering because that is the only way that humans can become morally virtuous, and
this greater good outweighs the evil of suffering. Or believers might say God permits suffering because
that is the only way to prevent the greater evil of people sinking into vice. But surely, Rowe claims, not
all evil is like this. He gives the example of a fawn caught in a fire:

Taking human and animal suffering as a clear instance of evil which occurs with great frequency in our
world, the argument for atheism based on evil can be stated as follows:
There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented
without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.

An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless
it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or
worse.

There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. [Premise] (2) seems to express a
belief that accords with our basic moral principles, principles shared by both theists and non-theists. If
we are to fault the argument for atheism, therefore, it seems we must find some fault with its first
premise.

[Premise (1)] Suppose in some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the
fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves
its suffering. So far as we can see, the fawn’s intense suffering is pointless. For there does not appear to
be any greater good such that the prevention of the fawn’s suffering would require either the loss of
that good or the occurrence of an evil equally bad or worse. Nor does there seem to be any equally bad
or worse evil so connected to the fawn’s suffering that it would have had to occur had the fawn’s
suffering been prevented. Could an omnipotent, omniscient being have prevented the fawn’s apparently
pointless suffering? The answer is obvious, as even the theist will insist. An omnipotent, omniscient
being could have easily prevented the fawn from being horribly burned, or, given the burning, could
have spared the fawn the intense suffering by quickly ending its life, rather than allowing the fawn to lie
in terrible agony for several days. Since the fawn’s intense suffering was preventable and, so far as we
can see, pointless, doesn’t it appear that premise (I) of the argument is true, that there do exist
instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without
thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse?*

Analyzing the Reading

Rowe suggests his “evidential” argument can only show God “probably” exists because “for all we know
there is some good outweighing the fawn’s suffering to which that suffering is connected in a way we do
not see.” What does he mean? Give an example of how there might be a good that requires the fawn’s
suffering and outweighs the fawn’s suffering? In other words, suggest some greater good that God could
achieve only by allowing the fawn’s suffering.

Consider this statement: “The existence of evil can show only that God is either not all-knowing or not
omnipotent; it cannot show that God does not exist.” Is this statement correct?
A playwright once wrote, “If God is good, He is not God; if God is God, He is not good.” Explain what he
meant.

The suffering of an animal, then, seems pointless. Such examples of intense suffering do not seem to
achieve a greater good nor prevent a greater evil. So Rowe concludes they apparently cannot be
explained by the theory that God allows evil to achieve a greater good or avoid a greater evil. Yet note
that Rowe’s last sentence in the quotation above is a question. He does not simply assert premise (1) is
true. In fact he later says: “the truth is that we are not in a position to prove that (1) is true.” The reason
we cannot prove (1) is that “for all we know, there is some… good outweighing the fawn’s suffering to
which that suffering is connected in a way we do not see.” So in the end, Rowe points out, he can only
conclude that an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being probably does not exist.

A few years later the philosopher Paul Draper made a key addition to the argument of the “evidential
problem of evil”.* Rowe’s example of “gratuitous” (i.e., pointless) evil, Draper suggested, is much better
explained by the hypothesis that if there are supernatural beings, they just don’t care about the
gratuitous suffering we experience in this world. In short, an omniscient, omnipotent God may exist, but
He is probably not benevolent.

Are the “evidential” arguments of Rowe and Draper right? Is it true that at least some terrible evils are
pointless, and that the best explanation of such evils is that either there is no God or God does not care?

Theistic Responses to the Problem of Evil.

Several theists have responded to the kind of evidential problem of evil argument that Rowe and Draper
advance. They have argued that God could not have created the world without evil, or that by allowing
evil God achieves a greater good. One approach argues that although God created the world, he had to
create a finite world and this finiteness is the source of evil. Yet God does not create that evil.

The early Christian theologian Saint Augustine (354–430), for example, argued that evil is a privation.
That is, evil is the loss of what is good from an entity that is in itself still good. Sickness, for example, is
the lack of health in a person, and the existence of a person is in itself good. Only God, he claims, can be
perfectly and completely good. So, anything that is not God must necessarily lack some good. God’s
creation, in other words, cannot be God. So it must be finite and limited, and so must contain
incomplete goodness and the possibility of the loss of goodness. Such a privation of goodness is what we
mean by evil. Yet God had good reason to create this finite and limited universe with its limited
goodness. For by creating a finite universe He created something good. He created a finite and limited
good, of course, but it is still a true good.
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Augustine argued that God produces what is good and only what is good. Because evil is the absence of
good, God does not produce evil. Moreover, what God creates must be finite and lack some good. So, if
God is to create a finite world, and thereby bring at least some goodness into existence, it has to contain
some evil.

What, after all, is anything we call evil except the privation of good? In animal bodies, for instance,
sickness and wounds are nothing but the privation of health … For evil is not a substance; the wound or
the disease is a defect of the bodily substance which, as a substance, is good. Such evil, then, is a
privation of that good which is called health.

The creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is its
Creator. Thus the good in created things can be diminished or increased. When their good is diminished,
that is evil. Still, even if it is diminished, something must remain of the thing’s original nature as long as
it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its
nature cannot be destroyed unless the thing itself is destroyed. … When, however, a thing is corrupted
[i.e., when it loses some of the good it had], its corruption is an evil because it is, to that degree, a
privation [a loss] of the good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is
evil, there is a corresponding diminishment of the good.*

Augustine concludes that it is wrong to argue that the existence of evil shows an all-good and all-
powerful God does not exist. Instead, evil exists because a finite world has to contain some evil or
privation of good if it is to be distinct from the all-good God. God could not prevent evil in our universe
unless He were to have created another God like himself. So even an omnipotent God cannot create a
finite world that has no evil.

But many critics of Augustine claim that his argument seems to dodge the issue. Call sickness lack of
health, if you wish, the fact remains that people experience pain and suffering, which they regard as evil.
Why does an all-powerful God allow such tremendous and painful “absences of good”? Surely a
benevolent omnipotent God could have created a world with less pain and less evil than ours contains.
Surely he could have created a world with less of the seemingly gratuitous suffering we see all around
us.

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Some believers argue that evil is necessary for good, in particular the good of human free will. Critics say
an omnipotent God could produce good without evil, in particular that God could have left humans free
but made them incapable of inflicting so much evil on each other. Moreover, this “free will” defense of
God’s existence would explain only “moral evil”; it would not explain “natural evils.”

But the most common way believers have dealt with the problem of evil is to claim that God had to
allow evil to achieve a greater good. Some have done this by arguing that human freedom is the cause
of evil. Proponents of this view argue that God made us free. Because we are free, we are free to do evil
as well as good. Even an omnipotent God could not make us free yet not free to do evil. Here is how
Richard Swinburne states this argument:

The free-will defense claims that it is a great good that humans have a certain sort of free will, which I
will call free and responsible choice, but that, if they do, then necessarily there will be the natural
possibility of moral evil. (By the “natural possibility” I mean that it will not be determined in advance
whether or not the evil will occur.) A God who gives humans such free will necessarily brings about the
possibility, and puts outside his own control, whether or not that evil occurs. It is not logically possible—
that is, it would be self-contradictory to suppose—that God could give us such free will and yet ensure
that we always use it in the right way. … Free and responsible choice is … the free will … to make
significant choices between good and evil, which make a big difference to the agent, to others, and to
the world. … It is good that the free choices of humans should include genuine responsibility for other
humans, and that involves the opportunity to benefit or harm them.*

However, critics of the “free will defense” claim there are several problems with the argument. First,
and most importantly, the argument does not explain all kinds of evil. Philosophers usually distinguish
“moral evils” from “natural evils.” A moral evil is one that is intentionally produced by a human being or
that a human being could have prevented but intentionally did not. Examples of moral evils would
include the pain and suffering people cause by murders, beatings, stabbings, torturing, and so on. A
natural evil, on the other hand, is one that is produced by natural processes and whose production does
not require the intentional actions or omissions of humans. Examples include the pain and suffering
caused by earthquakes, lightning strikes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. It also includes the pain and
suffering that animals and other nonhumans cause. The problem with the free will defense is that
although it may give a satisfactory account of moral evils, it ignores natural evils. Humans do not
produce natural evils. So, the argument that human freedom produces evil can only explain the source
of moral evils. It cannot explain why natural evil exists. And so it leaves open the possibility that either
God causes natural evils or God does not exist.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Philosophers distinguish between “moral evils” and “natural evils.” Give some examples of natural evils
that have inflicted serious pain and suffering on you or those you love. What are some “moral evils”
others have inflicted on you or those you love that caused you serious pain and suffering? Describe what
you felt (i.e., your feelings, emotions, and desires) about the evils at the time. For example, did you feel
anger, frustration, sadness, a thirst for revenge, a sense of betrayal? Were your feelings about the
natural evils different from those you felt about the moral evils? If so, then explain why you think your
feelings were different. If not, explain why they should have been different, and why you think they
weren’t.

According to Swinburne, “A God who gives humans free will necessarily brings about the possibility, and
puts outside his own control, whether or not that evil occurs.” From what you know about how your
own free will works, do you agree with Swinburne? That is, when you choose to do something good, do
you always feel the possibility of doing evil? Could you imagine yourself ever feeling free to choose what
is good without also feeling you could choose evil?

A house in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. This house was approximately one-quarter
mile from the break in the levy. A river of water hit it. Stoops lay empty with no houses behind them.
This photo was taken about nine months after Hurricane Katrina. Natural evils like this pose a problem
for the “free will defense.”© Sandra O’Claire/iStockphoto.com

A house in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. This house was approximately one-quarter
mile from the break in the levy. A river of water hit it. Stoops lay empty with no houses behind them.
This photo was taken about nine months after Hurricane Katrina. Natural evils like this pose a problem
for the “free will defense.”

The second problem with the free will defense is that it is not clear that it even gives a good account of
moral evils. Perhaps God does leave people free to do evil. But why would an all-powerful God let us
inflict such horrendous evils on each other? After all, if God is all-powerful, God could have made us
capable of inflicting only a limited amount of suffering on each other. We are vulnerable, easily injured
creatures to begin with. Why not make us incapable of inflicting a tremendous amount of suffering on
each other?

John Hick, whom we saw earlier in this chapter, provides a different explanation of why God might allow
evil. In his book Philosophy of Religion, Hick suggests that a world without suffering would be
unsatisfactory. Building on the views of the early Christians, Hick points to the idea that humans are
made in the image of God. But, he suggests, they have not yet achieved the kind of likeness to God that
Christ embodied. The world, then, “with all its rough edges,” must be the stage on which this remaining
part of the creative process takes place. And the world could not serve that purpose if God did not allow
evil.

To support his claim, Hick asks us to imagine what the world would be like if God did not allow any evils
in it. Imagine the world was a “paradise from which all … pain and suffering” were excluded.* In such a
world, people could not injure each other. A murderer’s knife might turn to paper, or his bullets might
melt into thin air. When thieves robbed a bank, the money they took would miraculously return to the
bank. All “fraud, deceit, conspiracy and treason” would no longer have any harmful effects on society.
People would no longer be injured in accidents. A child, for example, who fell from a tall building, would
somehow float safely down to the ground. Reckless driving would never result in death or injury. People
would not have to work because they would not suffer any harm if they refused to work. Most
importantly, we would not have to be concerned about each other because none of us would ever face
any “real needs or dangers.”

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Hick claims that a world without “pain, failure, sadness, frustration, and defeat” would not enable
people to develop “the moral qualities of human personality.” Good moral qualities are personal
qualities like kindness, selflessness, generosity, maturity, etc. If you look back on your life, does your
own experience tend to support or disprove Hick’s claim? For example, in your own life do you think you
acquired good “moral qualities” only when you had to suffer “pain, failure, sadness, frustration, and
defeat”? Or do you think that suffering “pain, failure, etc.” made it harder for you to develop good moral
qualities? Can you think of ways in which you could, or actually have, acquired good moral qualities
without having to go through “pain, failure, sadness, frustration, and defeat”? Do you think you have
any specific good moral qualities that you could only have acquired by going through “pain, failure,
sadness, frustration, and defeat”?

IconPhilosophy and Life

God’s Omniscience and Free Will

According to the traditional Western concept of God, God is omniscient—that is, God is all-knowing. But
does God’s knowledge leave any room for free will ? Many people believe it does not. If God is all-
knowing, they claim, then humans cannot be free. Here is how they argue:

Suppose God is all-knowing.

If God is all-knowing, then God knows what I will do in the future.

God cannot be wrong, so if God knows what I will do in the future, then it has to happen.

So what I will do in the future has to happen.

But if what I will do in the future has to happen, then I am not free to do anything else.
So I am not free—I am not able to do anything other than what God now knows I will do.

But this conclusion is distressing to believers. For if our actions are not free, then we cannot be held
responsible for them. That is, I cannot be blamed for doing something if I was not able to do anything
else. But if we can’t be blamed for anything we do, then what of traditional doctrines of heaven and
hell? How can we be punished for something if we couldn’t do anything else? How can we “repent” if
we never had the ability to avoid any sinful action? How can I be blamed for what I had no power to
change?

To avoid these conclusions, believers have rejected one or more of the premises of the preceding
argument. Some reject point 1 and say God is not all-knowing—his knowledge is limited. Others reject
point 2 and say God does not know now what I will do in the future because I have not yet decided what
I will do and God leaves me free to decide what I will do. Others reject point 3 and say that God can be
wrong because God is a fallible God. But, obviously, none of these options is very attractive to the
believer.

Questions

If you are a believer, do you agree with the preceding argument? If you don’t agree with it, which
premise do you think you should reject?

Suppose that instead of “God,” the preceding argument was about a supercomputer that knew
everything that would happen in the future and was infallible. Assuming such a supercomputer is
possible, would the argument still work?

IconQuick Review

Hick argues that evil is necessary, for “in a paradise” without pains, harms, injuries, needs, suffering,
dangers, or difficulties, ethical concepts would be meaningless and people could not develop into
virtuous beings.

How would this kind of world work? Hick suggests that nature would no longer operate through general
laws we must learn and respect if we want to avoid pain and death. Instead, nature would work through
“special providences.” Gravity, for example, would usually operate, but would be suspended when
allowing it to operate would end in someone being injured. Objects would sometimes be hard and solid,
but would become soft when necessary to avoid an injury. Science would become useless since the
world would no longer operate by fixed unchanging laws. Our lives would become like a kind of aimless
dream in which “we would float and drift at ease.”

In such a “hedonistic paradise,” Hick claims, our ethical concepts “would have no meaning.” If doing
wrong, for example, involves harming someone, then there could be no wrongdoing in such a world. Nor
could any actions be right as distinct from wrong. A moral virtue like courage would have no point in a
world in which there are no dangers. Generosity and kindness would likewise be pointless since no one
would have unmet needs or require the help of others. Prudence also would not be possible in a world
without a stable environment.

A world without evil, then, might promote pleasure. But it would not enable people to develop “the
moral qualities of human personality.” In that respect, such a world, Hicks claims, would be the worst of
all possible worlds. If our world is to be one in which we can become morally good people, then, it must
be a world very much like the world in which we actually live. That is, it must operate by regular laws. It
must, Hick concludes, be a world with real dangers, one in which people have problems and must
overcome obstacles. It must be a world in which pain, failure, sadness, frustration, and defeat are all real
possibilities. In short, it must be a world with some evils. And if it did not contain the evils our world
contains, then it would have to contain others instead.

Yet regardless of the “theodicies” that people like Hicks and others have attempted, evil remains a large
obstacle to belief in God. Persons of faith may be indifferent to evil as a problem because they are
willing to say they can’t begin to fathom God’s mystery.

Not so, however, for the atheist. For the atheist, the problem of evil is a plain and unanswerable reason
for concluding that God does not exist. Yet many people charge atheism with ignoring the persistent
belief in a force superior to humankind. Belief in that force gives many hope, confidence, faith, and love
in the face of troubles that may seem too heavy to carry. To strip them of belief may leave them ill
equipped to cope with life and, possibly, morally bankrupt. But such sentiments hardly provide evidence
that the atheist is wrong.

Finally, consider this observation about atheism, which is more of an insight than a criticism. Ernest
Nagel, the self-proclaimed atheist we met earlier, said atheism involves a “commitment.” It involves a
commitment in much the same way that theism or monotheism does. In other words, empirically
minded atheists erect their position as much on a commitment of faith as those who hold religious
positions. All the characteristics of atheism that Nagel cites are founded as much on a categorical
commitment as are the characteristics of the religionist. The commitments obviously differ. The
religionist’s commitment is to remaining open to the possibility of a nonempirical access to a spiritual
reality. The atheist’s commitment is to empiricism as a method of knowing a material world. But by
what criterion could we judge that the empiricist-atheistic commitment is more sound than the theistic
commitment?

Agnosticism

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Some argue that atheism requires a “commitment” to certain beliefs just like theism does.

Having studied the arguments for and against the existence of God, many thinkers claim that neither
side is convincing. As a result, they say they just don’t know whether God exists—a position known as
agnosticism.

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Huxley, an agnostic, held “it is wrong” to believe unless one has evidence that “logically justifies” belief,
so he “suspended judgment.”

The nineteenth-century English scientist Thomas Huxley was a well-known agnostic. For Huxley,
agnosticism is based on the principle that “it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective
truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”* Huxley
believed the arguments for and against God’s existence were both inconclusive. So he suspended
judgment, about the existence of God, just as he did about ultimates such as matter and mind. As Huxley
put it:

We have not the slightest objection to believe anything you like, if you will give us good grounds for
belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality and
insure our damnation several times over. We are quite content to leave the decision to the future. The
course of the past has impressed us with the firm conviction that no good ever comes of falsehood, and
we feel warranted in refusing even to experiment in that direction.*

Why We Believe: Freud’s View.

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Freud claimed that people believe because they have an “infantile” need to believe someone like a
“father” is still watching over them.
But if it is unclear whether God exists, how can the agnostic explain why so many of us continue to
believe? In his short work The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud suggested an influential answer to
that question. Freud, who was the founder of modern psychoanalysis, was hostile to religious belief. He
suggested that our belief in God is an “illusion” that has its origins in “infantile” needs. People have no
good reason to believe in God, he claimed. Yet people continue to believe because they have an
“infantile” need to feel someone is protecting and watching over them. This need leads them to believe
that there is a being that watches out for them. And they imagine that this being is like the father who
looked after them when they were children. In a later work, New Introductory Lectures in
Psychoanalysis, Freud summarized his view in the following words:

The God-Creator is openly called Father. Psychoanalysis has concluded that he really is the father,
clothed in the grandeur in which he first appeared to the small child. The religious man’s picture of the
creation of the universe is the same as his picture of his own creation…. He therefore looks back on the
memory-image of the overrated father of his childhood, exalts it into a Deity, and brings it into the
present and into reality. The emotional strength of this memory-image and the lasting nature of his
need for protection are the two supports of his belief in God.*

Analyzing the Reading

Freud suggests that your memory of how your father protected you when you were a child, and your
ongoing need for protection, lead people to imagine a God exists who still takes care of you. Freud gives
no evidence or argument for this suggestion, except that in Christianity God is called “Father.” What
kind of evidence could prove or establish that Freud is right? What kind could prove that he is wrong?

Freud’s suggestion is intriguing. And many people today accept it. But is it true? Is there any way of
proving that it is true? Perhaps not. Freud offers even less in the way of proof than traditional believers
and atheists have offered for their beliefs about God. Moreover, even if Freud is correct, and our belief
in God originates in “infantile” needs, does this show that belief in God is an “illusion”?

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Freud claims that the memory of one’s father and one’s ongoing need for protection are the reason why
a person believes in God, and he seems to think this is “infantile” and not a good thing. Do you believe in
God? If you do, then think about how you think and feel about God; do you see and turn to God
primarily as a source of protection and comfort? Would that be infantile? Would it be a bad thing? Why?
If you do not believe in God, then based on the people you’ve known who believe in God, would you say
that they seemed to see God mainly as a source of protection and comfort? Do you see that as bad?
Why?

IconQuick Review
Fallacies are defective arguments that present inadequate evidence or no evidence at all for their
conclusions. Formal fallacies are arguments with an invalid form; informal fallacies are arguments that
are bad because of their content. The most common formal fallacies are denying the consequent and
affirming the antecedent. Common informal fallacies include appeal to emotion, inappropriate appeal to
authority, ad hominem, argument from ignorance, begging the question, hasty generalization, biased
statistics, genetic fallacy, forgetful induction, and post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Icon Thinking Critically Formal and Informal Fallacies

No other subject matter raises the intense kinds of arguments that discussions of religion and God do.
Unfortunately, these discussions are often rife with fallacies, that is, with bad arguments, and Freud’s
argument may perhaps be an example. It will be useful to look at what formal and informal fallacies are,
and see how they can affect discussions of religion and God.

A fallacy is a defective argument, a case of bad or faulty reasoning. Fallacies present inadequate
evidence, or, more often, no evidence at all, for the conclusion they are supposed to support. They are,
in short, bad arguments, sometimes so bad that they hardly deserve to be called arguments at all.
Nevertheless, we are often taken in by fallacies, and to avoid this it will help if you know what they are.
There are two broad groups of fallacies: formal fallacies and informal fallacies.

Formal fallacies are arguments that are offered as sound logical arguments when in fact they have an
invalid form. We have already seen some formal fallacies and here it is enough to remind ourselves of
the two most common formal fallacies, the fallacy of denying the antecedent and the fallacy of affirming
the consequent:

If p, then q

If p, then q

Not-p

So Not-q
So p

Arguments with either of these forms are always bad arguments. Nevertheless, we frequently make
such fallacious arguments, and just as frequently they fool us. Here is an example of the fallacy of
denying the antecedent: “If you could prove God exists, then religion would be justified, but you can’t
prove God exists, so religion is not justified.” And here is an example of affirming the consequent: “If
God is good, then he would create a world in which we could enjoy ourselves; but God has created a
world in which we can enjoy ourselves, so God must be good.” Both of these are invalid, and so bad
arguments, although to some people—maybe even to you—they look like good ones. Don’t be fooled!

While formal fallacies are bad arguments because they have an invalid form, informal fallacies are bad
arguments because of their content, that is, because the content of the claims they make do not provide
real support for their conclusions. There are many kinds of informal fallacies, but here are some of the
most important ones:

Appeal to emotion. This common fallacy is the attempt to establish a claim not by providing good
reasons for the claim but by appealing to the passions or prejudices of the audience. Here’s an example:
“If you don’t accept that God exists, you’re going to Hell!” Emotional appeals may persuade people to
accept a claim, but they do not provide any evidence that the claim is true.

Inappropriate appeal to authority. Another common fallacy is the attempt to establish a conclusion by
appealing to an “authority” who is not an expert on the subject of the claim, or who has a motive to
mislead, or who is known to be unreliable, or whose claim is highly improbable on its face. A few years
ago, for example, a journalist working for the tabloid Weekly World News wrote that “scientists have
determined” that heaven is “a mind-boggling 3-billion light years from earth” because the Hubble
telescope sighted “a shining white city” suspended in space “roughly 3 billion light-years away.” Relying
on the tabloid’s journalist to prove a claim about heaven’s location would be an inappropriate appeal to
authority.

Ad hominem argument. This is an argument that attacks the person making an argument instead of
addressing the argument itself. I use an ad hominem argument, for example, when someone argues that
God does not exist and I reject his argument because “He’s an evil person.” The moral character of the
person who makes a claim is irrelevant to whether the claim is true or false.

Argument from ignorance. This kind of argument claims that because there is no evidence that
something is false, it must be true. For example, I am arguing from ignorance if I say that because you
cannot prove that God does not exist, God must exist. But the lack of evidence against a claim is not in
itself evidence in favor of a claim.
Begging the question. This fallacy is also called a circular argument. It is an argument in which the
premises or reasons used to prove a conclusion already assume that the conclusion is true. For example,
I am begging the question if I argue, “What the bible says must be true because the bible says it is the
word of God.”

Hasty generalization. This type of fallacy occurs when an inductive generalization is not based on a
sufficiently large sample. For example: “All of my friends who are religious are really happy people, so all
religious people must be really happy persons.” The few religious people who happen to be my friends
do not form a sufficiently large sample to base on it a conclusion about millions of others.

Biased statistics. An inductive generalization makes this fallacy when it relies on a sample that’s not
representative. When surveys dealing with religious issues poll people from only one social class or from
only one region of the United States and draw conclusions about everyone in the United States, they
generally make the fallacy of biased statistics.

Genetic fallacy. This fallacy occurs when a person argues that the causal origin of a belief or claim is
evidence that it is false or that it is true. For example, the geneticist Dean Hammer claimed in his book,
The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, that a human gene called causes spiritual
feelings including feelings of the presence of God. Some people then argued that genes must cause us to
believe in God, so the belief that God exists must be false. But this argument is fallacious since even if
our genes cause our belief in God, the belief might still be true, since whether a belief is true does not
depend on where the belief came from. The cause of a belief is not evidence for or against the truth of
the belief.

Forgetful induction. This is the fallacy of failing to take into account all the evidence that might affect
one’s conclusion and, in particular, ignoring evidence that would disprove one’s conclusion or shed
doubt on one’s conclusion. A person, for example, might argue that astrology is a true theory on the
basis of astrology predictions that turned out to be correct, while ignoring astrology’s many predictions
of things that didn’t happen.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. This Latin phrase, which means “after it, therefore caused by it,” refers to the
fallacy of arguing that since a first event occurred before a second one, the first must have caused the
second. This is also sometimes called the fallacy of false cause. An example of a post hoc ergo propter
hoc fallacious argument is when a person claims that since she prayed before she recovered from an
illness, her prayer must have caused her recovery.
There are many kinds of fallacies, then, and you should be able to recognize and point them out when
people try to use them to get you to accept their claims. Any of them has the power to ensnare a person
who is not careful. In fact, as we mentioned earlier, Freud’s argument that belief in God is an “illusion”
might be a fallacy. But we leave it to you to determine whether his argument or other arguments in this
chapter are fallacies.

Why We Believe: Kant’s View.

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Kant argued that our morality forces us to believe in the possibility of a just world where evil is punished
and good is rewarded, and this is possible only if there is a God and an afterlife. So, we have to believe in
a God and an afterlife.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed an explanation of why we believe in God even though we
cannot prove that God exists. Unlike Freud, Kant did not conclude that belief in God is “an illusion.” Kant
proceeded by noting that the world is often unjust. Morally good people often suffer unhappiness, while
evil people often prosper. But the fact that the good sometimes suffer while the evil sometimes prosper
should not lead us to reject God. On the contrary, Kant argued, the fact that this world is unjust should
lead us to believe in God. For the fact that the world is unjust obligates us to pursue a world that is just.
And this obligation in turn requires we believe in a God who alone can bring about a perfectly just world:

We ought to strive to bring about the supreme good [perfect justice]. Because we ought to bring about
this supreme good, it must be possible for it to exist. … But the supreme good is possible in the world
only if there exists a Supreme Being who can bring about a world in which happiness is correlated with
moral goodness. Now a being that is capable of bringing about a just world as the moral law requires, is
an intelligence (a rational being). And a being that acts according to the requirements of the moral law,
has a will. Therefore, the supreme creator of the world, whose existence must be supposed if the
sumum bonum is possible, is a Being who causes the world by His intelligence and will … that is, God.*

Kant is arguing that we feel an obligation to work for a world in which justice prevails. This would be a
world in which moral goodness is rewarded with happiness and evil with punishment. But, claims Kant,
if we have an obligation to do something, then it must be possible for us to do it. For we cannot have a
moral obligation to do something that is impossible. So, because we have an obligation to work for a
world in which justice prevails, we must believe it is possible for such a world to exist. In other words,
we must believe that it is possible for a world to exist in which good people are happy and evil people
are not. Such a world is possible only if there is a God who will punish the evil and reward the good,
perhaps in some afterlife. So, since our obligation to pursue a just world forces us to believe a just world
is possible, we must believe that there exists a God who can make such a world possible.
IconThinking like a Philosopher

According to Kant, the realization that the world is unjust should make us feel an obligation to make it
more just. Do you think that Kant’s claim applies to you? For example, think about the times that you
have seen that a person or group was being treated unjustly. Perhaps something was being taken from
them unjustly, or perhaps they were being unjustly oppressed, or maybe someone was violating their
rights. Has seeing or learning that such injustices were being inflicted on others made you feel you
should do something about it? For example, does seeing an injustice make you angry or upset at those
who are injuring others unjustly, so that if you could, you would do something to them or do something
to help their victims?

Kant also claims that your desire for justice extends to an afterlife. That is, Kant claims that when you
see injustice, your desire for justice makes you think that unjust people certainly must get what they
deserve in an afterlife. Do you think Kant is right, at least as far as your own feelings go?

Kant’s suggestion, like Freud’s, is an intriguing response to our inability to either prove or disprove that
God exists. It is an alternative to agnosticism. But, again, we must ask this: Is it reasonable? Unlike
Freud, as we noted, Kant does not claim that belief in God is an illusion. Kant claims only that even if
God’s existence cannot be proved, and even if evil in the world casts doubt on God’s existence, we are
still forced to believe that God exists. We are forced to believe in God—that is, if we feel that we have
an obligation to make this a better, more just world. However, Kant’s argument leaves open the
question of whether really God exists. Although we must believe that God exists, we cannot know that
God exists.

Perhaps, then, neither the existence or nonexistence of a theistic God can be proved. But lack of certain
evidence does not make the question any less important. Even if we feel we lack sufficient evidence, we
still must live our lives as if we believe or disbelieve. If we disbelieve, we will not join a church, pray, or
worship. We will not feel the presence of God as we walk through a hushed forest of tall trees. If we
believe, however, we will not only do these things, but we will also see ourselves as having a spiritual
dimension, perhaps one that survives after death. In short, if we lack belief, then we will live our lives in
one way, and if we believe, we will live in another way. The question is this: Is it possible to be an
agnostic in practice? In the end, mustn’t the agnostic choose to live either as a believer or as a
nonbeliever?

IconPhilosophy at the Movies

Why We Believe: Kant’s View.© Savoy Pictures/Everett Collection

Watch Shadowlands (1993), the true story of C. S. Lewis, a teacher at Oxford who meets, befriends, and
eventually marries Joy Gresham, an American woman who then discovers she has terminal cancer and
whom Lewis comes to love deeply before she dies. Early in the film, how does C. S. Lewis view the
problem of evil? What are his views on the problem of evil toward the end of the film? Is Lewis at any
point in the film an agnostic? Does he at any point consider atheism?

4.4. Traditional Religious Belief and Experience

Religious Belief

Many believers agree that the arguments for and against the existence of God are inconclusive. Yet this
hardly matters to them because their belief does not depend on rational proofs. Instead, they believe
because belief seems to cohere—to fit—with their life experience and who they are. In short, they do
not have conclusive proof of their beliefs, but they choose to believe “for reasons of the heart.”

“The Will to Believe”

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James held that when an option is a “genuine”—a “living, momentous, and forced”—option that “by its
nature cannot be decided on intellectual grounds,” it is legitimate (not wrong) to choose on the basis of
our “passional nature,” even without sufficient evidence in support of the option we choose.

Is it legitimate to base belief on a personal decision made with the heart instead of the head? Are we
justified in choosing to believe without irrefutable reasons for believing? In a classic address titled “The
Will to Believe,” the American pragmatist William James confronted these issues. (After he gave the
speech he said he should have titled it “The Right to Believe.”) The thrust of James’ views is captured in
the following excerpt from “The Will to Believe”:

Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief. … Next, let us call the
decision between two hypotheses an option. Options may be of several kinds. They may be:

(1)living or dead;

(2)forced or avoidable;

(3)momentous or trivial;

and for our purpose we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and
momentous kind:

A living option is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: “Be a theosophist or be a
Mohammedan,” it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But
if I say: “Be an agnostic or be Christian,” it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some
appeal, however small, to your belief.
Next, if I say to you: “Choose between going out with your umbrella or without it,” I do not offer you a
genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. … But if I say, “Either
accept this truth or go without it,” I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of
the alternatives. Every dilemma based on a complete logical disjunction, with no possibility of not
choosing, is an option of this forced kind.

Finally, if I were [the arctic explorer] Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expe dition,
your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your
choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at least
the chance of it into your hands. … [On the other hand,] an option is trivial when the opportunity is not
unique, when the stake is insignificant, or when the decision is reversible if it later proves unwise. …

The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, this: Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide
an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on
intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,”
is itself a passional decision,—just like deciding yes or no,—and is attended with the same risk of losing
the truth.

Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of
gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not
making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always
the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief
to act on is better than no belief at all. …

[But] moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for
sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would
be good if it did exist. …

Turn now from these wide [moral] questions of good, to a certain class of questions of fact, questions
concerning personal relations, states of mind between one man and another. Do you like me or not?—
for example. Whether you do or not depends, in countless instances, on whether I meet you half-way,
am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation. The previous faith on
my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come. But if I stand aloof, and
refuse to budge an inch until I have objective evidence, until you shall have done something apt, … ten
to one your liking never comes. …

But now, it will be said, these are all childish human cases, and have nothing to do with great cosmic
matters, like the question of religious faith. Let us then pass on to that.
We see, first that religion offers itself as a momentous option. We are supposed to gain, even now, by
our belief, and to lose by our nonbelief, a certain vital good. Secondly, religion is a forced option, so far
as that good goes. We cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light,
because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just
as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. …

If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher
upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole
chance in life of getting upon the winning side,—that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to
run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right.
All this is on the supposition that it [i.e., being religious], really may be prophetic and right, and that,
even to us who are discussing the matter, religion is a live hypothesis which may be true.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

James does not believe that only religious decisions have the four features of being living, forced,
momentous, and incapable of being decided on intellectual grounds. He claims that moral decisions and
decisions about whether to trust in a personal relationship also have these four features. Describe some
incidents from your own life when you faced decisions that were living, forced, momentous, and
incapable of being decided on intellectual grounds. Did you use your “passional nature” to make these
decisions? Describe how you went about making the decisions you actually made.

In concreto, the freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect of the individual
cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider.
When I look at the religious question as it really puts itself to concrete men, and when I think of all the
possibilities which both practically and theoretically it involves, then this command [that we must wait
until that we shall put a stopper on our heart, instincts, and courage, and wait—acting of course
meanwhile more or less as if religion were not true till doomsday, or till such time as our intellect and
senses working together may have raked in evidence enough—this command, I say, seems to me the
queerest idol ever manufactured in the philosophic cave.*

James is claiming that it is sometimes rationally and morally justified to believe something without
adequate intellectual evidence for the belief. It is justified when we face a “momentous, living, and
forced option” where to “not decide … is itself a decision” and the option “cannot by its nature be
decided on intellectual grounds.” It is legitimate to rely on “our passional nature” to decide such options
even without sufficient intellectual evidence for either option. Without understanding his terms as
James understands them, we can easily misconstrue what he is saying.
First, consider James’ statement that “we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced,
living, and momentous kind.” What does this mean? By the word option James means a choice among
beliefs or “hypotheses” that may be proposed to us, such as whether or not to believe in God. Some
options are what James calls “genuine” options—that is, they are choices we have to make and they will
affect our lives in a significant way. James explains that “genuine” options are “living, forced, and
momentous.” An option is living when it proposes a belief that we can take seriously. For example,
choosing whether to believe in the ancient Greek gods Zeus, Hera, or Apollo is not a living option for us,
although it was for the ancient Greeks. Second, an option is forced when it’s a choice you cannot escape
by deciding not to choose. For example, if someone proposes, “Either vote for me or vote for my
opponent,” you can avoid making a decision by not voting at all. On the other hand, if someone says,
“Either come follow me or don’t,” you are forced to make a choice. Even choosing not to choose would
be making a choice: the choice not to follow. Finally, an option is momentous when the opportunity is
unique, the stakes are important, and the decision is irreversible. If a depressed man, for example, is
choosing whether or not to leap over a cliff to his death, his option is momentous.

Next, consider James’ view that we are sometimes faced with an option “that cannot by its nature be
decided on intellectual grounds.” By this, he means that the intellectual evidence for both alternatives is
and must be inadequate, or the intellectual reasons for both alternatives are balanced. That is, the
reasons in favor of one option are as good or as bad as the reasons favoring the other option. For
example, the question whether you will still be alive ten years from now is one that “cannot by its
nature be decided on intellectual grounds.”

According to James, we may rationally and morally rely on our “passional nature” to decide an option
that is living, forced, momentous, and cannot be decided on intellectual grounds. What is our “passional
nature”? For James, our “passional nature” consists of our nonintellectual interests, emotions, desires,
hopes, fears, commitments, and so forth. They are the nonintellectual part of who we are. So, James is
saying that when a “genuine” option can’t be decided on intellectual grounds, it is legitimate to decide it
by relying on our emotions, desires, hopes, and so on.

James does not mean that one should simply rely on our emotions to believe in anything for which there
is no good evidence. When options are not living, forced, and momentous, James claims we should not
make up our minds until all the evidence is in. Otherwise we risk falling into needless error. Most
scientific questions and human issues we are likely to face, he points out, are not genuine options and
we should not rely on our passional nature to decide them. In other words, in most real choices the
need to act is not forced on us nor is the choice momentous. So if the evidence is lacking, we should
wait for more evidence before making up our minds. We should rely on our “passional nature” only
when facing “living, forced, and momentous” choices that “cannot be decided on intellectual grounds.”
In such cases, “as men who may be interested at least as much in positively gaining truth as in merely
escaping dupery,” we cannot sit back and wait to make our decision. We have to decide because waiting
to decide is itself a decision. Only when choices of that kind arise are we intellectually and morally
justified to rely on our interests, emotions, desires, and so forth. James believes that there are several
areas of our lives where such choices inevitably arise. These include when we must make important
moral decisions, or decide whether to trust in a personal relationship such as a love relationship or a
friendship. And, of course, such choices are also inevitable when deciding questions of religious belief.

Analyzing the Reading

According to James, it is not wrong to rely on our passional nature to make decisions when the options
are living, forced, momentous, and cannot by their nature be decided on intellectual grounds. Why does
James claim it is legitimate to base decisions on our passional nature when they have these four
features, but it is not legitimate when decisions lack one of these four features? Do you think James is
right?

Granted, for some people religious belief is not a living option. But for most it is. To these people, James
says that religious belief is also a momentous option. People stand to gain much by their belief and to
lose much by their unbelief. The option of belief or unbelief is also a forced option. If people choose to
wait to avoid error, they risk losing the chance of attaining the good that religious belief promises. If the
ice cream stand closes while you are debating your choice, the result will be the same as if you had
chosen to have no ice cream. And for many, religious belief is also an option “that cannot by its nature
be decided on intellectual grounds.” James himself argues that the intellectual evidence in favor of
belief balances the evidence against it. So there is no intellectual evidence that is absolutely persuasive
on either side. Yet the decision whether to believe in God is living, momentous, and forced. So we not
only can but should allow our “passional nature” to decide it.

Critics of James’ View.

James’ view obviously rejects the claim that we should not believe unless we have sufficient and strong
evidence in favor of belief. One critic of James’ view, and, in fact, the person against whom he was
arguing, is W. K. Clifford. In an earlier essay “The Ethics of Belief” Clifford asserted “it is wrong always,
everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” Clifford argued that our
beliefs affect other people. If we allow ourselves to believe things without sufficient evidence, he
argued, we may harm others directly. But we will also harm society at large by making it “credulous.”

A ship owner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew she was old, and not over well built at
the first; that she had seen many seas … and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to
him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind; … He thought that
perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at
great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy
reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so
many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would
put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were
leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. … In such ways he acquired a sincere and
comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure
with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that
was to be; and he got his insurance money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he
did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help
him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. … The reason of this
judgment is not far to seek: it is that … the belief held by one man was of great importance to other
men. But … no belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the
believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but
to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever.

Belief, … is ours not for ourselves but for humanity. … If I let myself believe anything on insufficient
evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never
have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I
make myself credulous. [In addition] the danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong
things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing
things and inquiring into them …

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in
others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to
habitual want of care in others about the truth. … By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick
atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere,
and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.*

Analyzing the Reading

Clifford suggests the example of a ship owner who without sufficient evidence decides that his ship is
seaworthy when it is not. Is this example relevant to the question whether we should decide a religious
question without sufficient evidence? Why or why not?

Clifford believes that credulity is something that spreads. That is, he claims that if I am credulous about
one thing, then I will become credulous about other things. And he claims that if one person in society is
credulous, then others in society will become credulous. Is Clifford right about both of these claims?

IconQuick Review

Clifford and other critics of James claim that it is always wrong to believe without sufficient evidence and
to rely on our passional nature when something cannot be decided on intellectual grounds. James
responds that their claim itself has no sufficient evidence, so critics like Clifford must rely on their
passional nature to accept their claim. So Clifford and his critics implicitly accept James’ view that it is
sometimes legitimate to believe without sufficient evidence.

Clifford’s conclusion was unequivocal. It is always wrong to believe without sufficient evidence. And he
meant this in a moral sense: it is morally wrong for a person to believe without sufficient evidence. For
by believing without evidence I may not only harm others, I will also wrong myself by making myself
credulous, and wrong society by making those around me both credulous and careless with the truth.

James responded to Clifford by arguing that questions of belief give us two options. We can choose to
protect ourselves from believing something false by withholding our belief if the evidence is insufficient.
Or we can choose to protect ourselves from missing out on the truth by sometimes choosing to believe
even if the evidence is insufficient. Which is the better option? James wrote:

We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may,
on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance.
Clifford, in the instructive passage which I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing,
he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur
the awful risk of believing lies. You, on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in error is a very
small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge, and be ready to be duped many
times in your investigation rather than postpone indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I myself find it
impossible to go with Clifford. We must remember that these feelings of our duty about either truth or
error are in any case only expressions of our passional life. Biologically considered, our minds are as
ready to grind out falsehood as veracity, and he who says, “Better go without belief forever than believe
a lie!” merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe. He may be critical of
many of his desires and fears, but this fear he slavishly obeys. He can not imagine any one questioning
its binding force. For my own part, I have also a horror of being duped; but I can believe that worse
things than being duped may happen to a man in this world: so Clifford’s exhortation has to my ears a
thoroughly fantastic sound. It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle
forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained.*

Analyzing the Reading

Read over the selections by Clifford and James’ response to Clifford. Do you think James really answered
Clifford? That is, do you think James’ reply showed that Clifford was wrong to conclude “it is wrong
always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”? Or was Clifford’s
real argument left standing? Who is right, James or Clifford?
James’ point here is that when faced with a momentous, living, and forced option to believe, there is a
cost to be paid if we choose never to believe without sufficient evidence. The cost is that by never
believing without sufficient evidence, we may miss out on the truth. On the other hand, there is also a
cost to be paid if we choose to believe sometimes without sufficient evidence when faced with such
momentous, living, and forced options. The cost is that the policy to believe sometimes without
sufficient evidence may lead us to believe a falsehood. Which policy should we adopt? In the end, James
subtly implies, the choice between these policies is itself a “genuine option” that cannot be decided on
intellectual grounds. So we have to choose between these two policies on the basis of our passional
nature! James points out that even Clifford had to choose on the basis of his own passional nature. He
chose to withhold belief because of his “horror” of falling into error, a “fear he slavishly obeys.” So he,
too, chose on the basis of emotion. We are in the same boat insofar as we, too, must choose between
these two policies on the basis of our passional nature.

James’ argument is relevant not only for those who believe in a personal God. It is also relevant for
those whose experience suggests the world has a spiritual dimension, but not necessarily a Supreme
Being. James’ view of the role of feeling and emotion in religious belief also provides a basis for belief in
a sacred dimension based on personal experience. Just what constitutes a personal experience of the
sacred is a complex question, of course. But individuals often appeal to personal experience as their
justification for religious belief. We turn now to discuss personal experience as the ground of belief.

Personal Experience of the Divine

Many believers, maybe most, do not need any rational proof for their religious belief. Many people say
they believe in God because they have experienced God or a religious dimension of reality. They may
describe an experience, in fact, that was deeper and more real than their sensory experiences.

IconQuick Review

Many believe in God not on the basis of rational proofs but because of a direct personal experience of
the divine.

For many people, such religious experiences are simply quiet moments in which they have “felt” a divine
presence. Consider this report of a 17-year-old boy:

Sometimes as I go to church, I sit down, join in the service, and before I go out I feel as if God was with
me, right side of me, singing and reading the Psalms with me. … And then again I feel as if I could sit
beside him, and put my arms around him, kiss him, etc. When I am taking Holy Communion at the altar, I
try to get with him and generally feel his presence.*
Other people claim to have had a more vivid direct experience of God or of a divinity. Here is how St.
Teresa described one of her religious experiences:

One day when I was at prayer … I saw Christ at my side—or, to put it better, I was conscious of Him, for I
saw nothing with the eyes of the body or the eyes of the soul. He seemed quite close to me and I saw
that it was He. As I thought, He was speaking to me. Being completely ignorant that such visions were
possible, I was very much afraid at first, and could do nothing but weep, though as soon as He spoke His
first word of assurance to me, I regained my usual calm and became cheerful and free from fear. All the
time Jesus Christ seemed to be at my side.*

And here is how the Old Testament prophet Isaiah described his encounter with God:

In the year that King Ussiah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty … Seraphs were in
attendance above him; each had six wings; with two they covered their faces, and with two they
covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” … And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of
unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
Hosts.*

IconQuick Review

James claims that religious experiences of the divine are ineffable and noetic. Rudolf Otto called the
direct experience of a religious reality a “numinous experience” and claimed it involves terror,
fascination, difference, unworthiness, mystery, and bliss.

What is the nature of such experiences? In his Varieties of Religious Experience, James suggests that
such experiences seem to usually have two characteristics. One is ineffability—that is, the experience
cannot be adequately described in words. The other is a noetic quality—that is, to the individual the
experience is a source of knowledge, often illuminations full of meaning, truth, and importance.

Rudolf Otto is a German theologian who wrote The Idea of the Holy, a classic study of religious
experience. He used the term “numinous experience” to describe an experience in which the power or
presence of a divinity or supernatural reality was felt or perceived. Based on his study of many such
experiences, Otto claimed that a numinous experience had several characteristic qualities. First, the
experience is accompanied by a kind of amazement, fear, even terror, at the power and awesome
nature of what is being experienced. Second, what is experienced attracts, fascinates, and draws one in
with an almost irresistible force. Third, what is experienced is wholly unlike anything that one has
encountered before. Fourth, the person having the numinous experience feels unworthy and
insignificant in the presence of a sacred reality. Fifth, the experience is suffused with a sense of mystery.
And sixth, the experience is accompanied by bliss, a feeling of fulfillment, of contentment and
satisfaction. Of course, not all of these qualities are present in all religious experiences of the divine, and
in some cases they may be extremely attenuated. The characteristics Otto identifies, however, are
widely thought to communicate well what a numinous experience is like.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Have you, or someone you know well, ever had a “numinous” experience, perhaps one in which the five
qualities Rudolf Otto mentions were extremely attenuated? If so, how would you describe the
experience? Sometimes when people walk through a forest, watch a spectacular sunset, or climb to the
top of a high mountain, they can be struck with awe at the beauty and majesty of what they see. Have
you ever had such experiences? Would you call them numinous experiences? Read over the “report” of
the 17-year-old boy quoted in the textbook. Have you ever had a similar experience? Would you call it a
numinous experience?

Do you think it is possible to have a numinous experience yet not believe in God? Read over the vision of
the Buddha described at the end of Chapter 1. The Buddha did not believe in God, although he did
believe in an “ultimate reality.” Did he have a numinous experience?

How would you distinguish a real from a false religious experience?

The point, however, is that many people approach religion through such numinous experiences. Such
experiences of God or of a supernatural dimension of reality convince them that God or a supernatural
dimension of reality exists. But should such experiences be trusted? Is it rational to believe that God or a
supernatural dimension of reality exists on the basis of such experiences? The philosopher Stephen T.
Davis offers the following argument to support his claim that religious experiences can be a legitimate
basis for belief in God:

Throughout human history, and in very many human societies and cultures, people claim to have
experiences of God or of some Godlike being.

The claim that those experiences are veridical is more probable than the claim that they are delusive.

Therefore, probably God or some Godlike being exists.*

Davis’ first premise is clearly true and uncontroversial. The term veridical in the second premise of Davis’
argument means “real” or “genuine.” The second premise means, therefore, that when a person claims
to have experienced God through a numinous experience, that person’s claim is probably true. And if it
is true that a person really experienced God, of course, it follows that God really exists.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (close-up). Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Location: S. Maria della
Vittoria, Rome, Italy.© Scala/Art Resource, NY

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (close-up). Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Location: S. Maria della
Vittoria, Rome, Italy.

IconQuick Review

Davis argues that many people claim to have experiences of God, that such experiences are probably
veridical, so probably God exists. Swinburne supports the claim that numinous experiences are probably
real experiences of God with his principle of credulity, which states that in the absence of special
considerations, “if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present.”

But what can be said in favor of premise (2), that is, in support of the claim that numinous experiences
are probably real experiences of God (or of a supernatural reality)? Davis claims that one reason for
accepting (2) is the “principle of credulity” proposed by philosopher Richard Swinburne. Swinburne
explains the principle of credulity in this way:

I suggest that it is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations), if it seems
(epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is
probably so. How things seem to be is good grounds for a belief about how things are. … [Therefore] in
the absence of special considerations, all religious experiences ought to be taken by their subjects as
genuine, and hence as substantial grounds for belief in the existence of their apparent object—God, or
Mary, or Ultimate Reality, or [the Greek god] Poseidon.*

IconQuick Review

Critics argue that Swinburne’s principle of credulity should not be applied to numinous experiences
because the unusual nature of such experiences should count as a “special consideration” against
accepting those experiences as veridical. Swinburne replies that numinous experiences are not unusual
and the only reason for claiming that no numinous experiences should be taken as veridical is if one
assumes God does not exist, but that is what has to be proven.
By “seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present” Swinburne means that the person’s perception
of x is the reason the person believes that x is present. So the principle of credulity basically says that we
are justified to rely on our perceptions, unless we have a special reason not to trust a particular
perception. Such “special considerations” might include things like the following. I was dreaming when I
had the perception. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the time of the perception. I had just taken
LSD when I had the perception. Or: I have well-supported knowledge that the perception is unreal
because it was the perception of a man carrying his head under his arm.

Analyzing the Reading

Swinburne’s “principle of credulity” is the primary basis of Davis’ argument that religious experiences
can be accepted as true experiences of God or a Godlike being. Do you think the principle of credulity is
true? Why?

The textbook summarizes the argument Swinburne gives for accepting his principle of credulity as true.
Does this argument make sense to you? Do you think it is right? Why?

But why should we accept the principle of credulity? According to Swinburne, we already accept the
principle and have no choice but to continue doing so. For we must rely on our perceptions virtually
every moment we are awake. If we were not justified in relying on our perceptions of the world, then
everything we think or believe about the world would be unjustified. We must rely on our perceptions
even to get information from others since we have to perceive what they say or what they write.
Moreover, precisely because the principle of credulity is so fundamental, there is no way to prove it (or
disprove it). For in order to prove it I would have to rely on at least some perceptions. So any proof
would depend on the principle and thus would be circular.

Nevertheless, critics have objected to Swinburne’s principle of credulity. Even if we accept the principle
of credulity for ordinary perceptions, they argue, it is not acceptable to use it for perceptions during a
“numinous experience.” A numinous experience is extremely unusual. Its unusual nature should count
as a “special consideration” against relying on one’s perceptions during such an experience. But
Swinburne replies to this objection, first, that numinous experiences are not unusual. They are
extremely common. He cites surveys which show that millions and millions of people today have such
experiences. Second, Swinburne claims, even if some numinous experiences are false, this does not
mean that all of them are. The only reason we can have for thinking that all numinous experiences are
false is because we think God does not exist. But such a “reason” assumes to know the very thing that
has to be proven: whether God exists.

If we accept Swinburne’s principle of credulity, then we have a reason to accept the second premise of
Davis’ argument. Assuming his first premise is true, it shows religious experiences provide reliable
evidence that “probably God exists.” But why is Davis only willing to say God “probably” exists?
Undoubtedly because Davis believes that although some religious experiences are “veridical,” it is at
least possible that none of them are. We may someday discover, for example, that all religious
experiences are the product of a brain misfunction. Davis apparently believes that is unlikely.
Nevertheless, it remains a possibility. And since that possibility remains, his argument can only be a
probabilistic one.

IconQuick Review

However, one can question whether people really have direct experiences of the divine, a possibility
that seems beyond the capacity of our human ability to perceive things.

Yet the claim that people have direct experiences of the divine can still be questioned. How can a finite
human being experience an infinite God? If we experience something, then mustn’t we experience it
through the senses that we have? And if so, then won’t it have to have sensory qualities such as colors,
sounds, feelings, and shapes? But certainly God does not have these sensory qualities. So how can what
we experience be God?

Despite these issues, we see in many people a continuing and intense search for a direct experience of a
divine dimension. Many people feel a need to locate themselves in the cosmic scheme of things. Often,
they reject traditional religious prescriptions and instead follow their own sense of what religion means
to them. This pursuit takes many forms. Among them are the New Age movement, self-healing,
consciousness expansion, and the human potential movement. But all reject some or all of traditional
religion.

In the following section, we discuss three religious movements that also reject traditional religion. These
are radical theology, feminist theology, and the study of Eastern religious traditions. Although quite
different in content and methodology, they are similar in their search for religious experience outside of
its traditional forms.

IconPhilosophy at the Movies

Watch The Apostle (1997) in which Eulis “Sonny” Dewey, a foot-stomping, shouting, charismatic Texas
preacher, becomes so enraged when he finds his wife Jessie (also a minister) is sleeping with the youth
minister that he hits the younger man in the head with a baseball bat, which sends the man into a coma
and forces Sonny to flee to Louisiana where he starts preaching in a renovated country church using the
alias “Apostle E. F.” Do you think Sonny believes on intellectual grounds? How would William James and
W. K. Clifford view Sonny’s grounds of belief? Who is right? Which, if any, of the religious experiences
many people in this film seem to have are “numinous experiences.”
4.5. Nontraditional Religious Experience

Radical Theology

For many of us traditional religion and traditional religious belief are no longer meaningful. Some
philosopher-theologians have responded by developing a school of theology that deviates in radical
ways from traditional theism. The radical theologians, as these thinkers are often termed, feel that our
relationship with God is more experiential than rational. The roots of this view can be traced to thinkers
like the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855).

Kierkegaard.

The northern European society into which Kierkegaard was born was thoroughly Christian. But it had
adopted a stylized formal kind of religious life that, Kierkegaard believed, lacked the passion that should
be at the heart of religion. Where the Christians around him should have felt fear, they were
complacent. Where they should have shown intensity, they were smugly self-satisfied. To put it bluntly,
Kierkegaard was revolted by these self-professed pillars of Christianity. In works such as Philosophical
Fragments and Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard railed against them. And he also worked
out an uncompromising view of Christianity that was both new and yet very old.

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard. “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I
can live or die.”© Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard. “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I
can live or die.”

Central to Kierkegaard’s religious thought is his distinction between the objective and subjective thinker.
This is essentially a distinction between one who relies on reason and one who relies on faith. The
objective thinker strikes an intellectual, dispassionate, scientific posture toward things, including his life
and religion. In effect, the objective thinker adopts the view of an observer. In contrast, the subjective
thinker is passionately and intensely involved with his life and religion. Truth for the subjective thinker is
not just a matter of accumulating evidence to establish a viewpoint. Truth is a profound personal
concern. Kierkegaard contrasts the importance of subjective truth as opposed to objective truth in this
selection from his personal journal:

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except insofar as a
certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God
really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can
live and die. What would be the use of discovering so-called objective truth, of working through all the
systems of philosophy and of being able if required, to review them all and show up the inconsistencies
within each system;—what good would it do me to be able to develop a theory of the state and combine
all the details into a single whole, and so construct a world in which I did not live, but only held up to the
view of others;—what good would it do me to be able to explain the meaning of Christianity if it had no
deeper significance for me and for my life;—what good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold
and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather
than a trusting devotion? I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and
that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now
recognize as the most important thing.*

Analyzing the Reading

What is the difference between “objective truth” and “subjective truth”? Notice that for Kierkegaard,
subjective truth is, first, a belief that is “true for me” and, second, a belief that expresses an “idea for
which I can live and die” or expresses an idea that has “significance for me and for my life.” So based on
these two features of subjective truth, what would “objective truth” be?

Several themes are worth noting in this entry. First, Kierkegaard is desperately seeking clarity.
Specifically, he wants clarity about action, about what he is to do, not an intellectual form of certainty.
Second, notice the emphasis he gives to subjective truth, to what is “true for me” and has “significance
for me and for my life.” This is a recurring theme in Kierkegaard’s thought. Reality must be understood
from the subjective perspective of the self who chooses and acts. Third, notice Kierkegaard’s intense
focus on personal decision and what “I can live and die” for, and can “take up into my life.” For
Kierkegaard, the self is an outcome of our choices and commitments. Through our decisions we create
who we are, we create the reality of the self. Finally, observe Kierkegaard’s religiosity. Kierkegaard was
deeply religious, and the central issue of his life and thought was what it means to be a Christian.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Describe some of the beliefs you hold that you would say are subjective truths, and some that you
would say are objective truths.

Kierkegaard says that subjective truths are more important than objective truths. Do you feel the same
way? Why?

Although Kierkegaard emphasizes subjective thinking, he never denies that objective thinking has its
place. He simply asserts that life’s most central concerns cannot be addressed by objective analysis.
Indeed, from Kierkegaard’s view, life’s most important questions defy objective analysis. Religious
commitment, in particular, says Kierkegaard, is not open to objective thinking. It is not open to objective
thinking because it is a relationship with God who always remains a mystery. Religion and religious
belief, then, are a confrontation with the unknown person of God, not with something knowable. In the
following passage from Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard demonstrates what he means:

But what is this unknown something with which Reason collides when inspired by its paradoxical
passion, with the result that it unsettles even man’s knowledge of himself? It is the Unknown. It is not a
human being, in so far as we know what man is; nor is it any other known thing. So let us call this
unknown something: the God. It is nothing more than a name we assign to it. The idea of demonstrating
that this unknown something (the God) exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if the God
does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to
attempt it. For at the very outset, in beginning my proof, I would have presupposed it, not as doubtful
but as certain (a presupposition is never doubtful, for the very reason that it is a presupposition), since
otherwise I would not begin, readily understanding that the whole would be impossible if he did not
exist. But if when I speak of proving the God’s existence I mean that I propose to prove that the
Unknown, which exists, is the God, then I express myself unfortunately. For in that case I do not prove
anything, least of all an existence, but merely develop the content of a conception.…

The works from which I would deduce God’s existence are not directly and immediately given. The
wisdom in nature, the goodness, the wisdom in the governance of the world—are any of these manifest,
perhaps, upon the very face of things? Are we not here confronted with the most terrible temptations
to doubt, and is it not impossible finally to dispose of all these doubts? But from such an order of things I
will surely not attempt to prove God’s existence; and even if I began I would never finish, and would in
addition have to live constantly in suspense, lest something so terrible should suddenly happen that my
bit of proof would be demolished. From what works then do I propose to derive the proof? From the
works as apprehended through an ideal interpretation, i.e., such as they do not immediately reveal
themselves. But in that case it is not from the works that I make the proof; I merely develop the idea I
have presupposed, and because of my confidence in this I make so bold as to defy all objections, even
those that have not yet been made. In beginning my proof I presuppose the ideal interpretation, and
also that I will be successful in carrying it through; but what else is this but to presuppose that the God
exists, so that I really begin by virtue of confidence in him?*

IconQuick Review

Kierkegaard distinguishes objective thinking (dispassionate, scientific) from subjective thinking

(passionate, involved). Religious belief is not open to objective thinking, and it is useless to try to prove
God’s existence. This causes “anguish.”

In this passage Kierkegaard explains the failure of rational theorizing—of objective thinking—in religious
matters. He argues that the attempt to “prove” God’s existence by using our reason is pointless. When
we use our reason to think about God, he claims, our reason encounters a major obstacle. The obstacle
is that God is absolutely unknowable. God is the great unknown something. A person may respond to
this unknown by trying to use reason to prove that it exists. But that exercise is pointless. If God does
not exist, then, of course, there would be no way to prove that He exists. For you cannot “prove”
something that is false. On the other hand, if God does exist and a person tries to prove that He exists
the person’s “proof” must begin by assuming that He exists. That is, a rational “proof” of God must
assume the very thing it is trying to prove. For example, suppose you try to argue that God must exist
because something had to create the universe. Then in that very idea of a “something” that creates the
universe you have assumed the existence of the god you wanted to prove. In any proof of God, the
conclusion is always implicit in the premises. All the “proof” does is draw out the content of the
concepts in the premises. Or suppose you try to prove that God must exist because of the wisdom and
goodness you see in nature. Then your proof will be based on the fact that you interpret nature as
exhibiting wisdom and goodness. In that decision to interpret nature as a sign of God’s wisdom and
goodness, you have assumed that God exists. Reason or “objective thinking,” then, is not a pathway to
God. God is not subject to rational, objective analysis. But if the point of religion and religious faith is not
to know God through rational objective analysis, just what is their point? To feel, act, and commit
oneself, rather than to know.

Analyzing the Reading

For Kierkegaard “objective thinking” is thinking that relies on reason and tries to be intellectual,
dispassionate, and objective about what it decides to believe or do; “subjective thinking” is thinking that
relies on faith and on feeling and passion when deciding what to believe or do. Kierkegaard says that the
decision to believe in God cannot be based on objective thinking (i.e., reasoning) about the proofs of
God’s existence. What argument does he give for saying this? Do you think he’s right? Why?

According to Kierkegaard, if I really think I can prove that God exists, all I am doing is to “presuppose
that the God exists, so that I really begin by virtue of confidence in him.” Explain what he means.

Rational thinking, which is what objective thinkers try to use to understand matters of religion, may give
us an intellectual idea of God. But that is not religion. Religion is not a relationship with our ideas about
God. It is, rather, a relationship with another person, that is, with God. Objective thinking not only
provides little on which to base a relationship with God, it can undermine that relationship. “I
contemplate the order of nature,” says Kierkegaard, “in the hope of finding God, and I see omnipotence
and wisdom; but I also see much else that disturbs my mind and excites anxiety. The sum of all this is
objective uncertainty.”

Faced with objective uncertainty and the failure of objective analysis and rational “proofs,” we are
anguished. This anguish is compounded by the anticipation of our own death and feelings of
insignificance in the face of the eternal order of things. The debates go on; our lives ebb away. Only a
decision, Kierkegaard argues, can end the rational reflections and debates that objective thinking keeps
spinning.
IconThinking like a Philosopher

How would you describe what Kierkegaard calls a “leap of faith”? Explain how a personal but
nonreligious decision can be a leap of faith.

Do you agree with Kierkegaard that basic religious beliefs and decisions should be a leap of faith? Or do
you believe religious beliefs and decisions should be based on reason and objective truth? What are
some of the religious decisions you have made? For example, did you ever decide you would continue to
believe in God or decide you would not start or would not continue to believe in God? Would you say
those decisions were a leap of faith? Would you say they were based more on subjective thinking or on
objective thinking?

Would you describe any of the nonreligious decisions you have made during your own life as a leap of
faith? If so, what were they? Are you happy now with the decisions you made?

Kierkegaard calls this decision the “leap of faith.” It is a commitment to a relationship with God that
defies objective analysis. It is a leap that is made alone and in “fear and trembling.” Of course, we may
choose not to make the leap of faith. We may, instead, try to minimize our suffering by continuing our
rational reflections and objective analysis. But for this alternative, Kierkegaard has only sarcasm. “The
two ways,” he says: “one is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another
suffered.”

When someone is to leap he must certainly do it alone and also be alone in properly understanding that
it is an impossibility … the leap is the decision. … I am charging the individual in question with not being
willing to stop the infinity of reflection. Am I requiring something of him, then? … And what do I require
of him? I require a resolution. And in that I am right, for only in that way can reflection be stopped. …
The beginning can occur only when reflection is stopped, and reflection can be stopped only by
something else, and this something else is something altogether different from the logical, since it is a
resolution.*

Kierkegaard believed that what we choose in those crucial moments is not as important as how we
choose. When making a significant choice we must choose passionately, with energy and an awareness
of the significant consequences of our choices. We must do this, for example, when choosing whether to
marry, or whether to do what is morally right or morally wrong, or whether to become a serious
Christian.
If you will understand me aright. I should like to say that in making a choice it is not so much a question
of choosing the right, as of the energy, the earnestness, the pathos with which one chooses. Thereby the
personality announces its inner infinity, and thereby, in turn, the personality is consolidated. Therefore,
even if a man were to choose the wrong, he will nevertheless discover, precisely by reason of the energy
with which he chose, that he had chosen the wrong. For the choice being made with the whole
inwardness of his personality, his nature is purified and he himself brought into immediate relation with
the eternal Power whose omnipresence interpenetrates the whole of existence.*

Analyzing the Reading

Kierkegaard claims that it is more important to make choices passionately, with “energy, earnestness,
and pathos,” than it is to make the right choices. What does he mean by this? Do you think his claim is
generally true? Why? What do you think are the types of choices for which Kierkegaard’s claim is
certainly correct?

What are some of the choices you have made that you would now say were made with “energy,
earnestness, and pathos”? Looking back on those choices, would you say they were good choices or
not?

IconQuick Review

Religion and God must be approached through a “leap of faith,” a commitment that defies objective
analysis.

We make a free “leap of faith” when we make significant choices in the absence of a clear knowledge
that we are choosing correctly. In such moments, we are both attracted and repelled by a future that is
unknown, and we feel anxiety at making a “leap” into the “nothingness” of an unknown future. For
example, when we look over the edge of a cliff, we feel anxiety. We may feel repelled by the thought of
falling over, and at the same time almost have an urge to jump into the “nothingness.” Our anxiety
arises from our realization that we are free to do it. For Kierkegaard, this was particularly true of the
“leap of faith” in which we choose to trust in God without any intellectual proof that God exists. We
must often, perhaps always, make our important life choices without full intellectual knowledge of what
our choices will bring. And so we feel both repelled and attracted by the leap into an unknown future.

Note that in the passage above, Kierkegaard says that in choosing “the personality is consolidated.” That
is, through our choices we become ourselves. We come to exist; we become real; we become a self.
Kierkegaard does not say there are no right and wrong choices. But he believed that if people choose
earnestly and passionately, they will know when they have made a wrong choice and will be able to get
back on the right track.
Even this brief sketch of Kierkegaard’s thought shows the extent to which he recast traditional religion.
Traditional theism emphasized objective thinking and a rational approach to God. Kierkegaard replaced
these with subjective thinking and a leap of faith that looks not toward knowledge, but toward a
relationship with “the God.” The authentic Christian is not the thinker, but the passionate doer and
actor. “It is impossible to exist without passion,” he wrote, “unless we understand the word ‘exist’ in the
loose sense of a so-called ‘existence.’” Kierkegaard urges us to make those anxiety-filled leaps of faith
that make us who we are. But most of all, Kierkegaard urges us to take our religion seriously and
embrace it passionately.

Paul Tillich “If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach
Him.”© Alfred Eisenstaedt/Pix Inc./Time and Life Pictures/Getty Images

Paul Tillich “If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach
Him.”

Tillich.

The chief exponent of radical theology in modern time has been Protestant theologian Paul Tillich
(1886–1965). Tillich, an existentialist, contends that traditional theism has viewed God as a being and
not as being itself. This view, he claims, is a profound error and the source of many more errors. For that
view sees God as one being among others. But God is not an individual being as we are. God is, rather,
existence itself, the origin of the existence of all individuals, yet not another individual among them. We
must look at why Tillich says this, and what he means.

Like Kierkegaard, Tillich believes that traditional theism’s attempts to “prove” God exists are mistakes.
They have ended by turning God into an object:

IconQuick Review

Tillich claimed that traditional concepts of God objectified God and turned God into an “invincible
tyrant.”

If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach Him; and if you
assert that He does exist, you can reach Him even less than if you assert that He does not exist. A God
about whose existence or non-existence you can argue is a thing beside others within the universe of
existing things. And the question is quite justified whether such a thing does exist, and the answer is
equally justified that it does not exist.*
God cannot be proved, as if God were an object for which one was searching. Doing that makes him just
one more object along with all the others in the universe. Such “objectification” limits the deity and
raises the very kinds of doubts that lead to a loss of faith.

Tillich argues that the proofs for God’s existence have not just fostered an erroneous view of God. They
have led to disbelief in God. The proofs have led us to bring God into our subject–object view of reality.
“He” is an object for us as subjects, becoming the target for our prayers, worship, and supplications.
From this perspective “He” becomes almost a thing to which we direct ourselves. At other times we
make ourselves an object for God and turn God into an all-knowing, all-powerful subject. Since we are
neither, the relationship must be one of superior (God) to inferior (us), controller to controlled, subject
to object, master to servant. An antagonistic tension results. As Tillich says:

He deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and try to make
him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as an invincible tyrant, the
being in contrast with whom all other things are without freedom and subjectivity.*

This image of God as “invincible tyrant,” he feels, is itself a refutation of the rational approach of
traditional theism. It is a more telling refutation than all the objections to the traditional proofs for God’s
existence. Tillich believes that this view of God as tyrant is “the deepest root of the Existentialist despair
and the widespread anxiety of meaninglessness in our period.”

Analyzing the Reading

Tillich says that the traditional proofs for the existence of God encourage us to see God as “an invincible
tyrant.” Explain why he probably believes that the proofs would lead people to see God in this way. Do
you agree?

Tillich claims that the view of God as tyrant is “the deepest root of the Existentialist despair and the
widespread anxiety of meaninglessness in our period.” What do you think he means by this? Do you
agree? Why?

If Tillich and other radical theologians reject the theistic concept of God, what do they offer as a
substitute? What kind of God do they believe in? For Tillich, as we said, God is not one entity among
other entities. Instead, God is “the ground of being.” That is, God is the foundation and source of all
existence. This ground of being transcends the individual God of traditional theism and can dissipate the
anxiety of our doubt and meaninglessness. This ground of being is not provable because it cannot be. It
is neither an object nor a subject. It is present, although hidden, in every divine-human encounter.
That God is the “ground of being” is only one of Tillich’s many difficult concepts. “Depth” is another
difficult concept that is central to his thought. “Depth is what the word God means,” he writes, realizing
that for many the word may have no meaning. “If the word has not much meaning for you, translate it,”
advises Tillich, “and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate
concern, of what you take seriously without reservation.” Tillich writes:

What does the metaphor depth mean? It means that the religious aspect points to that which is
ultimate, infinite, unconditional in man’s spiritual life. Religion, in the largest and most basic sense of the
word, is ultimate concern. And ultimate concern is manifest in all creative functions of the human spirit.
It is manifest in the moral sphere as the unconditional seriousness of the moral demand. Therefore, if
someone rejects religion in the name of the moral function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the
name of religion.

Ultimate concern is manifest in the realm of knowledge as the passionate longing for ultimate reality.
Therefore, if anyone rejects religion in the name of the cognitive function of the human spirit, he rejects
religion in the name of religion. Ultimate concern is manifest in the aesthetic function of the human
spirit as the infinite desire to express ultimate meaning. Therefore, if anyone rejects religion in the name
of the aesthetic function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion. You cannot
reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate seriousness, or the state of being ultimately
concerned, is itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man’s spiritual life.
This is the religious aspect of the human spirit.*

Thus, to be religious is to have an ultimate concern. If there is something about which you deeply and
truly care, then you are religious; you have a religion. And the object of your ultimate concern is the way
that God is manifested to you.

An atheist might say, “I do not believe in God.” But Tillich would say that this is virtually impossible. For
a genuine atheist would have to be someone who does not believe that there is anything that is worth
caring about deeply. Anyone who has an “ultimate concern” believes in God. The only people who can
rightly call themselves atheists are those who can say, “Life has no depth. Life is shallow. Being itself is
surface only.” Tillich writes: “If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but
otherwise you are not. He who knows the depth knows about God.”

IconThinking like a Philosopher

Explain what Tillich thinks a person’s “ultimate concern” is. Describe what your own “ultimate concern”
(or concerns) is at this point in your life.
Tillich says that anyone who has an ultimate concern believes in God. Would you say that your ultimate
concern is a kind of belief in God? That is, do you see your ultimate concern as somehow sacred, or as a
concern for something that is greater than your finite self?

The ultimate concern of some people is money, and the ultimate concern of others is power. Do you
think it would be right to describe such people as having turned money or power into their God? Would
this be part of what Tillich means when he says that a person who has an ultimate concern believes in
God? Why?

IconQuick Review

For Tillich, God is “the source of your ultimate concern” and “of what you take seriously without
reservation.” So, anyone who has an ultimate concern believes in God.

Tillich is no escapist, no dodger of doubt. On the contrary, he accepts the concrete world of finite values
and meanings. We must use this finite world with all its imperfections, skepticism, and meaninglessness
to confront what is ultimately real: being. And the ground of all being is God. Through our experience of
the being we confront in our finite world and our willingness to care deeply and seriously about the
ultimate meaning and value of that being, we experience God. Everyone, therefore, “who knows the
depth,” experiences God.

IconQuick Review

But it is unclear what Tillich means by “God,” and statements he makes about what “God” is seem to be
mere tautologies.

Besides the questions raised by his many elusive concepts, Tillich’s theology provokes other objections.
By saying that God is the object of a person’s ultimate concern, he seems to be doing away with what
we have traditionally recognized as God. Even the atheist who is ultimately concerned about something,
Tillich claims, can be said to believe in God. But what could this possibly mean? The atheist is someone
who does not believe in that which we call God. How can such a person believe in God if, say, he or she
is deeply committed to atheism itself as the ultimate concern? What does “God” mean here? Related to
this is the objection that Tillich’s statements about God are nothing but tautologies. In logic a tautology
is a statement whose predicate repeats its subject. When Tillich says, “He who knows the depth knows
about God,” is he actually saying, “He who knows about God knows about God”? When he argues, “If
one is ultimately concerned or has the courage to be, then one knows God,” isn’t he saying, “If one
knows God or knows God, then one knows God”?
Tillich claimed to have had an experience of divine presence. He experienced a merging with some
fundamental reality, and this experience became the foundation of many of his views. Of course, no one
may question Tillich’s personal experience; it is as personal as one’s thoughts and feelings. But his
interpretation of his experience can be questioned. We can and should ask for his reasons for
interpreting that experience as resulting from contact with the ground of all being. Tillich must verify
that this “ground of all being” is real and was the cause of his transcendent experiences.

Tillich would probably reply that knowledge about the God he describes—the ground of all being—is a
unique kind of knowledge. Such knowledge is different from the intellectual kind of knowledge we have
about ordinary things. He would argue that his knowledge transcends empirical data and defies scientific
verification. It is knowledge whose source is much closer to mystical intuition than to sense experience
or reason. This knowledge, he might say, is rooted in what Rudolf Otto called a “numinous experience.”
As we saw, in such an experience a person feels or perceives a divine presence as an awesome almost
irresistible force. And as William James noted, such experiences can be the source of illuminations full of
meaning. But even if Tillich’s experience was a numinous experience, does that put it beyond all
questioning?

Feminist Theology

Many feminists have also challenged the traditional Western concept of God and religion. Their most
important objections are that God is portrayed as male and is associated with religious beliefs and
practices that are oppressive to women.

For example, God has traditionally been said to have no sex, and many philosophers have been careful
to emphasize this point. Yet these same philosophers, as well as the majority of people, continue to use
male pronouns—He and Him—to refer to God. Both Christianity and Judaism have traditionally
characterized “Him” in male roles, particularly as a male parent, a “Father.” The result is that in Western
people’s real, practical, and lived religious experience, God is thought of as a male despite the denials of
philosophers and theologians. In her groundbreaking book Beyond God the Father, the feminist
philosopher and theologian Mary Daly has argued that this male conception of God has had a
profoundly oppressive impact on women:

If God in “his” heaven is a father ruling his people then it is in the “nature” of things and according to
divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male dominated. Within this context, a
mystification of roles takes place: The husband dominating his wife represents God “himself.” The
images and values of a given society have been projected into the realm of dogmas and “Articles of
Faith” and these in turn justify the social structures which have given rise to them and which sustain
their plausibility.*
Moreover, in a surprising reversal of biological fact, Christianity and Judaism have suggested that the
woman is born from the man’s body and not the man from the woman’s. The Old Testament story that
Eve, the first female, was made out of Adam’s rib implies that males are prior to females and are their
source. The Judeo-Christian Bible also implies that sin and evil originated with a woman—Eve—who
tempted the man—Adam—into the “Fall.” Subsequently, Christianity went on to hold that salvation has
to come from a male person—Jesus Christ, who is the “Son of God” and whom God sent forth to be
crucified as a sacrifice to save us all from sin and evil. Christianity has also given mostly to males—priests
and pastors—the authority to lead Christians in their daily lives, and many of the major Christian
religions—such as Roman Catholicism—still refuse to ordain women as priests or allow them to become
bishops. The most orthodox segments of Judaism have also similarly allowed only males—rabbis—to
play leadership roles.

Daly, perhaps the most articulate feminist critic of traditional religious beliefs, summarizes her criticisms
of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, in these propositions:

IconQuick Review

Feminist theologian Daly holds that the traditional concept of God is male, sexist, oppressive to women,
and legitimates patriarchy— the rule of men over women. We must reject it, especially in its Christian
form, and replace it with “the Goddess.”

There exists a planetary sexual caste system [patriarchy], essentially the same in Saudi Arabia and in
New York, differing only in degree.

This system is masked by sex role segregation, by the dual identity of women, by ideologies and myths.
…

All of the major world religions function to legitimate patriarchy. This is true also of the popular cults
such as the Krishna movement and the Jesus Freaks.

The myths and symbols of Christianity are essentially sexist. Since “God” is male, the male is God. …

The myth of feminine evil, expressed in the story of the Fall, is reinforced by the myth of
salvation/redemption by a single human being of the male sex [Jesus Christ]. The idea of a unique divine
incarnation in a male, the God-man of the “hypostatic union,” is inherently sexist and oppressive.
Christolatry is idolatry.*
Daly argues that by making God male, males have been able to use God to justify and maintain their
power and authority over women: It is right for males to rule because the highest “Lord”—God—and the
“savior”—Jesus Christ—are male. Moreover, because women are the source of evil and had their origins
in man (Adam’s rib), it is appropriate that they be ruled by men. Thus, the traditional male concept of
God has played and continues to play a major role in keeping women oppressed and dominated by men.

Analyzing the Reading

Do you agree that the Western concept of God is sexist? If not, how do you respond to Daly’s criticisms?

Do you think Mary Daly is right to claim that the traditional Western concepts of God and religion are so
sexist they should be discarded, or do you think Pamela Young is right that traditional religious concepts
and practices can be reformed?

Daly and other feminist thinkers have suggested that the male concept of God cannot be reformed
because it has too many masculine connotations that make it oppressive to women. Maleness is an
essential part of the traditional Western concept of God and cannot be separated from it. Instead, the
concept must be abandoned, allowed to wither and die, and replaced with new religious symbols and
concepts associated with “the Goddess”:

For some feminists concerned with the spiritual depth of the movement, the word “God” is becoming
increasingly problematic, however. This by no means indicates a movement in the direction of “atheism”
or “agnosticism.” … Some reluctantly still use the word “God” while earnestly trying to divest the term of
its patriarchal associations, attempting to think perhaps of the “God of the philosophers” rather than the
overtly masculist and oppressive “God of the theologians.” But the problem becomes increasingly
troublesome, the more the “God” of the various Western philosophers is subjected to feminist analysis.
“He”—“Jahweh”—still often hovers behind the abstractions, stunting our own thought, giving us a sense
of contrived doublethink. The word “God” just may be inherently oppressive. …

For an increasing minority of women—and even for some men—“Goddess” is becoming more
functional, meaningful, and loaded with healing associations. … The use of the expression, “The
Goddess,” is a way … of exorcising the male “God,” and of affirming a different myth/reality.*

A significant and growing number of women, Daly holds, are breaking away from the Judeo-Christian
concept of God. That concept “legitimates patriarchy—the prevailing power structure and prevailing
world view.” Efforts to reform these traditional structures and views, she claims, are useless. Such
efforts will “eventually come to be recognized as comparable to a Black person’s trying to reform the Ku
Klux Klan.” Instead, feminists who seek a religious dimension in their lives should find meaning in “the
Goddess.” Many women are already creating a revolutionary and powerful new community, a new
“sisterhood.” These new female communities reject the prevailing male view that power must be
understood as power over people. Within this new sisterhood, power is experienced as the “power of
presence to ourselves and to each other.” This new feminist movement is not hierarchical. That is, unlike
male organizations, it is not based on leaders who have “power” over their followers. Thus, the notion
of “the Goddess” will not lead to an oppressive female-dominated society like the male-dominated
society that the male God produced.*

Daly is perhaps the harshest and most extreme critic of traditional religious concepts. Many men feel
put off by her strong language and unrelenting attacks on everything that is male. Yet many of her
criticisms of religion are incisive and telling blows against the often oppressive maleness of the
traditional Western concept of God. That sexism undeniably affects much of traditional Western
religious thought and practice. Nor can it be denied that these sexist traditions have been used to justify
the so-called right of men to rule over women. Thus, although one might argue with this or that element
of the feminist perspective represented by Daly, much of what she says rings true.

Yet many feminists, while agreeing with much of Daly’s critique, have objected to some of her claims.
Some feminist theologians have questioned whether the male concepts of God and religion are as
irredeemable as Daly claims. For example, the feminist theologian Pamela Young writes, “Although for
Christians it is in Jesus that they see God’s presence, God’s love and care exemplified, that this decisive
revelation has taken place in a man is, in a very real sense, accidental.”* Young argues that the male
qualities attached to the concept of God and to Christianity are not necessary to either. Male qualities
are “accidental” or nonessential elements of traditional religious concepts and practices. Male qualities
got attached to God and to Christianity because they originated in human societies that were already
sexist and dominated by males. Young argues that it is the task of the feminist to identify the sexist,
oppressive, and male elements that have infected religious thinking and reform them.

It is unclear whether feminists such as Young can succeed in purging the Western concepts of God and
religion of their sexist leanings. Daly may be correct when she writes that “dressing up old symbols just
will not work for women who are conscious of sexist religiosity.” Both Daly and Young are inviting us to
come with them on different journeys toward an understanding of God and religion that is neither sexist
nor oppressive. But where either of those journeys will lead—or even whether they will succeed in going
anywhere—is still unclear. Yet those journeys matter to all of us. For each one of us has to make his or
her own journey toward an acceptance—or rejection—of God and religion. And for many of us, rejection
or acceptance of God and religion will depend on how flawed we believe them to be.

Eastern Religious Traditions

IconQuick Review
Hinduism views Brahman as the only reality and all else is illusion; Atman is the deepest consciousness
within each person and distinct from the ordinary self which is an illusion.

Eastern religious traditions are many and varied. It is neither our intention nor within our capabilities to
mention all of them, let alone discuss them fully. We can only outline some of the central beliefs of two
related Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Many Westerners have turned to these for
meaningful religious experience.

Hinduism.

Dharmachakra, Wheel of Transmigratory Existence (paper).Boltin Picture Library/The Bridgeman Art

Library

Dharmachakra, Wheel of Transmigratory Existence (paper).

One of the oldest Eastern traditions is Hinduism. Hinduism has been practiced by hundreds of millions of
people in India and elsewhere for about five thousand years. Hinduism has many divisions and
subdivisions. In fact, Hinduism is so diversified that it is very difficult to describe as a whole or to
generalize about it. Any attempt at description is bound to be an oversimplification. A further
complication is that our language has no precise equivalents for certain Indian terms and concepts.

With awareness of these limitations, let us begin with the literary sources of Hindu teaching. Although
many texts form the body of Hindu scripture, one has influenced Hindu thought more than any other:
the Bhagavad Gita or the Song of the Lord. The Bhagavad Gita is part of the great epic Mahabharata. The
Bhagavad Gita descries a long conversation between the god Krishna, and a warrior prince, Arjuna, on
the eve of a great battle. Reading the Bhagavad Gita will introduce you to the principal concepts of
Hinduism, as well as to beautiful poetry.

One concept found in the Bhagavad Gita is the idea that one fundamental reality underlies the
multiplicity of things we see around us. This underlying reality is the ultimate source of the whole
universe. This ultimate reality is the absolute, or Brahman, that sustains all things, is all things, yet is also
beyond all things. In the following selections from the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna, speaks as the avatar
or visible manifestation of Brahman:

I have no beginning and am Lord of all that exists. … The entire universe is pervaded by Me, yet my form
is not seen. All living things have their being in Me, yet I am not limited by them. … Though I, the
Supreme Self, am the cause and beholder of all, yet I remain outside them all. … I am the oblation, the
sacrifice and the worship. I am the fuel and the chant. I am the butter offered to the fire, I am the fire
itself, and I am the act of offering. I am the Father of the universe and its Mother. I am its Nourisher and
its Grandfather. I am the Knowable and the Pure. I am Om, and the Sacred Scriptures. I am the Goal, the
Sustainer, the Lord, the Witness, the Home, the Shelter, the Lover and the Origin. I am Life and Death. I
am the Fountain and the imperishable Seed. I am the Heat of the Sun. I release and hold back the Rains.
I am Death and Immortality. I am Being and Non-Being. … I am the Self, seated in the hearts of all beings.
I am the beginning and the life, and I am the end of them all. … I am the knowledge of spirituality. I am
the discussion between disputants. … I am all-devouring Death. I am the origin of all that shall happen. I
am fame, fortune, speech, memory, intellect, constancy and forgiveness. I am the gambling of the cheat
and the splendor of the splendid. I am victory. I am effort. I am the purity of the pure. … The aspects of
my divinity are endless.*

Brahman is present behind everything and causes whatever there is. It is unlimited, incomprehensible,
all-pervasive, omnipresent, and unchangeable. The many objects we see around us are illusions. They
are the illusory manifestations of Brahman.

A correlative Hindu idea is the concept of Atman. Atman is a deep consciousness that lies within each of
us. Atman is beneath all our living, sensing, and conscious thinking activities and beneath all our
dreaming and waking experiences. Atman is not the ordinary individual self we commonly call “I” or
“me.” The individual self that we are aware of and refer to as “me” is also an illusion. Beneath the
illusionary individual self that I am aware of, however, lies my real self, Atman, or my deep
consciousness. Atman is the profound inner consciousness of which I am not ordinarily aware. It is a
consciousness within myself that, though not sensed, directs everything I do. The Atman within each of
us has lived forever and will continue to live forever. This is the basis of the Hindu doctrine of
reincarnation. Each person’s body eventually dies, but his deep consciousness, his Atman, continues to
live in a different body. Here is how the Bhagavad Gita expresses these ideas. At this point in the
Bhagavad Gita prince Arjuna has said that he grieves for the many people that will die in the battle that
awaits him. To this Lord Krishna answers:

Wise people grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. For there was never a time when I did not
exist, nor when you, nor when any king did not exist. Nor will there ever be a time when we shall cease
to be. Just as the soul, Atman, acquires a child’s body, then a youth’s body, and then an aged body
during this life, similarly, the soul, Atman, acquires another body after death. … The visible physical body
is perishable and transitory. But the invisible soul, Atman, is eternal. Atman is indestructible. No one can
destroy the imperishable Atman. This is the way you and all others are Atman. A soul, Atman, pervades
all that we see. Nothing can destroy Atman. But the material bodies which this eternal, indestructible,
immeasurable soul inhabits are all finite. … Just as a man discards his threadbare robes and puts on new
ones, so the soul, Atman, throws off its worn-out bodies and takes fresh ones. *

Yet, I can become aware of the Atman within through meditation that achieves an enlightened inner
self-consciousness. Such an enlightened self-consciousness is one that sees beyond the many
differentiated illusionary things we perceive and beyond the illusionary self. It is a direct awareness of
one’s deep consciousness, Atman.

IconThinking like a Philosopher

The central concepts of Hinduism, like Brahman, Atman, karma, and the wheel of existence, are very
different from the basic concepts of Western religions. Do you think that the possibility of choosing to
believe Hinduism could ever be what James calls a “live” option for you? Do you think it could ever be a
true “live” option for most Americans? Why?

IconQuick Review

Hindu thought affirms enlightenment as the key to liberation from the great wheel of existence. The
destiny of each is the enlightened realization that Brahman, the ultimate reality that underlies all the
differentiated things in the universe, is identical with Atman, the profound consciousness within each of
us that underlies the illusorily self. When enlightened, we at last can be freed from the wheel of
existence.

When, through mediation, I am able to contact the Atman-consciousness within. I will see that my inner
deep consciousness is identical with Brahman. That is, I will truly and profoundly realize my unity with
Brahman. I will see that the ultimate reality that underlies everything in the universe is identical with the
deep consciousness within myself. Our deepest inner consciousness, then, is the ultimate reality that is
the source of the illusory universe we see around us.

In Hindu thought, the highest spiritual value is enlightenment, by which one is illuminated. More
importantly, enlightenment liberates us from the wheel of existence. Repeated existence is the destiny
of those who do not achieve enlightenment.

To understand enlightenment, you must understand the law of karma, the law of sowing and reaping.
Each of us, through what we do or do not do, determine his or her destiny. If we are particularly evil, we
may find ourselves reborn as something less than human. If we are noble, we may be reborn as
especially favored humans. In that way we are continually born, we continually die, and we are reborn
again. We will keep turning on this wheel of existence until we achieve enlightenment. That alone can
release us from the series of rebirths and from the endless striving to cling to material things.

Buddhism.
Another major Eastern tradition is Buddhism, contained in the teachings of its founder, Siddhartha
Gautama, or the Buddha. Because Gautama found no evidence for belief in a personal God, his
teachings are a diagnosis of and a prescription for the “disease” of living.

The Buddha preached the Four Noble Truths. As we saw in Chapter 2, he held that nothing in the
universe endures. To try to cling to what is impermanent inevitably ends in loss and suffering. Buddhism
recognizes the wheel of life. Everything that lives must die, and is then forced to rise, repeat life again,
and then fall again into death in a ceaseless round of loss and suffering. Our cravings keep us returning
to this passing world through successive “rebirths.” Release from this suffering, the Buddha preached,
can be gained only by putting an end to our craving for pleasure, for continued life, and for power. And
the key to ending this craving is following the Noble Eightfold Path:

And this is the Noble Truth of Sorrow. Birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, disease is sorrow, death is sorrow;
contact with the unpleasant is sorrow, separation from the pleasant is sorrow, every wish unfulfilled is
sorrow—in short, all the five components of individuality are sorrow.

And this is the Noble Truth of the Arising of Sorrow. It arises from craving, which leads to rebirth, which
brings delight and passion, and seeks pleasure now here, now there—the craving for sensual pleasure,
the craving for continued life, the craving for power.

And this is the Noble Truth of the Stopping of Sorrow. It is the complete stopping of that craving, so that
no passion remains, leaving it, being emancipated from it, being released from it, giving no place to it.

And this is the Noble Truth of the Way which leads to the Stopping of Sorrow. It is the Noble Eightfold
Path—[having] Right Views, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.*

Analyzing the Reading

Read the the First Noble Truth of the Buddha. Explain in your own words what you think it means. Use
the Internet if you need more clarification. Do you think there is any truth to what it says? Explain why.

Explain in your own words what you think the second noble truth means. Again, use the Internet if you
need more clarification. Do you believe there is any truth to what the second noble truth says? Explain
why.
What would you say are the main reasons many Westerners are attracted to Eastern thought?

IconQuick Review

Buddhism emphasizes the Four Noble Truths: All life is sorrow, sorrow arises from craving, stopping
craving will stop sorrow, and the Noble Eightfold Path will stop craving; it requires right views, right
resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right
concentration.

The First Noble Truth is concerned with the suffering that we experience in living within an
impermanent universe. All the main events of life, the First Noble Truth says, are filled with sorrow
because they are all related to what we must eventually lose. Since nothing lasts, we are doomed to
repeatedly suffer the pain of losing what we love or desire. The Second Noble Truth identifies the cause
of this suffering. We suffer because we grasp and try to cling to what never lasts. This clinging is due to
avidya—ignorance and unawareness of the illusory nature of the things around us. The person who lacks
awareness is committed to the world of things and illusion, maya. Such a person is unaware of the
deeper fundamental reality behind the world of illusion. The unaware person tries to control herself and
her environment. These attempts are futile. The result is frustration and the viciously circular pattern of
life called samsara, the cycle of births and deaths. The Third Noble Truth concerns the ending of
samsara, called nirvana—release or liberation. We achieve nirvana when we stop grasping and clinging
and become aware of the profound reality that underlies all things. Release from the cycle of births and
deaths comes when we at last enter a state in which all difference between oneself and fundamental
reality is obliterated. That state defies definition or description. The Fourth Noble Truth describes the
Eightfold Path of the Buddha’s dharma. Dharma is the Buddha’s moral doctrine about what we must do
to end the grasping and clinging that leads to frustration and is an obstacle to finding nirvana. We will
examine this concept more carefully in Chapter 7.

Differences between East and West.

Obviously, there is much more to Hinduism and Buddhism than we have outlined. Still, these sketches
already suggest some of the major differences between Eastern and Western religious thought.

IconQuick Review

Broadly speaking, these forms of Eastern thought reject the Western concept of an all-powerful, all-
knowing personal God and of the moral law as something God commands.

First, the East rejects the West’s “objectified” God. There is no claim of a personal, all-knowing, all-good,
all-powerful, and all-loving divine individual as there is in the Western tradition. So Eastern thinkers
have generally not been as preoccupied with debating God’s existence as Western thinkers have been.
As a corollary, Buddhism does not share the Western view that there is a moral law commanded by God.
There is no moral law whose transgression leads to eternal damnation. In short, our tradition presents a
God who expects us to behave in a certain way. In contrast:

The Buddha’s precepts of conduct—abstinence from taking life, taking what is not given, exploitation of
the passions, lying, and intoxication—are voluntarily assumed rules of expedience, the intent of which is
to remove the hindrances to clarity of awareness. Failure to observe the precepts produces bad “karma”
not because karma is a law or moral retribution, but because all motivated and purposeful actions,
whether conventionally good or bad, are karma insofar as they are directed to the grasping of life.
Generally speaking, the conventionally “bad” actions are rather more grasping than the “good.”*

Moreover, whereas the traditional thrust of Western religion has been to align us with a loving Creator,
Eastern thought aims to ground us in an ultimate reality. To do so, Eastern thought generally prescribes
discipline, self-control, moderation, and detachment. Although these values are accepted in Western
religious practice, they are often practiced as a means to an end: salvation and reward. They are ways of
attaining wisdom and truth, but they are also ways of avoiding damnation.

Perhaps these differences explain why there has been a growing interest in the United States in Eastern
thinking and religions. Many have turned from traditional faiths in favor of Buddhism, yoga,
Transcendental Meditation, Vedanta, and so on. Of course, converts to Eastern religions have not
stopped asking about their place in the scheme of things. On the contrary, they are asking perhaps more
intensely than ever before. Many of those who have turned to Eastern religions have found little
meaning in traditional Western religious concepts and practices. Traditional notions of self, Judeo-
Christian doctrines and the emphasis on a personal relationship with God, are no longer meaningful.
Many features of Eastern thought attract people to explore in new directions. Such features include, of
course, the Eastern emphasis on consciousness and inner growth and the importance of discipline,
practice, and method. They also include a distrust of doctrines and dogmas; and hope for integrating
body and intellect, feelings and reason. But a central feature seems to be the reevaluation and
redefinition of one’s concept of the divine and one’s relationship to it.

The many differences between Eastern thought and Western outlook should not be ignored. In the end,
those differences raise the fundamental questions that the Westerner must ask about Eastern religion.
Is it too alien to be truly understood by us? Is it too alien to meet our standards of what is reasonable? Is
it too alien to be ultimately meaningful for us?

IconPhilosophy at the Movies

Watch Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall and Spring (2003) which tells the story of a Buddhist monk and his
very young apprentice as they move through the cycles of life, desire, attachment, loss, search,
redemption, and death. The story takes place on a small floating monastery that is drifting on a lake in a
mountainous forest where the monk teaches the boy prayer and meditation and respect for life, until
the boy enters adolescence and falls in love with a girl whom he follows away from the monastery, only
to return many years later after the monk has died and after he has changed considerably. What aspects
of Buddhist thought do you see in this movie? Are Tillich’s claims about people’s “ultimate concern”
supported in this film? Do Mary Daly’s criticisms apply to the Buddhism you see in this movie?

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Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence

First published Fri Jun 10, 2005; substantive revision Wed Jun 19, 2019

Some phenomena within nature exhibit such exquisiteness of structure, function or interconnectedness
that many people have found it natural to see a deliberative and directive mind behind those
phenomena. The mind in question is typically taken to be supernatural. Philosophically inclined thinkers
have both historically and at present labored to shape the relevant intuition into a more formal, logically
rigorous inference. The resultant theistic arguments, in their various logical forms, share a focus on plan,
purpose, intention, and design, and are thus classified as teleological arguments (or, frequently, as
arguments from or to design).
Although enjoying some prominent defenders over the centuries, such arguments have also attracted
serious criticisms from major historical and contemporary thinkers. Both critics and advocates are found
not only among philosophers, but come from scientific and other disciplines as well. In the following
discussion, major variant forms of teleological arguments will be distinguished and explored, traditional
philosophical and other criticisms will be discussed, and the most prominent contemporary turns
(cosmic fine tuning arguments, many-worlds theories, and the Intelligent Design debate) will be tracked.
Discussion will conclude with a brief look at one historically important non-inferential approach to the
issue.

1. Introduction

2. Design Inference Patterns

2.1 Analogical Design Arguments: Schema 1

2.2 Deductive Design Arguments: Schema 2

2.3 Inferences to the Best Explanation/Abductive Design Arguments: Schema 3

3. Alternative Explanation

3.1 Explaining Away

3.3 Indirect Causation, Design and Evidences

4. Further Contemporary Design Discussions

4.1 Cosmological: Fine-Tuning

4.1.1 No explanation needed

4.1.2 Rival explanations

4.2 Biological: The “Intelligent Design” Movement

5. The Persistence of Design Thinking

6. Conclusion

Bibliography

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1. Introduction

It is not uncommon for humans to find themselves with the intuition that random, unplanned,
unexplained accident just couldn’t produce the order, beauty, elegance, and seeming purpose that we
experience in the natural world around us. As Hume’s interlocutor Cleanthes put it, we seem to see “the
image of mind reflected on us from innumerable objects” in nature. (Hume 1779 [1998], 35). And many
people find themselves convinced that no explanation for that mind-resonance which fails to
acknowledge a causal role for intelligence, intent and purpose in nature can be seriously plausible.

Cosmological arguments often begin with the bare fact that there are contingently existing things and
end with conclusions concerning the existence of a cause with the power to account for the existence of
those contingent things. Others reason from the premise that the universe has not always existed to a
cause that brought it into being. Teleological arguments (or arguments from design) by contrast begin
with a much more specialized catalogue of properties and end with a conclusion concerning the
existence of a designer with the intellectual properties (knowledge, purpose, understanding, foresight,
wisdom, intention) necessary to design the things exhibiting the special properties in question. In broad
outline, then, teleological arguments focus upon finding and identifying various traces of the operation
of a mind in nature’s temporal and physical structures, behaviors and paths. Order of some significant
type is usually the starting point of design arguments.

Design-type arguments are largely unproblematic when based upon things nature clearly could not or
would not produce (e.g., most human artifacts), or when the intelligent agency is itself ‘natural’ (human,
alien, etc.). Identifying designed traces of ‘lost’ human civilizations or even non-human civilizations (via
SETI) could in principle be uncontroversial. Objections to design inferences typically arise only when the
posited designer is something more exotic or perhaps supernatural.

But despite the variety of spirited critical attacks they have elicited, design arguments have historically
had and continue to have widespread intuitive appeal—indeed, it is sometimes claimed that design
arguments are the most persuasive of all purely philosophical theistic arguments. Note that while design
arguments have traditionally been employed to support theism over metaphysical naturalism, some
might also be relevant for panentheism, panpsychism, and other views involving irreducible teleology.

2. Design Inference Patterns

The historical arguments of interest are precisely the potentially problematic ones—inferences
beginning with some empirical features of nature and concluding with the existence of a designer. A
standard but separable second step—the natural theology step—involves identifying the designer as
God, often via particular properties and powers required by the designing in question. Although the
argument wielded its greatest intellectual influence during the 18th and early 19th centuries, it goes
back at least to the Greeks and in extremely clipped form comprises one of Aquinas’s Five Ways. It was
given a fuller and quite nice early statement by Hume’s interlocutor Cleanthes (1779 [1998], 15).
The question remains, however, about the formal structure of such arguments. What sort of logic is
being employed? As it turns out, that question does not have just a single answer. Several distinct
answers are canvassed in the following sections.

2.1 Analogical Design Arguments: Schema 1

Design arguments are routinely classed as analogical arguments—various parallels between human
artifacts and certain natural entities being taken as supporting parallel conclusions concerning operative
causation in each case. The standardly ascribed schema is roughly thus:

Schema 1:

Entity e within nature (or the cosmos, or nature itself) is like specified human artifact a (e.g., a machine)
in relevant respects R.

a has R precisely because it is a product of deliberate design by intelligent human agency.

Like effects typically have like causes (or like explanations, like existence requirements, etc.)

Therefore

It is (highly) probable that e has R precisely because it too is a product of deliberate design by intelligent,
relevantly human-like agency.

(The relevant respects and properties R are referred to variously as teleological properties or as marks or
signs of design, and objects having such properties are sometimes referred to as teleological objects. For
simplicity and uniformity of discussion, I shall simply talk in terms of “Rs”.)

2.1.1 Humean objections

This general argument form was criticized quite vigorously by Hume, at several key steps. (Hume’s
primary critical discussion is contained in (Hume 1779 [1998]). Hume’s responses are widely taken as the
paradigm philosophical refutation of traditional design arguments.) Against (1), Hume argued that the
analogy is not very good—that nature and the various things in it are not very like human artifacts and
exhibit substantial differences from them—e.g., living vs. not, self-sustaining vs. not. Indeed, whereas
advocates of design arguments frequently cited similarities between the cosmos on the one hand and
human machines on the other, Hume suggested (tongue perhaps only partly in cheek) that the cosmos
much more closely resembled a living organism than a machine. But if the alleged resemblance is in
relevant respects distant, then the inference in question will be logically fragile. And while (2) may be
true in specific cases of human artifacts a, that fact is only made relevant to natural phenomena e via
(3), which underpins the transfer of the key attribution. Against (3), Hume argued that any number of
alternative possible explanations could be given of allegedly designed entities in nature—chance, for
instance. Thus, even were (1) true and even were there important resemblances, the argument might
confer little probabilistic force onto the conclusion.

More generally, Hume also argued that even if something like the stated conclusion (4) were
established, that left the arguer far from anything like a traditional conception of God. For instance,
natural evils or apparently suboptimal designs might suggest e.g., an amateur designer or a committee
of designers. And if phenomena instrumental to the production of natural evils (e.g., disease
microorganisms) exhibited various of the Rs, then they would presumably have to be laid at the
designer’s door, further eroding the designer’s resemblance to the wholly good deity of tradition. And
even the most impressive empirical data could properly establish only finite (although perhaps
enormous) power and wisdom, rather than the infinite power and wisdom usually associated with
divinity. But even were one to concede some substance to the design argument’s conclusion, that
would, Hume suggested, merely set up a regress. The designing agent would itself demand explanation,
requiring ultimately a sequence of prior analogous intelligences producing intelligences. And even were
the existence of a designer of material things established, that did not yet automatically establish the
existence of a creator of the matter so shaped. And since analogical arguments are a type of induction
(see the entry on analogy and analogical reasoning), the conclusion even if established would be
established only to some, perhaps insignificant, degree of probability. Furthermore, we could not
ground any induction concerning the cosmos itself upon a requisite fund of experiences of other cosmoi
found to be both deliberately designed and very like ours in relevant respects—for the simple reason
that this universe is our only sample. And finally the fraction of this one cosmos (both spatially and
temporally) available to our inspection is extraordinarily small—not a promising basis for a cosmically
general conclusion. Hume concluded that while the argument might constitute some limited grounds for
thinking that “the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to
human intelligence” (Hume 1779 [1998], 88) Hume’s emphasis)—and that is not a trivial implication—it
established nothing else whatever.

Historically, not everyone agreed that Hume had fatally damaged the argument. It is simply not true that
explanatory inferences cannot properly extend beyond merely what is required for known effects. As a
very general example, based on the few observations which humans had made during a cosmically brief
period in a spatially tiny part of the cosmos, Newton theorized that all bits of matter at all times and in
all places attracted all other bits of matter. There was nothing whatever logically suspect here. Indeed,
simplicity and uniformity considerations—which have considerable well-earned scientific clout—push in
the direction of such generalizations.

But Hume certainly identified important places within the argument to probe. First, any two (groups of)
things have infinitely many properties in common and also differ in infinitely many respects. Whether or
not artifacts and natural objects are alike in ways that would support transfer of design attributions from
the former to the latter depends upon exactly what the relevant Rs are. Second, whether there really
are alternative means of producing Rs independent of any mind input is often an empirical matter,
which cannot be settled either way by simple stipulation. On the other hand, whether some of Hume’s
own remarks are to the point depends upon whether or not the strongest design arguments are
analogical. And whether Hume’s suggestions are correct concerning the uncertain character of any
designer inferred will depend upon the specific Rs and upon what can or cannot be definitively said
concerning requirements for their production.

2.1.2 R Concerns: Round 1

Key questions, then, include: what are the relevant Rs typically cited? do those Rs genuinely signal
purpose and design? how does one show that either way? are there viable alternative accounts of the
Rs requiring no reference to minds? how does one show that either way? The specific Rs in question are
obviously central to design argument efforts. Although the underlying general category is, again, some
special type of orderliness, the specifics have ranged rather widely historically. Among the more
straightforwardly empirical are inter alia uniformity, contrivance, adjustment of means to ends,
particularly exquisite complexity, particular types of functionality, delicacy, integration of natural laws,
improbability, and the fitness (fine-tuning) of the inorganic realm for supporting life. Several problematic
proposals that are empirically further removed and have axiological overtones have also been advanced,
including the intelligibility of nature, the directionality of evolutionary processes, aesthetic
characteristics (beauty, elegance, and the like), apparent purpose and value (including the aptness of
our world for the existence of moral value and practice) and just the sheer niftiness of many of the
things we find in nature.

Many of the specific Rs advanced historically were vulnerable to substantive critiques, often increasingly
so as time went on. Specifically, while it was clearly evident that various a’s had the R character they did
in virtue of their (human) intentional production, it was much more difficult establishing that any or all
other occurrences of R likely owed their existence to intention as well. As the standard story has it,
science increasingly acquired understandings of how nature unaided by deliberate intent and planning
could produce virtually any R proposed, and thus while (2) might continue to hold for virtually any
human artifact a having any intended R one might please, (3)—and the inference to (4)—became
progressively less defensible. Design, on this telling, might gradually be explained away.

2.2 Deductive Design Arguments: Schema 2

But some advocates of design arguments had been reaching for a deeper intuition. The intuition they
were attempting to capture involved properties that in and of themselves constituted some degree of
evidence for design—properties that were not merely constantly conjoined, for whatever reason, with
instances of design. The specific Rs were singled out not just because such properties happened to be
often or even only produced by designing agents. (Garbage heaps fit that description.) Advocates were
convinced that the appropriate Rs in question were in their own right directly reflective of and redolent
of cognition, that this directly suggested mind, that we could see nearly directly that they were the
general sort of thing that a mind might or even would generate, and that consequently they did not
depend for their evidential force upon previously established constant conjunctions or other
associations with known instances of design. When we see a text version of the Gettysburg Address, that
text says mind to us in a way totally unrelated to any induction or analogy from past encounters with
written texts. It was that type of testimony to mind, to design, that some historical advocates of design
arguments believed that they found in some Rs observed in nature—a testimony having no dependency
on induction or analogy. Beauty, purpose and in general value especially when conjoined with delicate
complexity were popular underlying intuitive marks. Intricate, dynamic, stable, functioning order of the
sort we encounter in nature was frequently placed in this category. Such order was taken to be
suggestive of minds in that it seemed nearly self-evidently the sort of thing minds, and so far as was
definitively known, only minds were prone to produce. It was a property whose mind-resonating
character we could unhesitatingly attribute to intent.

Despite Hume’s earlier demurs that things in nature are not really very like artifacts such as machines,
most people (including opponents of design arguments) who are most familiar with nature’s dazzling
intricacies freely admit that nature abounds with things that look designed—that are intention-shaped.
For instance, Francis Crick (no fan of design) issued a warning to his fellow biologists:

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. (Crick
1988, 138).

Along with this perception of mind-suggestiveness went a further principle—that the mind-suggestive or
intention-shaped (the design-like) characteristics in question were too palpable to have been generated
by non-intentional means.

That allows specification of a second design inference pattern:

Schema 2:

Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) are design-like (exhibit a cognition-resonating,
intention-shaped character R)

Design-like properties (R) are not producible by (unguided) natural means—i.e., any phenomenon
exhibiting such Rs must be a product of intentional design.

Therefore

Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) are products of intentional design. And of course,
the capacity for intentional design requires agency of some type.
Notice that explicit reference to human artifacts has dropped out of the argument, and that the
argument is no longer comparative but has become essentially deductive. Some arguments were
historically intended as arguments of that type. Consider the widely reproduced opening passages of
William Paley’s 1802 Natural Theology:[1]

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how the stone came to be
there, I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever; nor
would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch
upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place. I should hardly
think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always
been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? [...] For this
reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive—what we
could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose … [The
requisite] mechanism being observed … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have
had a maker. ... Every observation which was made in our first chapter concerning the watch may be
repeated with strict propriety concerning the eye, concerning animals, concerning plants, concerning,
indeed, all the organized parts of the works of nature. … [T]he eye … would be alone sufficient to
support the conclusion which we draw from it, as to the necessity of an intelligent Creator. …

Although Paley’s argument is routinely construed as analogical, it in fact contains an informal statement
of the above variant argument type. Paley goes on for two chapters discussing the watch, discussing the
properties in it which evince design, destroying potential objections to concluding design in the watch,
and discussing what can and cannot be concluded about the watch’s designer. It is only then that
entities in nature—e.g., the eye—come onto the horizon at all. Obviously, Paley isn’t making such heavy
weather to persuade his readers to concede that the watch really is designed and has a designer. He is,
in fact, teasing out the bases and procedures from and by which we should and should not reason about
design and designers. Thus Paley’s use of the term ‘inference’ in connection with the watch’s designer.
[2]

Once having acquired the relevant principles, then in Chapter 3 of Natural Theology—“Application of the
Argument”—Paley applies the same argument (vs. presenting us with the other half of the analogical
argument) to things in nature. The cases of human artifacts and nature represent two separate
inference instances:

up to the limit, the reasoning is as clear and certain in the one case as in the other. (Paley 1802 [1963],
14)

But the instances are instances of the same inferential move:

there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was
made for assisting it. (Paley 1802 [1963], 13)
The watch does play an obvious and crucial role—but as a paradigmatic instance of design inferences
rather than as the analogical foundation for an inferential comparison.

Schema 2, not being analogically structured, would not be vulnerable to the ills of analogy,[3] and not
being inductive would claim more than mere probability for its conclusion. That is not accidental.
Indeed, it has been argued that Paley was aware of Hume’s earlier attacks on analogical design
arguments, and deliberately structured his argument to avoid the relevant pitfalls (Gillispie 1990, 214–
229).

2.2.1 Assessing the Schema 2 argument

First, how are we to assess the premises required by this schema? Premise (5), at least, is not
particularly controversial even now. Crick’s earlier warning to biologists would have been pointless were
there no temptation toward design attributions, and even as implacable a contemporary opponent of
design arguments as Richard Dawkins characterized biology as:

the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.
(Dawkins 1987, 1)

Day-to-day contemporary biology is rife with terms like ‘design’, ‘machine’, ‘purpose’ and allied terms.
As historian of science Timothy Lenoir has remarked:

Teleological thinking has been steadfastly resisted by modern biology. And yet, in nearly every area of
research biologists are hard pressed to find language that does not impute purposiveness to living
forms. (Lenoir 1982, ix)

Whether or not particular biological phenomena are designed, they are frequently enough design-like to
make design language not only fit living systems extraordinarily well, but to undergird generation of
fruitful theoretical conceptions as well.[4] Advocates of design arguments claim that the reason why
theorizing as if organisms are designed meets with such success is that organisms are in fact designed.
Those opposed would say that all teleological concepts in biology must, in one way or another, be
reduced to natural selection.

However principle (6) (that the relevant design-like properties are not producible by unguided natural
means) will be more problematic in evolutionary biology. What might be the rational justification for
(6)? There are two broad possibilities.

1. Empirical: induction. Induction essentially involves establishing that some principle holds within the
realm of our knowledge/experience (the sample cases), and then, subject to certain constraints,
generalizing the principle to encompass relevant areas beyond that realm (the test cases). The attempt
to establish the universality of a connection between having relevant Rs and being a product of mind on
the basis of an observed consistent connection between having relevant Rs and being a product of mind
within all (most) of the cases where both R was exhibited and we knew whether or not the phenomenon
in question was a product of mind, would constitute an inductive generalization.

This approach would suffer from a variety of weaknesses. The R-exhibiting things concerning which we
knew whether they were designed would be almost without exception human artifacts, whereas the
phenomena to which the generalization was being extended would be almost without exception things
in a very different category—things in nature. And, of course, the generalization in question could
establish at best a probability, and a fairly modest one at that.

2. Conceptual. It might be held that (6) is known in the same conceptual, nearly a priori way in which we
know that textbooks are not producible by natural processes unaided by mind. And our conviction here
is not based on any mere induction from prior experiences of texts. Texts carry with them essential
marks of mind, and indeed in understanding a text we see at least partway into the mind(s) involved.
Various alien artifacts (if any)—of which we have had no prior experience whatever—could fall into this
category as well. Similarly, it has been held that we sometimes immediately recognize that order of the
requisite sort just is a sign of mind and intent.

Alternatively, it could be argued that although there is a genuine conceptual link between appropriate
Rs and mind, design, intent, etc., that typically our recognition of that link is triggered by specific
experiences with artifacts, or that our seeing the connections in depth is best elicited by considerations
involving artifacts. (Both Aristotle and Galileo held a correlate of this view concerning our acquiring
knowledge of the general principles governing nature.) On this view, once the truth of (6) became
manifest to us through experiences of artifacts, the appropriateness of its more general application
would be clear. That might explain why so many advocates of design arguments—both historical and
current—seem to believe that they must only display a few cases and raise their eyebrows to gain
assent to design.

Either way, principle (6), or something like it, would be something with which relevant design inferences
would begin. Further investigation of (6) requires taking a closer look at the Rs which (6) involves.

2.2.2 R Concerns: Round 2

One thing complicating general assessments of design arguments is that the evidential force of specific
Rs is affected by the context of their occurrence. Specifically, properties which seem clearly to constitute
marks of design in known artifacts often seem to have significantly less evidential import outside that
context. For instance, we typically construe enormous complexity in something known to be a
manufactured artifact as a deliberately intended and produced characteristic. But mere complexity in
contexts not taken to involve artifacts (the precise arrangement of pine needles on a forest floor, for
instance) does not seem to have that same force. In the case of natural objects with evident
artifactuality absent, it is less clear that such complexity—as well as the other traditional empirical Rs—
bespeaks intention, plan and purpose. Similarly, absolutely straight lines in an artifact are typically
results of deliberate intention. That straight lines traveled by light rays is so would seem to many to be
less obvious.

Furthermore, even within those two contexts—artifact and nature—the various Rs exhibit varying
degrees of evidential force. For instance, even in an artifact, mere complexity of whatever degree
speaks less clearly of intent than does an engraved sentence. As most critics of design arguments point
out, the examples found in nature are not of the “engraved sentence” sort.

There are two crucial upshots. First, if complexity alone is cited, that complexity may not clearly speak of
intent. Second, although the exhibiting of genuine purpose and value might constitute persuasive
evidence of a designer, establishing that the empirical characteristics in question really do betoken
genuine purpose and value—and not just, say, functionality—seems to many to be difficult if not
impossible.[5]

2.2.3 Gaps and Their Discontents

Evidential ambiguity would virtually disappear if it became clear that there is no plausible means of
producing some R independent of deliberate intent. Part of the persuasiveness of (6) historically came
from absence of any known plausible non-intentional alternative causal account of the traditional Rs.
Such cases are often linked to alleged gaps in nature—phenomena for which, it is claimed, there can be
no purely natural explanation, there being a gap between nature’s production capabilities and the
phenomenon in question. (For example, nature’s unaided capabilities fall short of those capabilities
required for producing a radio. Thus, when we see a radio we know that something else—human agency
—was involved in its production.) Design cases resting upon nature’s alleged inability to produce some
relevant ‘natural’ phenomenon are generally assumed to explicitly or implicitly appeal to supernatural
agency, and are typically described as “God-of-the-gaps” arguments—a description usually intended to
be pejorative.

But evidence of design in nature does not automatically imply gaps. Design built or “front-loaded” into
nature from the very beginning would require no further interventions within the historical flow of
nature and therefore no gaps. But since the artifact/nature divide parallels the gap/non-gap divide, one
way the implausibility of alternative means of production could become exceptionally clear was if R
were associated with a gap in nature’s capabilities—if the unaided course of nature genuinely could not
or would not produce R, yet we see R in ‘nature’. In such a case, the appeal to agency would be virtually
inevitable.
The position that there are gaps in nature is not inherently irrational—and would seem to be a
legitimate empirical question. But although gaps would profoundly strengthen design arguments, they
have their own suite of difficulties. Gaps are usually easy to spot in cases of artifactuality, but although
they may be present in nature, establishing their existence there can usually be done (by science, at
least) only indirectly—via probability considerations, purported limitations on nature’s abilities, etc.

Several possible snags lurk. Gaps in nature would, again, suggest supernatural agency, and some take
science to operate under an obligatory exclusion of such. This prohibition—commonly known as
methodological naturalism—is often claimed (mistakenly, some argue) to be definitive of genuine
science.[6] ‘Established’ limitations both on science and on nature can and have been overturned in the
past. The possibility of discovery (or postulation) of alternative ‘natural’ means of production would
constitute a standing threat to any argument resting in part on a perceived absence of such means. And
the spotty track record of alleged gaps provides at least a cautionary note. Such considerations will
complicate attempts to very firmly establish design empirically on the basis of the types of properties we
usually find in nature.

The way that alleged gaps typically disappear is, of course, through new proposed scientific theories
postulating means of natural production of phenomena previously thought to be beyond nature’s
capabilities. The most obvious example of that is, of course, Darwin’s evolutionary theory and its
descendants.

2.3 Inferences to the Best Explanation/Abductive Design Arguments: Schema 3

Some philosophers of science claim that in a wide variety of scientific cases we employ an “inference to
the best explanation” (IBE).[7] The basic idea is that if one among a number of competing candidate
explanations is overall superior to others in significant respects—enhanced likelihood, explanatory
power and scope, causal adequacy, plausibility, evidential support, fit with already-accepted theories,
predictiveness, fruitfulness, precision, unifying power, and the like—then we are warranted in
(provisionally) accepting that candidate as the right explanation given the evidence in question (Lipton
1991, 58). Some advocates see design arguments as inferences to the best explanation, taking design
explanations—whatever their weaknesses—as prima facie superior to chance, necessity, chance-driven
evolution, or whatever.

A general schema deployed in the current case would give us the following:

Schema 3:
Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) exhibit exquisite complexity, delicate adjustment of
means to ends (and other relevant R characteristics).

The hypothesis that those characteristics are products of deliberate, intentional design (Design
Hypothesis) would adequately explain them.

In fact, the hypothesis that those characteristics are products of deliberate, intentional design (Design
Hypothesis) is the best available overall explanation of them.

Therefore (probably)

Some things in nature (or nature itself, the cosmos) are products of deliberate, intentional design (i.e.,
the Design Hypothesis is likely true).

In arguments of this type, superior explanatory virtues of a theory are taken as constituting decisive
epistemic support for theory acceptability, warranted belief of the theory, and likely truth of the theory.
There are, of course, multitudes of purported explanatory, epistemic virtues, including the incomplete
list a couple paragraphs back (and lists of such have evolved over time). Assessing hypotheses in terms
of such virtues is frequently contentious, depending, as it does, on perceptions of ill-defined
characteristics, differences in background conceptual stances, and the like. Still, in general we frequently
manage rough and ready resolutions.

2.3.1 IBE, Likelihood and Bayes

One key underlying structure in this context is typically traced to Peirce’s notion of abduction. Suppose
that some otherwise surprising fact e would be a reasonably expectable occurrence were hypothesis h
true. That, Peirce argued, would constitute at least some provisional reason for thinking that h might
actually be true. Peirce’s own characterization was as follows (Peirce 1955, 151):

Schema 3:

The surprising fact, C, is observed.

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course.

Hence,

There is reason to suspect that A is true.

The measure of C being a ‘matter of course’ given A is frequently described as the degree to which C
could be expected were A in fact true. This intuition is sometimes—though explicitly not by Peirce
himself—formalized in terms of likelihood, defined as follows:
The likelihood of hypothesis h (given evidence e) = P(e | h)

The likelihood of h is the probability of finding evidence e given that the hypothesis h is true. In cases of
competing explanatory hypotheses—say h1 and h2—the comparative likelihoods on specified evidence
can be taken to indicate which of the competitors specific pieces of evidence differentially support, i.e.:

Likelihood Principle:

[P(e | h1) > P(e | h2)] ⇔ (e supports h1 more than it does h2)

Higher likelihood of h1 than h2 on specific evidence does not automatically imply that h1 should be
accepted, is likely to be true, or is better in some overall sense than is h2. h1 might, in fact, be a
completely lunatic theory which nonetheless entails e, giving h1 as high a likelihood as possible. Such
maximal likelihood relative to e would not necessarily alter h1’s lunacy. Likelihood thus does not
automatically translate into a measure of how strongly some specific evidence e supports the hypothesis
h1 in question (Jantzen 2014a, Chap. 11).

This, then, leads directly to Bayesian probability theory. While the Bayesian approach is undoubtedly
more rigorous than appeals to IBE, few teleological arguments are presented in these terms. For a
contrast between IBE and Bayesianism, see abduction. For an important recent critique of theistic design
arguments in Bayesian terms, see (Sober 2009), and the reply by (Kotzen (2012), and Jantzen’s response
(2014b).

Whatever one’s view of Bayesianism, IBEs have their own shortcomings. The assessment of ‘best’ is not
only a value-tinged judgment, but is notoriously tricky (especially given the ambiguous and hard to
pinpoint import of the Rs in the present case). There is also the very deep question of why we should
think that features which we humans find attractive in proposed explanations should be thought to be
truth-tracking. What sort of justification might be available here? Furthermore, taking design to be the
best explanation for something requires prior identification of the appropriate properties as design-
relevant, and that recognition must have a different basis.[8] And again, substantive comparison can
only involve known alternatives, which at any point represent a vanishingly small fraction of the possible
alternatives. Choosing the best of the known may be the best we can do, but many would insist that
without some further suppressed and significant assumptions, being the best (as humans see it) of the
(humanly known) restricted group does not warrant ascription of truth, or anything like it.

There are other potential issues here as well. Sober argues that without additional very specific
assumptions about the putative designer we could specify no particular value for P(e | h)—e.g., the
likelihood that a designer would produce vertebrate eyes with the specific features we observe them to
have: and that depending on the specific assumptions made we could come up with any value from 0 to
1 (e.g., Sober 2003, 38).
There is also the potential problem of new, previously unconsidered hypotheses all lumped together in
the catch-all basket. Without knowing the details of what specific unconsidered hypotheses might look
like, there is simply no plausible way to anticipate the apparent likelihood of a novel new hypothesis—
let alone its other potential explanatory virtues. This, on some views, is essentially what happened with
traditional design arguments—such arguments were the most reasonable available until Darwinian
evolution provided a plausible (or better) alternative the details and likelihood of which were not
previously anticipatable.

3. Alternative Explanation

Without going into the familiar details, Darwinian processes fueled by undesigned, unplanned, chance
variations that are in turn conserved or eliminated by way of natural selection would, it is argued, over
time produce organisms exquisitely adapted to their environmental niches.[9] And since many of the
characteristics traditionally cited as evidences of design just were various adaptations, evolution would
thus produce entities exactly fitting traditional criteria of design. Natural selection, then, unaided by
intention or intervention could account for the existence of many (perhaps all) of the Rs which we in fact
find in biology. (A parallel debate can be found between those who believe that life itself requires a
design explanation (Meyer 2009) and those proposing naturalistic explanations (see the entry on life.)

That was—and is—widely taken as meaning that design arguments depending upon specific biological
gaps would be weakened—perhaps fatally.

Premise (10)—not to mention the earlier (6)—would thus look to simply be false. What had earlier
appeared to be purpose (requiring intent) was now apparently revealed as mere unintended but
successful and preserved function.

Of course, relevant premises being false merely undercuts the relevant schemas in present form—it
does not necessarily refute either the basic design intuition or other forms of design arguments. But
some critics take a much stronger line here. Richard Dawkins, for instance, subtitles one of his books:
“Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design” (Dawkins, 1987). Typically underlying
claims of this sort is the belief that Darwinian evolution, by providing a relevant account of the origin
and development of adaptation, diversity, and the like, has explained away the alleged design in the
biological realm—and an attendant designer—in much the same way that kinetic theory has explained
away caloric. Indeed, this is a dominant idea underlying current responses to design arguments.
However, undercutting and explaining away are not necessarily the same thing, and exactly what
explaining away might mean, and what a successful explaining away might require are typically not
clearly specified. So before continuing, we need clarity concerning some relevant conceptual landscape.
3.1 Explaining Away[10]

That an alleged explanatory factor α is provisionally explained away requires that there be an alternative
explanation Σ meeting these conditions:

Σ is explanatorily adequate to the relevant phenomenon (structure, property, entity, event)

Σ can be rationally supported in terms of available (or likely) evidence

Σ is relevantly superior to the original in terms either of adequacy or support

Σ requires no essential reference to α

However, (a) – (d) are incomplete in a way directly relevant to the present discussion. Here is a very
simple case. Suppose that an elderly uncle dies in suspicious circumstances, and a number of the
relatives believe that the correct explanation is the direct agency of a niece who is primary heir, via
deliberately and directly administering poison. However, forensic investigation establishes that the
cause of death was a mix-up among medications the uncle was taking—an unfortunate confusion. The
suspicious relatives, however, without missing an explanatory beat shift the niece’s agency back one
level, proposing that the mix-up itself was orchestrated by the niece—switching contents of prescription
bottles, no doubt. And that might very well turn out to be the truth.

In that sort of case, the α in question (e.g., niecely agency) is no longer directly appealed to in the
relevant initial explanatory level, but is not removed from all explanatory relevance to the phenomenon
in question. In general, then, for α to be explained away in the sense of banished from all explanatory
relevance the following condition must also be met:

no reference to α is required at any explanatory level underlying Σ

Roughly this means that Σ does not depend essentially on any part β of any prior explanation where α is
essential to β. There are some additional possible technical qualifications required, but the general
intuition should be clear.

Thus, e.g., whereas there was no need to appeal to caloric at some prior or deeper level, with design,
according to various design advocates, there is still an explanatory lacuna (or implicit promissory note)
requiring reference to design at some explanatory level prior to Darwinian evolution. Indeed, as some
see it (and as Paley himself suggested), there are phenomena requiring explanation in design terms
which cannot be explained away at any prior explanatory level (short of the ultimate level).

That some phenomenon α has been explained away can be taken to mean two very different things—
either as
showing that it is no longer rational to believe that α exists

or as

showing that α does not exist

(And often, of course, both.)

For instance, few would assert that there is still an extant rational case for belief in phlogiston—any
explanatory work it did at the proximate level seems to have ceased, and deeper explanatory uses for it
have never subsequently materialized. Perhaps its non-existence was not positively established
immediately, but removal of rational justification for belief in some entity can morph into a case for non-
existence as the evidence for a rival hypothesis increases over time.

3.1.1 Level-shifting

Purported explanations can be informally divided into two broad categories—those involving agents,
agency, intention, and the like; and those involving mechanism, physical causality, natural processes,
and the like. The distinction is not, of course, a clean one (functioning artifacts typically involve both),
but is useful enough in a rough and ready way, and in what follows agent explanations and mechanical
explanations respectively will be used as convenient handles. Nothing pernicious is built into either the
broad distinction or the specified terminology.

There are some instructive patterns that emerge in explanatory level-shifting attempts, and in what
immediately follows some of the more basic patterns will be identified.

(a) Agent explanations

Intention, intervention, and other agency components of explanations can very frequently be pushed
back to prior levels—much as many defenders of teleological arguments claim. The earlier case of the
alleged poisoning of the rich uncle by the niece is a simple example of this.

But in some cases, the specifics of the agent explanation in question may make appeal to some prior
level less plausible or sensible. For example, suppose that one held the view that crop circles were to be
explained in terms of direct alien activity. One could, upon getting irrefutable video proof of human
production of crop circles, still maintain that aliens were from a distance controlling the brains of the
humans in question, and that thus the responsibility for crop circles did still lie with alien activity. While
this retreat of levels preserves the basic explanation, it of course comes with a significant cost in
inherent implausibility.

And in some cases, pushing specific agency back a level seems nearly unworkable. Suppose that the
standard explanation of global warming was human activity, but that subsequently a complete,
completely adequate, nailed down explanation in terms of solar cycles emerged. That would seem to
explain away the alleged human causation, and in this sort of case it would be difficult to retreat back
one level and make the case that human agency and activity were actually driving the solar cycles.

Still the level-changing possibility is as a general rule available with proposed agent explanations. And
design typically is, of course, an agent explanation.

(b) Mechanical explanations

Pushing specific explanatory factors back to a prior level often works less smoothly in cases of purely
mechanical/physical explanations than in intentional/agency explanations. In many attempted
mechanistic relocation cases, it is difficult to see how the specific relocated explanatory factor is even
supposed to work, much less generate any new explanatory traction. Exactly what would caloric do if
pushed back one level, for instance?

Although level shifting of specific explanatory factors seems to work less easily within purely physical
explanations, relocation attempts involving broad physical principles can sometimes avoid such
difficulties. For instance, for centuries determinism was a basic background component of scientific
explanations (apparently stochastic processes being explained away epistemically). Then, early in the
20th century physics was largely converted to a quantum mechanical picture of nature as involving an
irreducible indeterminism at a fundamental level—apparently deterministic phenomena now being
what was explained away. However, DeBroglie, Bohm and others (even for a time Einstein) tried to
reinstate determinism by moving it back to an even deeper fundamental level via hidden variable
theories. Although the hidden variable attempt is generally thought not to be successful, its failure is not
a failure of principle.

3.1.2 Possible disputes

How one assesses the legitimacy, plausibility, or likelihood of the specific counter-explanation will bear
substantial weight here, and that in turn will depend significantly on among other things background
beliefs, commitments, metaphysical dispositions, and the like. If one has a prior commitment to some
key α (e.g., to theism, atheism, naturalism, determinism, materialism, or teleology), or assigns a high
prior to that α, the plausibility of taking the proposed (new) explanation as undercutting, defeating, or
refuting α (and/or Σ) will be deeply affected, at least initially.
Tilting the conceptual landscape via prior commitments is both an equal opportunity epistemic necessity
and a potential pitfall here. Insisting on pushing an explanatory factor back a level is often an indication
of a strong prior commitment of some sort. Disagreement over deeper philosophical or other principles
will frequently generate divergence over when something has or has not been explained away. One side,
committed to the principle, will accept a level change as embodying a deeper insight into the relevant
phenomenon. The other, rejecting the principle, will see an ad hoc retreat to defend an α which has in
fact been explained away.

Returning to the present issue, design argument advocates will of course reject the claim that design,
teleology, agency and the like have been explained away either by science generally or by Darwinian
evolution in particular. Reasons will vary. Some will see any science—Darwinian evolution included—as
incompetent to say anything of ultimate design relevance, pro or con. (Many on both sides of the design
issue fit here.) Some will see Darwinian evolution as failing condition (a), (b) and/or (c), claiming that
Darwinian evolution is not explanatorily adequate to selected α’s, is inadequately supported by the
evidence, and is far from superior to agency explanations of relevant phenomena. (Creationists and
some—not all—‘intelligent design’ advocates fit here.) Some will argue that a Darwinian failure occurs at
(d), citing e.g., a concept of information claimed to be both essential to evolution and freighted with
agency. (Some intelligent design advocates (e.g., Dembski, 2002 and Meyer, 1998) fit here.) However,
the major contention of present interest involves (e).

3.3 Indirect Causation, Design and Evidences

Historically, design cases were in fact widely understood to allow for indirect intelligent agent design
and causation, the very causal structures producing the relevant phenomena being themselves
deliberately designed for the purpose of producing those phenomena.[11] For instance, it was typically
believed that God could have initiated special conditions and processes at the instant of creation which
operating entirely on their own could produce organisms and other intended (and designed) results with
no subsequent agent intervention required. Paley himself, the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises and
others were explicitly clear that whether or not something was designed was an issue largely separable
from the means of production in question. Historically it was insisted that design in nature did track back
eventually to intelligent agency somewhere and that any design we find in nature would not—and could
not—have been there had there ultimately been no mind involved. But commentators (including many
scientists) at least from the early 17th century on (e.g., Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle) very clearly
distinguished the creative initiating of nature itself from interventions within the path of nature once
initiated. For instance, over two centuries before Darwin, Bacon wrote:

God … doth accomplish and fulfill his divine will [by ways] not immediate and direct, but by compass;
not violating Nature, which is his own law upon the creation. (quoted in (Whewell 1834, 358))
Indeed, if the Rs in question did directly indicate the influence of a mind, then means of production—
whether unbroken causation or gappy—would be of minimal evidential importance. Thus, the frequent
contemporary claim that design arguments all involve appeal to special divine intervention during the
course of nature’s history—that in short design arguments are “God-of-the-gaps” arguments—
represents serious historical (and present) inaccuracy (e.g., Behe, 1996).

However, if Rs result from gapless chains of natural causal processes, the evidential impact of those Rs
again threatens to become problematic and ambiguous, since there will a fortiori be at the immediate
level a full natural causal account for them.[12] Design will, in such cases, play no immediate
mechanistic explanatory role, suggesting its superfluousness. But even if such conceptions were
explanatorily and scientifically superfluous at that level, that does not entail that they are conceptually,
alethically, inferential, or otherwise superfluous in general. The role of mind might be indirect, deeply
buried, or at several levels of remove from the immediate production mechanism but would still have to
be present at some level. In short, on the above picture Darwinian evolution will not meet condition (e)
for explaining away design, which is not itself a shortcoming of Darwinian evolution.

But any gap-free argument will depend crucially upon the Rs in question being ultimately dependent for
their eventual occurrence upon agent activity. That issue could be integrated back into an altered
Schema 2 by replacing (6) with:

(6a) Design-like properties (R) are (most probably) not producible by means ultimately devoid of
mind/intention—i.e., any phenomena exhibiting such Rs must be a product (at least indirectly) of
intentional design.

The focus must now become whether or not the laws and conditions required for the indirect
production of life, intelligent life, etc., could themselves be independent of intention, design and mind at
some deep (perhaps primordial, pre-cosmic) point. In recent decades, exactly that question has arisen
increasingly insistently from within the scientific community.

4. Further Contemporary Design Discussions

4.1 Cosmological: Fine-tuning

Intuitively, if the laws of physics were different, the evolution of life would not have taken the same
path. If gravity were stronger, for example, then flying insects and giraffes would most likely not exist.
The truth is far more dramatic. Even an extraordinarily small change in one of many key parameters in
the laws of physics would have made life impossible anywhere in the universe. Consider two examples:

The expansion rate of the universe is represented by the cosmological constant Λ. If Λ were slighter
greater, there would be no energy sources, such as stars. If it were slightly less, the Big Bang would have
quickly led to a Big Crunch in which the universe collapsed back onto itself. For life to be possible, Λ
cannot vary more than one part in 1053 (Collins 2003)

Life depends on, among other things, a balance of carbon and oxygen in the universe. If the strong
nuclear force were different by 0.4%, there would not be enough of one or the other for life to exist
(Oberhummer, Csótó, and Schlattl 2000). Varying this constant either way “would destroy almost all
carbon or almost all oxygen in every star” (Barrow 2002, 155).

Many examples of fine-tuning have to do with star formation. Stars are important since life requires a
variety of elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Stars contain the
only known mechanism for producing large quantities of these elements and are therefore necessary for
life. Lee Smolin estimates that when all of the fine-tuning examples are considered, the chance of stars
existing in the universe is 1 in 10229. “In my opinion, a probability this tiny is not something we can let
go unexplained. Luck will certainly not do here; we need some rational explanation of how something
this unlikely turned out to be the case” (Smolin 1999, 45). Smolin is not merely claiming that all
improbable events require an explanation, but some improbable events are special. (In poker, every set
of five cards dealt to the dealer has the same probability, assuming that the cards are shuffled
sufficiently. If the dealer is dealt a pair on three successive hands, no special explanation is required. If
the dealer is dealt a royal flush on three successive hands, an explanation would rightly be demanded,
and the improbability of this case isn’t even close to the magnitude of the improbability that Smolin
mentioned.) Physicists who have written on fine-tuning agree with Smolin that it cries out for an
explanation. One explanation is that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for the existence of life
because it literally has been constructed for life by an intelligent agent.

There are two other types of responses to fine-tuning: (i) it does not, in fact, require a special
explanation, and (ii) there are alternative explanations to theistic design. Let’s briefly consider these
(also see the entry on fine-tuning).

4.1.1 No explanation needed

Three approaches have been taken to undermine the demand for explanation presented by fine-tuning.

4.1.1.1 Weak anthropic principle

In a sense, it is necessary for the fine-tuned constants to have values in the life-permitting range: If
those values were not within that range, people would not exist. The fine-tuned constants must take on
the values that they have in order for scientists to be surprised by their discovery in the first place. As a
matter of fact, they could not have discovered anything else. According to the weak anthropic principle,
we ought not be surprised by having made such a discovery, since no other observation was possible.
But if we should not have been surprised to have made such a discovery, then there is nothing unusual
here that requires a special explanation. The demand for explanation is simply misplaced.

4.1.1.2 Observational selection effect

Sober gives a related but stronger argument based on observational selection effects (Sober 2009, 77–
80). Say that Jones nets a large number of fish from a local lake, all of which are over 10 inches long. Let
hall= ‘all of the fish in the lake are over 10 inches long’ and h1/2= ‘Half of the fish in the lake are over 10
inches long’. The evidence e is such that P(e | hall) > P(e | h1/2). Now say that Jones discovers that his
net is covered with 10 inch holes, preventing him from capturing any smaller fish. In that case, e does
not favor one hypothesis over the other. The evidence e is an artifact of the net itself, not a random
sample of the fish in the lake.

When it comes to fine-tuning, Sober considers hdesign=‘the constants have been set in place by an
intelligence, specifically God’, and hchance=‘the constants are what they are as a matter of mindless
random chance’. While intuitively

P(constants are just right for life | hdesign) >

P(constants are just right for life | hchance)

one has to consider the role of the observer, who is analogous to the net in the fishing example. Since
human observers could only detect constants in the life-permitting range, Sober argues, the correct
probabilities are

P(you observe that the constants are right | hdesign & you exist) = P(you observe that the constants are
right | hchance & you exist).

Given this equality, fine-tuning does not favor hdesign over hchance. The selection effect prevents any
confirmation of design.

Sober’s analysis is critiqued in (Monton 2006) and (Kotzen 2012). Also see (Jantzen 2014a, sec. 18.4). We
should note that if Sober is correct, then the naturalistic explanations for fine-tuning considered below
(4.1.2) are likewise misguided.

4.1.1.3 Probabilities do not apply

Let C stand for a fine-tuned parameter with physically possible values in the range [0, ∞. If we assume
that nature is not biased toward one value of C rather than another, then each unit subinterval in this
range should be assigned equal probability. Fine-tuning is surprising insofar as the life-permitting range
of C is tiny compared to the full interval, which corresponds to a very small probability.

As McGrew, McGrew, and Vestrup argue (2001), there is a problem here in that, strictly speaking,
mathematical probabilities do not apply in these circumstances. When a probability distribution is
defined over a space of possible outcomes, it must add up to exactly 1. But for any uniform distribution
over an infinitely large space, the sum of the probabilities will grow arbitrarily large as each unit interval
is added up. Since the range of C is infinite, McGrew et al. conclude that there is no sense in which life-
friendly universes are improbable; the probabilities are mathematically undefined.

One solution to this problem is to truncate the interval of possible values. Instead of allowing C to range
from [0, ∞), one could form a finite interval [0, N], where N is very large relative to the life-permitting
range of C. A probability distribution could then be defined over the truncated range.

A more rigorous solution employs measure theory. Measure is sometimes used in physics as a surrogate
for probability. For example, there are many more irrational numbers than rational ones. In measure
theoretic terms, almost all real numbers are irrational, where “almost all” means all but a set of zero
measure. In physics, a property found for almost all of the solutions to an equation requires no
explanation; it’s what one should expect. It’s not unusual, for instance, for a pin balancing on its tip to
fall over. Falling over is to be expected. In contrast, if a property that has zero measure in the relevant
space were actually observed to be the case, like the pin continuing to balance on its tip, that would
demand a special explanation. Assuming one’s model for the system is correct, nature appears to be
strongly biased against such behavior (Gibbons, Hawking, and Stewart 1987, 736). The argument for
fine-tuning can thus be recast such that almost all values of C are outside of the life-permitting range.
The fact that our universe is life-permitting is therefore in need of explanation.

The question of whether probabilities either do not apply or have been improperly applied to
cosmological fine-tuning continues to draw interest. For more, see (Davies 1992), (Callender 2004),
(Holder 2004), (Koperski 2005), (Manson 2009), (Jantzen 2014a, sec. 18.3), and (Sober 2019, sec. 5.1).
Manson (2018) argues that neither theism nor naturalism provides a better explanation for fine-tuning.

4.1.2 Rival explanations

Assuming that fine-tuning does require an explanation, there are several approaches one might take
(Koperski 2015, section 2.4).

4.1.2.1 Scientific progress

That the universe is fine-tuned for life is based on current science. But, just as many other anomalies
have eventually been explained, so might fine-tuning. Science may one day find a naturalistic answer,
eliminating the need for design. For suggestions along these lines, see (Harnik, Kribs, and Perez 2006)
and (Loeb 2014).

While this is a popular stance, it is, of course, a promissory note rather than an explanation. The appeal
to what might yet be discovered is not itself a rival hypothesis.

4.1.2.2 Exotic life

It’s conceivable that life could exist in a universe with parameter values that we do not typically believe
are life-permitting. In other words, there may be exotic forms of life that could survive in a very different
sort of universe. If so, then perhaps the parameter intervals that are in fact life-permitting are not fine-
tuned after all.

The main difficulty with this suggestion is that all life requires a means for overcoming the second law of
thermodynamics. Life requires the extraction of energy from the environment. Any life-form imaginable
must therefore have systems that allow for something like metabolism and respiration, which in turn
require a minimal amount of complexity (e.g., there can be no single-molecule life forms). Many
examples of fine-tuning do not allow for such complexity, however. If there were no stars, for example,
then there would be no stable sources of energy and no mechanism for producing the heavier elements
in the periodic table. Such a universe would lack the chemical building blocks needed for a living entity
to extract energy from the environment and thereby resist the pull of entropy.

4.1.2.3 Multiverse

While the odds of winning a national lottery are low, your odds would obviously increase if you were to
buy several million tickets. The same idea applies to the most popular explanation for fine-tuning: a
multiverse. Perhaps physical reality consists of a massive array of universes each with a different set of
values for the relevant constants. If there are many—perhaps infinitely many—universes, then the odds
of a life-permitting universe being produced would seem to be much greater. While most of the
universes in the multiverse would be unfit for life, so the argument goes, ours is one of the few where all
of the constants have the required values.

While the philosophical literature on the multiverse continues to grow (see (Collins 2009, 2012) and
(Kraay 2014)), many of the arguments against it share a common premise: a multiverse would not, by
itself, be a sufficient explanation of fine-tuning. More would have to be known about the way in which
universes are produced. By analogy, just because a roulette wheel has 38 spaces does not guarantee
that the probability of Red 25 is 1/38. If the wheel is rigged in some way—by using magnets for example
—to prevent that outcome, then the probability might be extremely small. If the table were rigged and
yet Red 25 was the actual winner, that would require a special explanation. Likewise, if a property has
zero measure in the space of possible universes, and yet that property is observed, its existence would
still require an explanation (Earman 1987, 315). This is true regardless of whether the space of universes
is finitely or infinitely large. In order to explain fine-tuning, the multiverse proponent would still have to
show that the life-permitting universes do not have zero measure in the space of all universes (Koperski
2005, 307–09).

4.2 Biological: Intelligent Design

A high-profile development in design arguments over the past 20 years or so involves what has come to
be known as Intelligent Design (ID). Although there are variants, it generally involves efforts to construct
design arguments taking cognizance of various contemporary scientific developments (primarily in
biology, biochemistry, and cosmology)—developments which, as most ID advocates see it, both reveal
the inadequacy of mainstream explanatory accounts (condition (a)) and offer compelling evidence for
design in nature at some level (condition (e) again).

ID advocates propose two specialized Rs—irreducible complexity (Behe 1996) and specified complex
information (Dembski 1998, 2002).[13] Although distinctions are sometimes blurred here, while ID
arguments involving each of those Rs tend to be gap arguments, an additional focus on mind-reflective
aspects of nature is typically more visible in ID arguments citing specified complexity than in arguments
citing irreducible complexity.

The movement has elicited vociferous criticism and opposition. Opponents have pressed a number of
objections against ID including, inter alia contentions that ID advocates have simply gotten the relevant
science wrong, that even where the science is right the empirical evidences cited by design advocates do
not constitute substantive grounds for design conclusions, that the existence of demonstrably superior
alternative explanations for the phenomena cited undercuts the cogency of ID cases, and that design
theories are not legitimate science, but are just disguised creationism, God-of-the-gaps arguments,
religiously motivated, etc.

We will not pursue that dispute here except to note that even if the case is made that ID could not count
as proper science, which is controversial,[14] that would not in itself demonstrate a defect in design
arguments as such. Science need not be seen as exhausting the space of legitimate conclusions from
empirical data. In any case, the floods of vitriol in the current ID discussion suggest that much more than
the propriety of selected inferences from particular empirical evidences is at issue.

5. The Persistence of Design Thinking

That question is: why do design arguments remain so durable if empirical evidence is inferentially
ambiguous, the arguments logically controversial, and the conclusions vociferously disputed? One
possibility is that they really are better arguments than most philosophical critics concede. Another
possibility is that design intuitions do not rest upon inferences at all. The situation may parallel that of
the existence of an external world, the existence of other minds, and a number of other familiar
matters. The 18th century Scottish Common Sense philosopher Thomas Reid (and his contemporary
followers) argued that we are simply so constructed that in certain normally-realized experiential
circumstances we simply find that we in fact have involuntary convictions about such a world, about
other minds, and so forth. That would explain why historical philosophical attempts to reconstruct the
arguments by which such beliefs either arose or were justified were such notorious failures—failures in
the face of which ordinary belief nonetheless proceeded happily and helplessly onward. If a similar
involuntary belief-producing mechanism operated with respect to intuitions of design, that would
similarly explain why argumentative attempts have been less than universally compelling but yet why
design ideas fail to disappear despite the purported failure of such arguments.

A number of prominent figures historically in fact held that we could determine more or less
perceptually that various things in nature were candidates for design attributions—that they were in the
requisite respects design-like. Some, like William Whewell, held that we could perceptually identify
some things as more than mere candidates for design (Whewell 1834, 344). Thomas Reid also held a
view in this region,[15] and Hume’s Cleanthes made suggestions in this direction.

If something like that were the operative process, then ID, in trying to forge a scientific link to design in
the sense of inferences from empirically determined evidences would be misconstructing the actual
basis for design belief, as would be design arguments more generally. It is perhaps telling, in this regard,
that scientific theorizing typically involves substantial creativity and that the resultant theories are
typically novel and unexpected. Design intuitions, however, do not seem to emerge as novel construals
from creative grappling with data, but are embedded in our thinking nearly naturally—so much so that,
again, Crick thinks that biologists have to be immunized against it.

6. Conclusion

Perception and appreciation of the incredible intricacy and the beauty of things in nature—whether
biological or cosmic—has certainly inclined many toward thoughts of purpose and design in nature, and
has constituted important moments of affirmation for those who already accept design positions. The
status of the corresponding arguments of course, is not only a matter of current dispute, but the
temperature of the dispute seems to be on the rise. And regardless of what one thinks of the arguments
at this point, so long as nature has the power to move us (as even Kant admitted that the ‘starry
heavens above’ did), design convictions and arguments are unlikely to disappear quietly.

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Related Entries

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Acknowledgments

Del Ratzsch would like to thank his colleagues in the Calvin College Philosophy Department, especially
Ruth Groenhout, Kelly Clark and Terrence Cuneo, and to David van Baak.

Jeffrey Koperski would like to thank Hans Halvorson, Rodney Holder, and Thomas Tracy for helpful
comments on source material for section 4. Special thanks to Benjamin Jantzen and an anonymous
referee for several comments and corrections on the 2019 version.
Copyright © 2019 by

Del Ratzsch

Jeffrey Koperski <koperski@svsu.edu>

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

William Paley 1743–1805 Paley was by all accounts a gifted lecturer, adored by his students. He was also
an intellectual powerhouse, having graduated in 1763 as ‘Senior Wrangler’ from Christ’s College,
Cambridge, meaning that he was the highest ranking mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge
University. He also rose through the ranks of the Anglican Church, becoming Archdeacon of Carlisle in
1782. This information is useful mainly in order to give you a snapshot wof his stature and nature. For
everything else about Paley, should judge him by his writings. 2 ● Paley’s Analogical Argument: its basis
in observation 1 Paley’s argument is a posteriori, meaning that it is based on sense experience: we
observe the world through touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight, and we draw conclusions from what
our senses tell us. Key term a posteriori arguments which depend on sense experience: think of
‘posterior’ – behind / after sense experience. For example, that ‘oak trees grow from acorns’ can only be
known by sense experience and not by logic. Section A: Philosophy of Religion 1.1 Arguments for the
Existence God The Design Argument This chapter will cover: ● Paley’s Analogical Argument ● Criticisms
of Design Arguments from David Hume You will need to consider six things for this section 1 The basis of
Paley’s Analogical Argument in observation and thought. 2 Paley’s Analogical Design Argument. 3
Criticisms of Design Arguments from David Hume. 4 The strengths and weaknesses of Paley’s argument.
5 The status of Paley’s argument as a ‘proof’. 6 The value of Paley’s argument for religious faith.
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 2 12/09/16 11:50 am Draft © Hodder Education 1.1
Arguments for the Existence God 3 Key terms inductive arguments which use reasoning in which the
premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion.
Inductive arguments are probabilistic. They can be used to argue from what we see in the world back to
the supposed cause. premise a proposition that supports, or helps to support, a conclusion. 2 Further,
the argument is inductive. Inductive reasoning is where we use premises to supply strong evidence for
the truth of the conclusion. Inductive arguments are about what is probably true, and they give us new
knowledge. Since I’ve owned many cats, here’s an example based on my observations about cats: ● All
the cats that I have observed have had fur. ● Tomorrow I am going on holiday to Canada. ● The cats I
see in Canada will probably have fur. The third line of the argument gives us knowledge, but it can only
be probably true. In fact, until the 1970s, my conclusion would probably have been true for every
observation of cats I would ever make, but during the 1970s breeders developed a fur-less cat known as
the Canadian Sphynx, and as a matter of fact one turned up two weeks ago in the house next to mine.
Since Paley’s argument is a posteriori and inductive, his conclusion that the universe was designed is at
best probably true, and it might turn out to be false. 3 Paley’s argument is based on three particular
observations about the world: ● Its complexity. Paley goes into great detail concerning his observations
about the complexity of the natural world. He looks at the complexity of biological organisms and
organs, such as the eye. He also looks at the complexity of the laws of nature by which everything is
governed. ● Its regularity. Paley observes in particular the regularity of the orbits of comets, moons and
planets and the regularity of the seasons of the year. ● Its purpose. Paley observes that the machines
we make are built for a purpose. The complexity and regularity of a watch implies that it has a purpose,
even if we do not know what the purpose is. Our observation of the complexity and regularity of the
world therefore implies that the world too has a purpose. 4 On the basis of these observations, Paley
formulated his inductive Design Argument, which can be summarised as follows: ● Some objects in the
world show clear evidence that they were designed because they exhibit complexity, regularity and
purpose. ● The universe appears to exhibit complexity, regularity and purpose. ● So it is likely that the
universe was designed. 5 In summary, Paley argues inductively from what we can see in the world (the
appearance of design) back to the supposed cause (God). ● Paley’s analogical Design Argument Paley’s
arguments have three main foundations in philosophical and religious thought. ● Aristotle’s argument
that everything in nature moves towards a final end or purpose. ● Aquinas’ earlier analogical Design
Argument of the archer and the arrow. − The long tradition of natural theology in the Christian Church
(hence the title of his book – Natural Theology … ). Key term natural theology the view that questions
about God’s existence, nature and attributes can be answered without referring to scripture or to any
other form of special revelation, by using reason, science, history and observation.
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 3 12/09/16 11:50 am Draft © Hodder Education 4
Component 1 Philosophy of religion and ethics Paley’s argument here is simple. If, while crossing a
heath, I come across two objects, the first a stone and the second a watch, and I ask myself how they
came to be there, I would have to give different answers to this question. For the stone, it would not be
absurd to suppose it had been there forever; but the watch is quite clearly different, because closer
inspection shows that it is a complex artefact. To put Paley’s mention of the watch into context (Natural
Theology was first published in 1802), remember that watches then were rather different artefacts to
the comparatively dainty objects that most of us wear upon our wrists. Paley would be thinking about
something like the watch shown here, where unclipping the hinge between the front and the back
would reveal a complex arrangement of gears and levers. In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot
against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any
thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the
absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired
how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before
given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this
answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone; why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in
the fi rst? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive
(what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a
purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated
as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what
they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order,
than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine,
or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. … This mechanism being observed
… the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have
existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artifi cer or artifi cers who formed it for the
purpose which we fi nd it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.
▲ Paley: Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the
Appearances of Nature, 1802. Ch.1, 1–3. (Note 1) 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 4
12/09/16 11:51 am Draft © Hodder Education 1.1 Arguments for the Existence God 5 Looking at these
pictures, we could not suppose of Paley’s watch what we could suppose of the stone – that it had always
been there. For example, the watch would contain brass – a metal that is commonly selected in
watchmaking because of its elasticity and anti-rusting properties. The front face would be covered with
glass, both to protect the hands of the watch and to enable the numbers engraved on the face to be
seen. The gears and cogs inside the watch would lead you to suppose that they were responsible for the
regularity of the movement; moreover if only one part of the mechanism had been different (such as
one cog being too large or too small), then the movement would fail. Eventually you would realise
further that the movement had an obvious purpose – to tell the time. From the existence of the watch
and its properties we could infer the existence of a watchmaker. Like a good politician, Paley then
anticipated some objections to his argument. For example: ● Some might object that if the watch is
broken, or does not work properly, that would weaken his argument. Paley answers that even if that
were the case, he would still know that the broken watch was designed. ● The same would be true if he
could not work out what all the parts did. ● Some might object to Paley by claiming that there just
happens to be a principle of order in material things which had somehow brought the parts of the watch
into their present form and situation. Paley sees this as nonsense – watches do not get made by any
‘principle of order’ other than that found in the mind of a watchmaker. ● Nor would he change his mind
if somebody told him he was ignorant of the whole matter – Paley says that he would know enough to
understand that the watch was designed. From here, Paley went on to develop his analogy. Paley’s
analogy An inference is a conclusion reached through evidence and reasoning. An analogy is an
inference where information or meaning is transferred from one subject to another. Paley is transferring
his inference about the organisation and design of watches to the organisation and design of nature.
Paley’s analogy is this: From the existence of a watch that I can see, I can infer the existence of a
watchmaker who I cannot see. Equally, from the existence of the universe that I can see, I can infer the
existence of its creator and designer who I cannot see. Moreover, since watches have a purpose (to tell
the time), God must also have a purpose in creating the universe, which, ultimately, is the creation of
intelligent beings such as ourselves. Further, the design of the universe is far more wonderful than that
of anything designed by humans, from which Paley concludes that the designer of the universe has to be
of a far greater calibre than any human designer. Key terms analogy to get to analogy, start with
inference. An inference is a conclusion reached through evidence and reasoning. An analogy is an
inference where information or meaning is transferred from one subject to another. inference (see
analogy) … Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch,
exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and
that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the
contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtility [subtlety], and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more,
if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less
evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or
suited to their offi ce, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. ▲ Paley: Natural
Theology (1802), III, 18. 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 5 12/09/16 11:51 am Draft ©
Hodder Education 6 Component 1 Philosophy of religion and ethics Paley gives some rather exhaustive
examples of what he means, for example: ● The eye in all creatures is superbly adapted for vision. ● Fish
have fins and gills so that they are perfectly adapted to living in water. ● Equally, birds have feathers,
bones and wings that are perfectly adapted to flight. ● Paley considered the grandest of God’s works to
be the heavenly bodies – the stars, planets and comets – and the awe-inspiring regularity of their orbits.
In summary, Paley’s Design Argument is that the universe exhibits design through its implied purpose
and through regularity. The main argument being from purpose explains why Paley’s argument is also
called the ‘Teleological Argument’, telos being the Greek for ‘end’, or ‘purpose’. We now need to look at
Hume’s objections to Design Arguments. ● Criticisms of Design Arguments from David Hume Hume’s
critique of Design Arguments appears in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). The text of the
Dialogues is available online. (Note 2) In the first place, avoid these three common errors: 1 Avoid the
error of thinking that Hume was commenting on Paley’s Design Argument. Hume died in 1776 and Paley
published Natural Theology 26 years later, in 1802. Hume showed amazing foresight in so far as many of
his comments do apply to Paley’s argument; nevertheless his anticipation of Paley is not the miracle that
might have convinced Hume that miracles do happen. 2 Avoid the error of assuming that Paley had no
knowledge of Hume’s critique of Design Arguments. It is a fact that Paley had read at least some of
Hume’s Dialogues, for the simple reason that he says as much in Natural Theology, 1802, XXVI, 512,
where he refers to ‘Mr. Hume, in his posthumous dialogues …’. It is hard to say whether Paley makes
direct replies to Hume. Perhaps Paley decided not to dignify Hume’s complaints with an answer. 3 Do
not turn into a parrot. Students often learn Hume’s objections to Design Arguments parrot-fashion,
sometimes reducing them to a list of simple phrases or even single words. It is better to engage fully
with fewer of Hume’s objections than to regurgitate all of them without understanding. Key term
teleological telos in Greek means ‘end’ or ‘purpose’, so ‘The Teleological Argument for the existence of
God’ seeks to show that we can perceive evidence of deliberate design in the natural world. David Hume
1711–1776 Hume was a Scottish philosopher, born in Edinburgh. He was an empiricist, a sceptic and
probably an atheist. Hume had a superb intellect and used it to rather devastating effect in his various
critiques of religion. 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 6 12/09/16 11:51 am Draft © Hodder
Education 1.1 Arguments for the Existence God 7 Hume’s arguments The following gives you a selection
of some of Hume’s main arguments. 1 Even if we grant that the universe was designed, there is no
evidence that this was the God of Christian theism. A lesser being could have designed the universe.
Hume is using one of his guiding principles here: that a cause must be proportional to its effect. Put
another way: a wise man proportions his belief to his evidence. Imagine yourself hard at work in the
classroom, when from the corridor comes the sound of an orchestra playing at full blast. The cause of
what you hear might be (a) a full symphony orchestra sitting in the corridor, or (b) someone with a
powerful MP3 player. If you apply Hume’s principle, you would assume that even though (a) is possible,
(b) is all you need to account for what you hear. To apply this to Paley’s argument: Paley infers that the
designer of the universe is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God of Christian theism, but although
such an inference might be true it is nevertheless out of proportion to the evidence. If there is a
designer, a lesser being could well be responsible. Hume explores the idea of a limited designer in some
detail: ● Wherever we find intelligent minds, we find them attached to physical bodies, so there is no
obvious reason to suppose that the designer of this universe was a metaphysical being. Hume
speculated (tongue in cheek) that the designer might have a body, with eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
Possibly the designer was mortal and died long ago. ● Design is normally a feature of teamwork, so
there is no obvious reason to suppose that the designer of this universe was a single being operating on
his own. Think of a set of scales – the kind that used to be used in banks for weighing out gold and silver.
● Imagine that somebody arranges the scales so that one half is hidden by a curtain. On the side that
you can see there is a 1 kg weight. Since the scales are balanced, the weight on the hidden side must
also be 1 kg, but without observing what is behind the curtain you cannot not tell whether the 1 kg
weight is balanced by two half-kilograms, or any number of small weights that amount to 1 kg. In the
same way, we really have no idea as to how many beings might have designed this world. For all we
know, then, the job of designing this universe could have been carried out by a team of junior gods on a
trial and error basis: If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the
carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprize must we
feel, when we fi nd him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a
long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies,
had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an
eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost, many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but
continued improvement carried on during infi nite ages in the art of world-making … ▲ Hume:
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (FP 1779), 167 (Note 3) 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-
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ethics 2 The existence of evil and imperfection in the world does indeed suggest a limited designer.
Hume noted that Epicurus’ questions about the ‘inconsistent triad’ are still unanswered. The
inconsistent triad refers to three statements (a triad) about evil that Epicurus thought were inconsistent
with each other, namely: i God is omnipotent (all powerful) ii God is omnibenevolent (all loving) iiiEvil
exists. Hume comments: Is [God] 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? Dialogues (FP
1779), 198 Hume suggests that we only have to think of the long catalogue of ailments that afflict both
humans and animals to see this is not what we would expect from a being of infinite power, wisdom and
goodness. For all we know, the universe could have been designed by an infant god or a senile god.
Instead of confronting such problems, theologians spend much time inventing theodicies to excuse
God’s behaviour. 3 Analogies between the way the universe works and the way machines work are
unsound. The world is more like a vast floating vegetable, and the thing about vegetables is that they
grow themselves, apparently without the need for a designer. In some parts of Hume’s writings he
seems to anticipate Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the opinion of most evolutionary biologists,
evolution is not directed by any external agent such as God. Hume has some powerful support here,
then. 4 To make an analogy between the designers of human machines and the designer of the universe
is just anthropomorphism – we are trying to explain the universe in our own image. To know that the
universe is designed, we would have to have some knowledge of how universes are made, but the fact is
that we have no experience at all of universe-making, and therefore we have no idea of what it takes to
design one, or what the designer would be like. Our experience of design is limited to the machines we
design ourselves, so in effect we are imagining God to be like a human designer. Again, this is
anthropomorphic in the extreme. We cannot assume that we can apply our limited experience of life on
this world to the universe as a whole. 5 The universe could have developed into a comparatively ordered
state simply by chance. This is Hume’s so-called ‘Epicurean Hypothesis’. Epicurus (341–270BCE) taught
that the basic constituents of the world were indivisible atoms – an interesting guess in the light of
twentieth-century atomic physics. Since the world is nothing more nor less than changing arrangements
of its atoms, Key terms omnipotent all-powerful. Omnipotence is an attribute of God. omnibenevolent
all-loving. Omnibenevolence is an attribute of God. anthropomorphism the habit of attributing human
form or ideas to beings other than humans, particularly to gods and animals. The adjective is
anthropomorphic. 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 8 12/09/16 11:51 am Draft © Hodder
Education 1.1 Arguments for the Existence God 9 given infinite time it was inevitable that atoms should
arrive at an ordered state. Hume suggested that some such theory accounted for the appearance of
design in the world, so it is at least as likely that the world appears in an ordered state purely by chance
rearrangement as that it was designed by God. Twenty-first-century physics offers a refined version of
these ideas through multiverse theory, according to which there are vast numbers of universes existing
now and perhaps in the past. If some version of multiverse theory turns out to be true, then some
universes will be chaotic, some will be semi-ordered, and some will be highly-ordered – all purely by
chance. This would not disprove the existence of God, but it would support Hume’s argument that we
can explain this universe without needing to appeal to God. ● Strengths and weaknesses of Paley’s
Design Argument Weaknesses The five criticisms we have just looked at from Hume clearly do show
some weaknesses in Paley’s argument, so the following five points are the same five we have just looked
at. 1 Even if the universe was designed, the all-powerful God of Christian theism is a greater cause than
is needed to account for that design. The universe could well have been produced by a team of lesser
beings, or even by designers who ‘botched and bungled’ it. 2 The existence of evil is a powerful
argument against belief in an allloving and all-powerful God. Evil seems to happen on a cosmic scale.
The death of large stars in the universe causes supernova explosions so vast that they would irradiate
any nearby civilisation. It is difficult to reconcile the sheer amount of evil in this world alone with the
existence of a good designer God. 3 Hume’s argument that the universe is more like a vegetable than a
machine, and that vegetables do not need designers, is backed up strongly by the theory of evolution.
Evolution seems to show that nature designs itself, without the need for God. Richard Dawkins
suggested that Paley was ‘gloriously wrong’ – the heavens are utterly and blindly indifferent to humanity
and everything else (The Blind Watchmaker, 1986). If there was a ‘watchmaker’, the watchmaker is
evolution, not God, and evolution is as indifferent to our opinions on the subject as the stars themselves.
The universe has no purpose, no designer, and no plan. 4 As Hume says, we have no experience of
universe-making, so our ideas about it are anthropomorphic – we lift them from our own limited
experience and impose them on the universe. Immanuel Kant made a similar comment: the way our
brains work means that in order to make sense of the world we live in, we have to impose order on it: so
the ‘design’ is in our minds and not in the world. 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 9
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Moreover if nature can design itself, as Hume argues and evolutionary theory supports, Hume is
probably right in claiming that the universe designed itself in the first place. Multiverse theory suggests
one way in which this could be true: there could be so many universes that some will appear designed
even though they are not. This could be one such universe. Strengths Commenting first on the five
weaknesses identified above: 1 Paley may be right to argue that the designer is the all-powerful
Christian God, because this is the simplest explanation. Richard Swinburne claims, against Hume, that
the existence of an all-powerful God is a simpler, and therefore better, explanation of the appearance of
design in the universe. (Note 4) Swinburne argues that: ‘ … simplicity is always evidence for truth’. You
will have to make up your own mind about this. 2 Paley argued that evil may be unavoidable in order for
God to bring about good. (Note 5) We can support this in many ways, for example: ● The free will
defence: freedom to choose between the highest goods and the highest evils means that there must be
such goods and evils in the world. ● Process theology maintains that God is all-loving but not all-
powerful. We study process theology in the next section on the problem of evil. ● Perhaps the best
theodicy (defence of God against the problem of evil) is that of Irenaeus–Hick. Hick argues that evil is
‘soul-making’, because without evil we could never learn to love the good. We will study Hick in Chapter
2. In other words there are any number of possibilities as to why God might allow evil to exist within the
design. The important point is not whether one particular explanation is right, but that Paley’s argument
that ‘evil may be unavoidable’ may be right. 3 Evolution does not destroy the Design Argument because
(1) evolution does not explain itself, and (2) evolution is compatible with belief in God anyway. ● Against
the likes of Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker), Richard Swinburne maintains that evolution explains
nothing, since it is regulated entirely by the laws of physics, biology and chemistry, and those laws do
not explain themselves. We need to ask where the laws of nature come from, and in Swinburne’s view,
they come from the God who designed them. ● You will have to think carefully about whether or not
evolution is compatible with belief in a good designer-God. Humans can treat other humans with
indescribable barbarity, and many consider the fate of animals, particularly in the meat and fur
industries and in laboratory testing as foul in the extreme. If such things are ‘natural’, can we really
approve of, or believe in, a God who uses such a process, for whatever purpose?
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 10 12/09/16 11:51 am Draft © Hodder Education 1.1
Arguments for the Existence God 11 4 Paley does draw the conclusion that the designer is metaphysical
and transcendent (above the space–time universe) from evidence that makes the designer seem
anthropomorphic. Remember, however, that Paley is an eighteenth-century theologian, and is not
writing with the kind of philosophical rigour expected today. Nevertheless his conclusion that the
designer exists beyond the universe seems reasonable, despite the anthropomorphic language he uses
to make the point: the designer must be metaphysical, since it would be impossible to design such a
system from the inside. We have neither imagined the laws of nature nor imposed them on the world –
science only works because these laws exist. They could only have come from an external source – God.
5 Paley’s argument that ‘nature shows intention’ (Note 6) becomes stronger when supported by the
anthropic principle, which is a modern form of the Design Argument. ‘Anthropic’ means ‘relating to
humans, so the principle points out that there are 30 or more ‘boundary conditions’ (such as the
‘stickiness’ of gravity and the expansion rate of the Big Bang) that have to be ‘fine-tuned’ for an ordered
universe containing intelligent life to develop. The odds against all the boundary conditions being at
exactly the right settings are colossal – roughly 10180 against, so if this is the only universe, then it
seems obvious that something must have designed it to bring about intelligent beings such as ourselves.
Be careful here, however, because we have no way of telling how many universes may have existed in
the past, or might exist in different space– times alongside our own. The number could easily be far
greater than 10180, in which case this universe would quite possibly appear designed but not be. If you
are interested in multiverse theory, then there is plenty of material available through internet research.
6 One strong point about Paley’s argument is its simplicity – it is a simple inductive argument. As we
have seen, the argument is based on induction – on what we observe – and what we observe does have
the appearance of design. Even though Immanuel Kant did not accept the Design Argument as a proof of
God’s existence, he accepted that it is a powerful argument simply because the order in the heavens he
could see above him filled him with awe. Key term anthropic principle ‘anthropic’ means ‘related to
humans’, so the anthropic principle is that there is a direct link between our observation of the universe
and the ‘boundary conditions’ which brought it into existence. In other words, the boundary conditions
(also known as ‘cosmological constants’) had to be ‘fine tuned’ by God, otherwise intelligent life could
never have developed: it is no accident that we are here. Activity There is a view that the strongest
indication of design in the universe can be seen in the fact that just about everything has a mathematical
description. Research briefly the terms ‘logarithmic spiral’ and ‘Fibonacci numbers’, and their
appearance in nature. Do these indicate an underlying design principle, and if so, what kind of designer?
01_01_05 AQA A-Level Religious Studies Barking Dog Art 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 11
12/09/16 11:52 am Draft © Hodder Education 12 Component 1 Philosophy of religion and ethics ● The
status of Paley’s Design Argument as a ‘proof’ 1 Paley evidently regarded his argument as a proof of the
existence of God, since the word ‘proof’ occurs several times in his Natural Theology, and those who
already believe in God might indeed regard Paley’s argument as a proof, because it supports their belief.
2 At this point, however, you should revisit what was said about this near the start of this section, about
the basis of Paley’s argument in observation. You will remember from that discussion that Paley’s
argument cannot be a proof, because the argument is inductive, and inductive arguments deal in
probability and not proof. 3 How probable is Paley’s argument that the universe was designed by God?
Quite simply, we have no way of telling, because whatever part of Paley’s evidence we use, there will
always be those who reject it in favour of Hume’s view that the universe probably orders itself. Two
examples include: ● Paley’s evidence about the regularity of the orbits of the heavenly bodies counts for
very little, since gravity does this, and gravity is just part of the way in which matter behaves. ● All of
Paley’s evidence about design in nature also counts for very little, since it is just as likely that some
version of multiverse theory is true, so what we see as having been designed might be the product of
pure chance. 4 For individuals, proof could only come through religious experience: by some kind of
psychological certainty that they had experienced God, such as some people have in a near-death
experience, but that ‘proof’ could never be transferred from one person’s brain to another. Even if
everybody believed there was a designer God, it would still not prove that there is a designer God. ●
What value does Paley’s Design Argument have for religious faith? 1 Perhaps the greatest value of
Paley’s argument for religious faith is that it supports faith by reasoning. You will remember that natural
theology is the view that the existence of God can be seen in nature through the use of observation and
reasoning, without the need for any special revelation from God. Paley’s argument supports this view.
Again, the argument cannot prove God’s existence, but it does demonstrate that theologians and
philosophers can use reason and observation to talk rationally and meaningfully about God. This is a
clear support for religious faith. 2 Paley’s argument can be used as part of the religious defence against
atheism. ● Atheists claim that religion is unreasonable because religious faith is nothing more than idle
speculation. ● But atheists have no more evidence that God does not exist than theists have for
believing that he does, so the atheistic view that Discussion point One question you should consider is: If
there is a proof of God’s existence available from observation, what kind of proof would that be?
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 12 12/09/16 11:52 am Draft © Hodder Education 1.1
Arguments for the Existence God 13 religious faith is nothing more than idle speculation is itself nothing
more than idle speculation. ● So, if atheists can speculate that God does not exist is reasonable, then it
must be reasonable for theists to speculate that God does exist. ● This holds true for Paley’s Design
Argument: there is nothing obscure or hard to understand about it, so it is a reasonable claim that God
exists. 3 For those who are unsure what to believe, the simplicity of Paley’s argument could provide a
basis for belief. Moreover belief in God does not depend just on the Design Argument. The Cosmological
Argument, for example, is also a powerful argument to support belief in God. 4 Some would argue that
Paley’s Design Argument has no value for faith, because faith does not depend on any kind of proof or
on probability. Faith can be seen as a special state of mind which does not depend on supporting
arguments. It has to do with commitment to a religious way of life, and that means commitment to God
also. This is often expressed by saying that those who have religious faith do not believe that God exists,
rather they believe in God. Discussion point What is the difference in meaning between these two
statements? I believe in God. I believe that God exists. What kind of God are we left with? You will see
that criticism of the Design Argument raises some fairly powerful questions about the nature of a
designer. ● If we argue that evolution is part of God’s design, then some might argue that we are left
with a God who does not care about the immense suffering evolution causes. How would Christian
belief cope with the idea of a God who is not all-loving? ● Process theologians prefer to accept that God
cannot eliminate such suffering because he is not omnipotent. How would Christian belief cope with the
idea of a God who is not all-powerful? ● Many deists argue that God designed and created the world
and then left it to its own free devices, so what happens in the world is in the hands of the beings that
control it, which in our case means ourselves. There are no miracles, and there is no personal revelation
through scripture or religious experience. How would Christian belief cope with the idea of a God who is
indifferent to humans? 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 13 12/09/16 11:52 am Draft ©
Hodder Education 14 Component 1 Philosophy of religion and ethics This is not a claim that any of these
possibilities is truly the case. It is a suggestion that Christians should think seriously about the nature of
God, since traditional answers to that question do not seem to give us consistent answers. Technical
terms for Paley’s Design Argument analogy to get to analogy, start with inference. An inference is a
conclusion reached through evidence and reasoning. An analogy is an inference where information or
meaning is transferred from one subject to another. In his Design Argument, Paley is transferring his
inference about the organisation and design of watches to the organisation and design of nature.
anthropomorphism the habit of attributing human form or ideas to beings other than humans,
particularly to gods and animals. The adjective is anthropomorphic. anthropic principle ‘anthropic’
means ‘related to humans’, so the anthropic principle is that there is a direct link between our
observation of the universe and the ‘boundary conditions’ which brought it into existence. In other
words, the boundary conditions (also known as ‘cosmological constants’) had to be ‘fine tuned’ by God,
otherwise intelligent life could never have developed: it is no accident that we are here. a priori
arguments which rely on logical deduction, and not on sense experience. An a priori argument is prior to
/ before sense experience. a posteriori arguments which depend on sense experience: think of
‘posterior’ – behind/after sense experience. For example, that ‘oak trees grow from acorns’ can only be
known by sense experience, and not by logic. inductive arguments which use reasoning in which the
premises seek to supply strong evidence for (not absolute proof of) the truth of the conclusion.
Inductive arguments are probabilistic. They can be used to argue from what we see in the world back to
the supposed cause. inference see analogy natural theology the view that questions about God’s
existence, nature and attributes can be answered without referring to scripture or to any other form of
special revelation, by using reason, science, history and observation. omnibenevolent all-loving.
Omnibenevolence is an attribute of God. omnipotent all-powerful. Omnipotence is an attribute of God.
omniscience all-knowing. Omniscience is an attribute of God. premise a proposition that supports, or
helps to support, a conclusion. teleological telos in Greek means ‘end’ or ‘purpose’, so ‘The Teleological
Argument for the existence of God’ seeks to show that we can perceive evidence of deliberate design in
the natural world. Summary of Paley’s Design Argument 1 Paley’s argument is based on his observation
of the world, so it is: ● a posteriori and inductive ● a ‘probability’ argument and not a proof. It is based
on three main sets of observations: ● The complexity of the biological world (e.g. the eye, and of the
laws of nature generally). ● The regularity of the orbits of the heavenly bodies and of the seasons of the
year. ● The purpose of a designer (God) seen in this complexity and purpose. Paley argues inductively
from what we can see in the world (the appearance of design) back to the supposed cause (God). 2
Paley’s Design Argument is based on the analogy between the properties of a watch and the properties
of the universe He begins with the observation of a stone and then a watch. From the properties of a
watch we infer the existence of a watchmaker; from the properties of the universe we infer the
existence of God. Just as apparent flaws in a watch, and any ignorance we may have about watches, do
not destroy the inference to designer / watchmaker, our lack of knowledge about the universe does not
destroy our inference that it was designed. Paley supports his arguments by referring to the perfect
design of an eye for vision and to the perfect adaptation of animals such as fish and birds to their
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 14 12/09/16 11:52 am Draft © Hodder Education 1.1
Arguments for the Existence God 15 environment. Design is also seen in the perfect regularity of orbits
of the heavenly bodies. 3 Hume’s critique of Design Arguments Avoid three common errors: ● The error
of thinking that Hume was commenting specifically on Paley’s Design Argument. ● The error of assuming
that Paley had not read Hume’s Dialogues. ● The error of giving a ‘parrot’ recital of Hume’s comments.
Hume’s critique: ● The cause of design in the universe needs only to be proportional to its effect. Even if
we grant that the universe was designed, there is no evidence that this was the God of Christian theism.
A lesser being could have designed the universe. ● The existence of evil and imperfection in the world
suggests (at best) a limited designer. ● Analogies between the universe and machines are flawed. The
world is more like a vegetable, and vegetables design and reproduce themselves. ● Any analogy
between the designers of human machines and the designer of the universe is just anthropomorphism.
● The universe could have developed into a comparatively ordered state simply by chance. 4 Strengths
and weaknesses of Paley’s Design Argument Weaknesses ● Hume seems to be right that the all-
powerful God of Christian theism is a greater cause than is needed to account for the appearance of
design in the universe. ● There is too much evil in the world to see it as the design of a loving / powerful
God. ● Hume’s comment that the universe is more like a vegetable than a machine is backed up by
Darwin’s theory of evolution. Nature appears to design itself without the need for God. ● As Hume says,
we have no experience of universe making, so our ideas about it are anthropomorphic and limited. ●
Moreover, if nature can design itself, Hume is probably right in claiming that the universe is now in an
ordered state purely by chance (his Epicurean Hypothesis). Strengths ● Paley may be right to argue that
the designer is the all-powerful Christian God, and not Hume’s lesser gods, because (as Swinburne says)
‘God’ is probably the simplest explanation of the appearance of design in the universe. ● Paley argued
that evil may be unavoidable in order for God to bring about good. Modern arguments support Paley
here, for example, the free will defence; process theology; and Hick’s Irenaean theodicy. ● Paley is right
to see God as the designer of nature: Swinburne argues that evolution simply obeys the laws of science
designed by God. ● Paley’s language is anthropomorphic, but his conclusion that the designer is
metaphysical and transcendent still seems reasonable. Moreover, we know enough about design to
show that Paley could be right. ● Paley’s argument that nature shows purpose and design is supported
by the ‘fine-tuning’ argument and the anthropic principle, although if it turns out that there is a
multiverse, that argument does not work. ● Paley’s argument is good because it is based on induction –
what we observe; and we do observe the appearance of design. 5 The status of Paley’s argument as a
‘proof’ ● Paley saw it as a proof, because he calls it a proof in his Natural Theology, and for those who
believe in God already it could be seen as a proof. ● But it cannot be a proof, because it is inductive, and
no inductive argument can be more than probable (give examples). ● Whatever part of Paley’s evidence
we appeal to (give examples), there will always be those who reject it in favour of Hume’s view that the
universe probably orders itself. ● Proof could come only from faith. 6 The value of Paley’s Design
Argument for religious faith ● It supports faith by reasoning, which defeats the claim that faith is
irrational. ● It supports the defence against atheism, since given what we observe in the universe, it can
be no less rational for a theist to accept the existence of God than for an atheist to deny it.
873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd 15 12/09/16 11:52 am Draft © Hodder Education 16
Component 1 Philosophy of religion and ethics ● For those who are unsure, Paley’s Design Argument
could provide a bridge to faith. ● Some theists would argue that Paley’s Design Argument has no value
for religious faith, because faith is more properly based in commitment to and belief in God, and not in
any rational or logical demonstration that God exists. At the end of this discussion, we are still left with
the issue of what kind of God we are left with. Does the nature of evil show that the designer cannot be
all-loving? Could Christian belief cope with the view of process theology, that God is not all-powerful?
Could Christian belief cope with the deistic view that the designer has left us to our own free devices? 16
Three suggestions for practice and development Use one or more of these three questions / claims as a
homework assignment, a class essay, or a focus for practice. 1 ‘Paley’s Design Argument is inductive, so
cannot be a proof of God’s existence.’ 2 How far does the existence of evil defeat Paley’s Design
Argument? 3 ‘Evolution supports Paley’s Design Argument.’ 873959_1.1_AQA_A_level_RS_001-016.indd
16 12/09/16 11:52 am Draft © Hodder Education

The Design Argument for the Existence of God

by James R. Beebe

Dept. of Philosophy

University at Buffalo

Copyright � 2002

Outline of Essay:

I. The Analogical Version of the Design Argument

II. Criticisms of the Analogical Version

A. No Experience of Cosmic Beginnings: A Disanalogy

B. Evil: A Harmful Analogy

C. Full-Blown Anthropomorphism

D. Begging the Question

III. The Inference to the Best Explanation Version of the Design Argument

A. Inference to the Best Explanation

B. The Data

C. Explaining the Data

D. Conditional Probability

IV. Objections and Replies

A. The Anthropic Principle

B. �Sometimes the Improbable Happens�

C. Non-deductive Inference
 The design argument is the simplest, most straightforward argument for the existence of God.
Unlike the cosmological argument, the design argument can be stated in a few, easy-to-understand
steps. In a nutshell, the design argument claims that the fact that everything in nature seems to be put
together in just the right manner suggests that an intelligent designer was responsible for its creation.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)�a strident critic of the design argument�recognized both its simplicity
and its importance. He wrote, "This proof always deserves to be mentioned with respect. It is the
oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind" (Kant 1781/1965, A
623, B 651).

In the first section of this essay I will describe the most famous version of the design
argument�William Paley�s argument by analogy. Analogical arguments are perhaps the weakest sort
of arguments one can offer without committing an outright fallacy. As we will see in section II, the
analogical version of the design argument has come in for some heavy fire over the years. A
contemporary reformulation of the argument, which I will call the �Inference to the Best Explanation�
(IBE) version of the design argument, claims to be able to escape the criticisms that are leveled against
the analogical version. The IBE version will be explained in section III. It eschews the analogical form of
the first version and uses evidence from contemporary science to back up its claims.

I. The Analogical Version of the Design Argument

William Paley (1743-1805), an Anglican priest whose textbooks were required reading at
Cambridge until the twentieth-century, put forward the most famous version of the design argument in
his book Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the
Appearances of Nature. In his autobiography, Charles Darwin (1876/1958, p. 19) cites Paley�s book as
one of his favorite undergraduate texts:

In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley�s Evidences of Christianity,
and his Moral Philosophy. This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have
written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language
of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I may add, of his Natural Theology, gave me as much delight as
did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only
part of the academical course which, as I then felt, and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the
education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley�s premises; and taking these
on trust, I was charmed and convinced by the long line of argumentation.

The only discussion of the design argument that might be more famous than Paley�s is David Hume�s
(1711-1776) in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In this work Hume subjects the argument to
severe criticism.

Paley famously begins his version of the argument by comparing the universe to a watch.
Suppose, he says, that we come upon a watch while walking through the forest.

[W]hen we come to inspect the watch, we perceive... that its several parts are framed and put together
for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so
regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped
from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any
other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the
machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.... This mechanism being
observed,... the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there
must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for
the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its
use. (cited in Hick 1964, pp. 99-100)

Paley claims that the same can be said for the universe as a whole. It seems to show evidence of an
intelligent designer as well. The parts of the universe have an order, complexity and simplicity that
resemble the parts of a finely crafted, well-oiled machine. It seems, then, that the universe was
fashioned by some kind of Divine Watchmaker.

To support the analogy between a finely crafted watch and the universe, defenders of the design
argument typically put forward the following kinds of considerations. Consider the fact that the
universe is constructed in a way that is conducive to life. There is just enough oxygen to support life on
earth. If there were even a little less, the Earth�s atmosphere would not be able to support life as we
know it. But if there were just a little bit more oxygen in the atmosphere, combustion would occur too
easily and often and it would once again be difficult to sustain life in such conditions. Moreover, the
Earth is just the right distance from the sun. If we were a little bit closer, the atmosphere would be too
hot to sustain life; but if we were a little further away, plants would not receive enough energy from the
sun to carry on photosynthesis�the primary process by which the sun�s energy is converted into life
on Earth. These and other �fine-tuning� aspects of the universe suggest that there was an intelligent
mind that intentionally brought these features into being. As Sir Isaac Newton put it, the �most
beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of
an intelligent and powerful Being� (from the General Scholium of Principia Mathematica; cited in Leslie
1989, p. 25).

Defenders of the design argument need not rest content with pointing to large-scale features of
the universe that suggest design. They can also point to the apparent design of many kinds of objects in
the world. Take, for example, mammalian organs, such as the heart, kidney, brain or eye. Each of these
has been given a certain function to perform and each has an amazing capacity to carry out that
function.

We can summarize the analogical version of the design argument as follows:

1) Human artifacts are the products of intelligent design.

2) The universe resembles human artifacts.

3) Therefore, the universe is probably a product of intelligent design.

4) Therefore, the author of the universe is probably an intelligent being. (adapted from Plantinga 1990,
p. 97)

We know that (1) is true on the basis of personal experience and testimony from reliable sources. We
know that machines are always put together to serve certain purposes and that it takes careful planning
and construction to make sure that each of the parts of a complicated machine work properly. So, when
we see that mammalian organs�e.g., hearts, lungs, eyes, brains, etc.�have certain very specific
functions that they perform by carrying rather complicated series of interactions, it is plausible to think
that they, too, are the products of intelligent design.

II. Criticisms of the Analogical Version

 The most famous criticisms of the analogical version of the design argument appear in David
Hume�s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. According to Norman Kemp Smith (�Introduction�
to Hume�s Dialogues, p. 3), �Hume�s destructive criticism of the argument was final and
complete.� Smith�s sentiments are shared by many. As we will see, however, defenders of the IBE
version of the design argument claim that Hume�s criticisms apply only to the analogical version of the
argument and not to their own version.

Most of Hume�s criticisms center on the analogical aspect of the traditional design argument.
The problem, according to Hume, is that the analogy in question is not as strong as it needs to be in
order to succeed. The more the universe resembles an artifact, the stronger the argument will be; but
the less the universe is like an artifact, the weaker it will be.

A. No Experience of Cosmic Beginnings: A Disanalogy

Hume points out there are many dissimilarities or disanologies that harm the theist�s case. One
of the first things he notes is that there is a disanalogy between the kind of experience we have with
respect to artifacts and the kind of experience we have with respect to the universe. We have a lot of
experience with a wide range of artifacts, which includes a general idea about what kinds of artisans or
craftspeople make artifacts. We know that artifacts are made by intelligent designers because we have
observed designers making a variety of things on many occasions. However, we don�t know what
usually makes universes. We simply have no experience with this kind of thing. As a result, Hume
claims, we can�t be too confident that whatever was responsible for making the universe is going to be
much like the designers we are familiar with.

B. Evil: A Harmful Analogy

Hume also argues that there are analogies that are detrimental to belief in a designer. He thinks
the analogical design argument correctly notes that we generally infer properties about an artisan or
manufacturer from properties we observe in their products. But he claims the argument ignores
important facts about our world. For example, from the solid 24 karat gold, diamonds and precision
timing of a Rolex watch, one can infer that the manufacturer has the highest commitment to quality.
When one is faced with a defective product, one draws analogous but opposite conclusions. For
example, I own a Soviet-era military watch with the KGB insignia on its face. At noon and midnight, the
two hands of the watch should both be pointing straight up, but there are five degrees of separation
between them. Moreover, it gains about eight minutes every day. I have been led to form rather
negative conclusions about Soviet-era craftsmanship from the properties of this watch.

Hume notes that there seem to be imperfections in nature: cancer, AIDS, heart disease, famines,
plagues, floods, and countless other tragedies. If God is a Divine Watchmaker, as Paley claimed, the
world looks to be more like a Soviet watch than a Rolex. In other words, if we are going to infer by
analogy characteristics of the Creator from characteristics of the creation, it doesn�t seem we can
conclude that the Creator had to be perfect because the world is anything but perfect. In jest, Hume
suggests that maybe the universe was created by a junior deity who is just learning the ropes of universe
creation and didn�t get things quite right this time.

C. Full-Blown Anthropomorphism

Hume also asks, �While we�re in the business of arguing by analogy, what is to keep us from
pursuing the analogy all the way to a full-blown anthropomorphism?� The theist wants to argue that,
since every highly ordered, complex contrivance we encounter has an intelligent designer behind it, we
can conclude that the world also has a designer behind it. Well, says Hume, every artifact we encounter
also has a designer with toenails, a bellybutton, 46 chromosomes, teeth made out of calcium
composites, a spleen, and bad breath in the morning. What�s stopping us from concluding that the
creator of the universe has all of these features as well? Hume�s point is that the analogy upon which
the traditional design argument is based supports other conclusions than the one the theist is seeking to
support.

D. Begging the Question

Kelly James Clark (1990, p. 30) echoes some of Hume�s worries when he claims,
The connection between the first premise, that the world appears designed, and belief in God is so tight
that some contend that the argument from design simply assumes what it is trying to prove: to
countenance apparent cosmic design is already to be committed to a design-er.

Clark thinks that one must already believe in God before one can accept the first premise of the
traditional design argument�viz., that the world appears to be designed. If you don�t think there is a
cosmic designer, then you�re probably not going to look at the world and think �This world appears
to be designed.� An argument that assumes from the start the very thing that is up for debate is said
to �beg the question.� Since Clark thinks the analogical design argument begs the question, he
concludes that the argument fails to have any persuasive force.

While I think Hume�s criticisms for the most part succeed in hitting their mark, I think that
Clark�s does not. Most (if not all) evolutionary theorists admit that biological organs appear to be
designed, but they remain committed to the project of explaining apparent design without appealing to
a designer. In other words, they do not deny the first premise that Clark finds so worrisome; they
merely deny the inferences theists wish to draw from it.

In any case, the objections put forward in this section have convinced many people that the
design argument fails miserably. However, in recent years there has been a renewal of interest in the
design argument�from both philosophers and scientists�and this has led to an updated formulation of
the argument.

III. The Inference to the Best Explanation Version of the Design Argument

A. Inference to the Best Explanation

The design argument can be reformulated so that it is not an analogical argument. Instead, it can
be understood as an inference to the best explanation. This form of inference is common to both
science and ordinary life. We start with a set of data that is initially surprising or unexplained, and we
wonder what could explain it. As possible explanations pop into our minds, we evaluate the initial
plausibility and simplicity of each explanation and see how well the explanations make sense of the
data. J. P. Moreland (1994, p. 26) offers the following example of an ordinary inference to the best
explanation.
Suppose I get a terrible stomachache. Then it dawns on me that I just ate a gallon and a half of ice
cream, two bags of popcorn and a lot of candy on an empty stomach. A hypothesis suggests itself as the
best explanation of the stomachache�it arose because of what I had just eaten. Other hypotheses may
also suggest themselves, but I should adopt the explanation that best solves the problems for which it
was postulated.

In what follows I will present an array of scientific data that, according to defenders of the IBE design
argument, cries out for explanation. The facts described are extraordinarily improbable and unlikely to
be the result of chance. After presenting the data, we will examine the suggestion that the best
explanation for these unlikely occurrences is that a personal, transcendent Being of tremendous power
and intelligence is directly responsible for purposefully bringing them about.

B. The Data

1. We can begin by considering the fact that the energy the Earth receives from the Sun is precisely
the amount required to nurture life. According to Richard Brennan (1997, pp. 244-245),

The term used in science for this energy is the solar constant, which is defined as 1.99 calories of energy
per minute per square centimeter. If Earth received much more or less than 2 calories per minute per
square centimeter, the water of the oceans would be vapor or ice, leaving the planet with no liquid
water or reasonable substitute in which life could evolve. It is only because Earth is 93 million miles
away from a Sun that produces 5,600 million, million, million, million calories per minute that life is
possible.

2. Brennan (1997, p. 245) continues,

For another example, it has been calculated that if Earth were just 5 million miles closer to the Sun, the
intensity of the Sun�s rays would have broken apart water molecules in the atmosphere and eventually
turned the planet into a dry and dusty wasteland. If Earth were only 1 million miles farther from the
Sun, the cold would have frozen the ocean solid.

3. For there to be enough carbon around to support life, the strong nuclear force (the force that
holds quarks together to form protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons together to form
the nuclei of atoms) can be no more than 1% stronger or weaker than it is. Increasing its strength by 2%
would block the formation of protons, so that there would either be no atoms at all or else stars would
burn a billion billion times faster than our sun, thereby making it difficult to have an environment
friendly to living organisms (Leslie 1989, p. 4). Increasing its strength by only 1% would result in all
carbon being burned into oxygen (Leslie 1989, p. 35).

4. Decreasing the strong nuclear force by 5% would make it impossible for stars to burn (Leslie
1989, p.4).

5. If the force of electromagnetism were somewhat stronger, the amount of light given off by stars
would be significantly lower. Main sequence stars (i.e., stars like our sun in the stable phase during
which they spend most of their lifetimes and have their interior heat and radiation provided by nuclear
fusion reactions near their centers) would be too cold to support life and would not contain any
elements heavier than iron. It would also make protons repel one another strongly enough to prevent
the existence of atoms (Leslie 1989, p. 4).

6. If the force of electromagnetism were slightly weaker, all main sequence stars would be very hot
and short-lived blue stars. According to the physicist, P. C. W. Davies, changes in either
electromagnetism or gravity by only one part in 1040 would spell catastrophe for stars like the sun
(Leslie 1989, p. 37).

7. Some of the basic forces of the universe also need to be finely-tuned to each other. Gravity is
roughly 1039 times weaker than electromagnetism. If it had been only 1033 times weaker, stars would
be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster (Leslie 1989, p. 5). If gravity were
ten times less strong, stars and planets could probably not form at all (Leslie 1989, p. 39).

8. The opposite charges of electrons and protons perfectly balance each other. They are identical
magnitudes. If there had been a difference between their charges even as small as one part in ten
billion, scientists have calculated that no solid bodies could weigh more than one gram (Leslie 1989, p.
45).

9. The difference in mass between protons and neutrons is twice the mass of the electron, which is
itself a very small quantity. If this were not so, then

all neutrons would have decayed into protons or else all protons would have changed irreversibly into
neutrons. Either way, there would not be the couple of hundred stable types of atom on which
chemistry and biology are based. (Leslie 1989, p. 5)
If all protons were changed irreversibly into neutrons, the universe would consist of nothing but neutron
stars and black holes. (A neutron star is a kind of collapsed star that is immensely dense and is made
mostly of neutrons. It is not the sort of star that could support life as we know it.)

10. According to William Lane Craig (Strobel 2000, p. 77), P. C. W. Davies concluded that the odds
against the initial conditions being suitable for the formation of stars is a one followed by at least a
thousand billion billion zeroes.

11. Davies also estimated that if the strength of gravity or of the weak force were changed by only
one part in a ten followed by a hundred zeroes, life could never have developed (ibid.).

12. Craig (1990, p. 143) writes,

[Astronomer Fred] Hoyle and his colleague Wickramasinghe calculated the odds of the random
formation of a single enzyme from amino acids anywhere on the earth�s surface as one in 1020. But
that is only the beginning: �The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance
of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)20,000 = 1040,000, an outrageously
small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.� And of
course, the formation of enzymes is but one step in the formation of life. �Nothing has been said of
the origin of DNA itself, nothing of DNA transcription to RNA, nothing of the origin of the program
whereby cells organize themselves, nothing of mitosis and meiosis. These issues are too complex to set
numbers to.� In the end, they conclude that the chances of life originating by random ordering of
organic molecules is not sensibly different from zero.

13. J. P. Moreland (1987, p. 53) claims, �If the mass of a proton were increased by 0.2 percent,
hydrogen would be unstable and life would not have formed.�

14. Brennan (1997, p. 246) writes,

If something called the fine structure constant (the square of the charge of the electron divided by the
speed of light multiplied by Planck�s constant) were slightly different, atoms would not exist.

15. The fact that all of this fine tuning is distributed across enormous ranges makes it even more
amazing that they should be found in just the right proportions. The strong nuclear force is roughly 100
times stronger than electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is itself some 10,000 billion billion billion
times stronger than gravity (Leslie 1989, p. 6).

None of the foregoing evidence of the �fine-tuning� of the universe depends upon acceptance
of the Big Bang theory of the origin of (the present state of) the universe and the cosmic timeline
(spanning 15 billion years) that goes with it. Theists who think that the Big Bang is identical to the event
of divine creation, however, can avail themselves of further evidence of the fine-tuning of the universe,
some of which is described below. According to defenders of the IBE design argument, this evidence
shows that even the theory of cosmic origin most widely accepted by atheist scientists strongly suggests
that there was and is an Intelligent Designer behind the controls of the universe.

16. The rate of expansion of the universe immediately after the Big Bang had to be finely tuned.
According to William Lane Craig (Strobel 2000, p. 77), Stephen Hawking, the world�s most famous
living physicist, has calculated that if the rate of the universe�s expansion one second after the Big
Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have
collapsed into a fireball.

17. If the rate of expansion were decreased by only one part in a million when the Big Bang was a
second old, the universe would have recollapsed before temperatures fell below 10,000 degrees (i.e.,
before it could cool off enough for life to be able to form) (Leslie 1989, p. 29).

18. An increase of only one part in a million in the rate of the early universe�s expansion would
have meant that the kinetic energy of expansion would have so dominated gravity that stars could not
form (Leslie 1989, p. 29).

19. Had the weak nuclear force been slightly stronger, the Big Bang would have burned all hydrogen
to helium. There would then be neither water nor long-lived stable stars, which are hydrogen-burning
(Leslie 1989, p. 4).

20. The weakness of the weak force results in our sun burning its hydrogen slowly and gently for
billions of years instead of blowing up like a bomb (Leslie 1989, p. 34).
21. Making the weak nuclear force slightly weaker would have destroyed all of the hydrogen, and the
neutrons formed during the earliest stages of the universe would not have decayed into protons (Leslie
1989, p. 4). Without this neutron-decay, the universe would be made up of nothing but helium (Leslie
1989, p. 34).

22. P. C. W. Davies (Other Worlds, London, 1980, pp. 168-169; cited in Leslie 1989, p. 28) claims that,
because of all the parameters that had to be perfectly set before the Big Bang, the odds against a
universe filled with stars is �one followed by a thousand billion billion zeros, at least.�

C. Explaining the Data

What should we make of all these facts? John Leslie (1989, p. 25) responds, �Our universe does
seem remarkably tuned to Life�s needs.� Craig (1990, p. 143) writes,

The point is that within the wide range of universes permitted by the actual laws of physics, scarcely any
are life-permitting, and those that are require incredible fine-tuning of the physical constants and
quantities. In fact, Donald Page of Princeton�s Institute for Advanced Study has calculated the odds
against the formation of our universe as one out of 10,000,000,000124, a number that exceeds all
imagination.

To get a handle on how large this number is, consider the fact that there are estimated to be only 1080
elementary particles in the universe (Craig 1990, p. 159). A universe that is inhospitable to life is
extraordinarily more likely to have arisen than the one that we, in fact, find ourselves in. Craig (1990, p.
143) claims that the fine-tuning of the universe �cries out for explanation.� And an explanation
immediately suggests itself: maybe this improbable �cosmic accident� wasn�t an accident after all.
Keith Parsons (1990, p. 181), who is quite skeptical of the design argument, summarizes the conclusion
of the argument nicely as follows.

[A] �finely tuned� universe is much more likely if there is a God than if there is not. In other words, it
is implied that the cosmic �coincidences� that make possible a universe such as ours are extremely
improbable unless they are the product of conscious design. Presumably, the conclusion is that since a
�finely tuned� universe does in fact exist, its existence strongly confirms the existence of a conscious
Designer�that is, God.
In other words, scientific discoveries of the infinitesimally small margin of error allowed in creating a
universe capable of sustaining life support the central claim of theism: the universe was purposefully
constructed by a personal, transcendent Being of tremendous power and intelligence.

D. Conditional Probability

Let me introduce some ideas from probability theory that can make clearer how the IBE version
of the design argument is supposed to work.

1. Let �P(A�B)� mean �the probability of A, given B.�

2. Let A = �You will die of cancer in the next ten years.�

3. Let B = �You are 20 years old, do not smoke, have no family history of cancer, and are very
healthy.�

The value of �P(A�B)� is called a �conditional probability� value because we are asking what the
probability is that A is true, on the condition that B is true. We are not simply asking what the
probability of A is. We are asking about A�s likelihood in light of certain background assumptions.

According to the stipulations above, P(A�B) is the probability that you will die of cancer in the
next ten years, given that you are 20 years old, do not smoke, have no family history of cancer, and are
very healthy. The probability of that happening should be very low. Let�s replace B with the following
conditions and see how the resulting probability values differ.

4. Let C = �You are a chain-smoking, 55-year old male.�

5. Let D = �You are a chain-smoking, 55-year old male who has been working in an asbestos factory for
35 years.�
Consider the value of P(A�C). It will obviously be a lot higher than P(A�B). And it�s a good bet that
P(A�D) will be even higher.

In each of these cases, A remained the same. The only thing that changed was the set of
background assumptions we used to determine the conditional probability value in question. We are
now in a position to use the idea of conditional probability to achieve a better understanding of the IBE
version of the design argument.

6. Let F = �There exists a finely-tuned, life-permitting universe.�

7. Let T = �There exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who created the universe.�

8. Let Not-T = �There does not exist an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God who created the
universe.�

Now consider the following probabilities.

9. P(F�T)

10. P(F�Not-T)

According to the scientists cited above, a conservative estimate of P(F�Not-T) is 1/10,000,000,000124.

In other words, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the fine-tuning of the universe could have been brought
about without the conscious planning of an intelligent designer.

Now think about the value of P(F�T). You can make an estimate of this probability, regardless of
whether you are a theist or an atheist (or neither). I am simply asking what you think the probability of
there being a a finely-tuned, life-permitting universe would be IF there were an all-powerful, all-
knowing, perfectly good God who created the universe. Although I can�t give a precise number, it
seems that the probability of P(F�T) would be extremely high. If there were a supremely powerful and
intelligent God, that being could easily create a finely-tuned universe if he so desired. So, the difference
between P(F�T) and P(F�Not-T) is enormous.
 Why is this fact significant? Parsons (1990, pp. 193-194) writes,

It is the consequence of Bayes� theorem [a theorem of probability theory that undergirds the currently
accepted view about the confirmation of scientific theories]� that a given piece of evidence e confirms
a hypothesis h if and only if e is more probable on h than on not-h. Hence, where h is theism and not-h
is atheism and e comprises all of the �finely tuned� features of the universe, the �finely tuned�
features of the universe confirm theism if and only if those features are more likely if God exists than if
God does not exist.

In other words, since P(F�T) is tremendously higher than P(F�Not-T), facts about the fine-tuning the
universe provide confirmation of the existence of God. The defender of the IBE version of the design
argument concludes that it is more reasonable to believe that the universe was created by an Intelligent
Designer than to believe that it spontaneously arose through chance.

IV. Objections and Replies

A. The Anthropic Principle

The Inference to the Best Explanation version of the design argument sometimes encounters the
following objection.

We should not be surprised that the universe is life-permitting. If it weren�t life-permitting, we

wouldn�t be here to contemplate it. The fact that we are indeed here to contemplate it shows that it
obviously must be life-permitting. Consequently, expressions of surprise at the fact that our universe is
well suited for living things are inappropriate.

Part of this objection is obviously true, but another part of it is mistaken. The trivially true part is the
claim that if our universe were not life-permitting, we living human beings would not be around to
contemplate it. But it is a mistake to think that this fact neutralizes the need to explain why the
universe is life-permitting.
 Let me use the following example to make the point. Suppose I were brought before a firing
squad made up of one hundred professional marksmen and that each of them was instructed to shoot
one dozen rounds of ammunition at me. Now suppose that, after the smoke clears, it becomes evident
that all 1200 bullets fired at me have missed their intended target. After a brief moment of elation, I will
begin to wonder why I am still alive. Suppose I said to myself, �If they hadn�t all missed me then I
shouldn�t be contemplating the matter so I mustn�t be surprised that they missed� (Leslie 1989, p.
108). Would that thought thoroughly satisfy my curiosity? Not by a long shot [sic]. I would begin to
wonder whether they really intended to harm me. Were they instructed to miss me on purpose? Did
someone load all of their rifles with blanks? Was this just a cruel birthday joke perpetrated by my wife?
I might start looking around for the cameras from Spy TV or Candid Camera.

Similarly, merely pointing out that if the universe were not life-permitting, we would not be
around to contemplate it does not satisfy our curiosity about the fine-tuning of the universe. We can
still ask for an explanation of why these amazing and unlikely facts came to be.

B. �Sometimes the Improbable Happens�

A second objection that is often raised against the Inference to the Best Explanation version of
the design argument goes like this:

Sometimes the improbable happens. For example, the fact that it is extraordinarily unlikely that any
single person will win the Powerball lottery does not mean that no one will ever win. In fact, people
whose odds of winning are vanishingly small win the Powerball lottery on a regular basis. Our reaction
to the existence of an improbable, �finely-tuned,� life-permitting universe should be the same as our
reaction to the news that somebody won the latest Powerball lottery: an uninterested yawn.

The defender of the IBE design argument will claim: a) that there is a confusion lurking behind these
remarks; and b) once we clear up the confusion we will see that there are important disanalogies
between the Powerball case and the case of a fine-tuned universe.

Suppose that in a certain lottery there are 100 million tickets sold and that one of these tickets
will be chosen at random. If it is a fair lottery, then every ticket has an equal chance of winning. So, the
probability that any particular ticket will bring riches to its bearer is 1/100,000,000. Now consider the
probability that at least one of the 100 million lottery tickets that were sold will win. That probability is
1 (probabilities come in ranges of continuous values between zero and one). In other words, there is a
100% chance that one of the 100 million tickets sold will win.

According to the defender of the IBE design argument, we need to distinguish between the
following two kinds of probability judgments:

1) The probability that a particular ticket will win.

2) The probability that some (i.e., at least one) ticket will win.

The value of (1) is 1/100,000,000. The value of (2) is 1. The reason we are unsurprised that somebody
(or other) won the latest Powerball lottery is that the probability of somebody (or other) winning is 1.
It�s a sure bet. But that doesn�t mean that we would not not be surprised if we held the winning
ticket. We be very surprised because of the enormous odds against our winning.

Our winning, however, would not be completely mysterious to us. It�s not as if we would have
no idea about how to explain how we won. Our knowledge of how lotteries work includes the
knowledge that somebody has to win. We also know that winners in a fair lottery are selected through
some kind of random process that gives everybody a fair shot. Knowledge of this process�even if it is
vague and unspecific�keeps the fact of our winning from being an utterly mysterious, unexplainable
fact.

The defender of the IBE design argument will maintain that the central problem with the current
objection is that we do not know that the following is true:

4) The initial conditions of the present universe�e.g., the strengths of the four fundamental forces (the
strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity), the masses of the fundamental
particles, etc.�were the result of some kind of cosmic lottery. Out of the indefinitely large number of
possible universes that could have been brought into being, ours was the one that just so happened�by
pure chance�to be selected. If other universes had been selected, they would have collapsed into
fireballs just a few seconds after being formed, while others would have been composed of only neutron
stars and black holes. Still others would have consisted of nothing but electromagnetic radiation.
Fortunately for us, none of these cosmic options were selected.
If we knew: a) that each possible universe had an equal probability of being actualized; b) that the
probability that any particular universe would be selected was extremely small; and c) that at least one
of them had to be selected; then it seems that we should show the same lack of surprise at the
existence of our improbable but life-permitting universe that we do at the news of the latest lottery
winner. The problem, however, is that we don�t know that our universe was the winner of a perfectly
fair cosmic lottery. Lack of surprise is appropriate only when we have this knowledge. The fact that a
life-permitting universe is extraordinarily improbable raises the suspicion that our universe wasn�t
randomly selected after all.

Consider the following unlikely events and the �explanations� offered of these events.

i) The stones in one garden are randomly strewn about. In another garden the stones spell �Welcome
to Wales by British Railways.� Regarding this example William Dembski (1998, p. xi) writes, �In both
instances the precise arrangement of stones is vastly improbable. Indeed, any given arrangement of
stones is but one of an almost infinite number of possible arrangements.� When asked for the best
explanation of why one set of stones spells out an English sentence, someone replies, �Sometimes the
improbable happens.�

ii) On several occasions during the last week, large pieces of scrap metal have fallen from above and
nearly killed me. After each �accident� I turn around and see hurrying away from the scene one of
my colleagues who has only a temporary contract with LSU but whose chances of being permanently
hired by LSU would be greatly increased if I were out of the way. When detained and questioned by the
police about why he always seemed to be present when pieces of scrap metal were falling near my
head, my colleague simply replies �Sometimes the improbable happens.�

iii) I am brought before a firing squad made up of one hundred professional marksmen, each of whom is
instructed to shoot one dozen rounds of ammunition at me. All 1200 bullets fired at me miss their
intended target. When I ask someone for an explanation of this unlikely phenomenon, someone replies
�Sometimes the improbable happens.�

iv) A silk merchant who, while trying to sell a silk gown, keeps his thumb over a hole in the silk the entire
time his customer is looking at the gown. When his ruse is found out and he is asked to account for his
behavior, he replies, �Every thumb must be somewhere. While it is improbable that my thumb should
cover the hole the entire time, it is equally improbable that my thumb should be at any other location
on the gown. Sometimes the improbable happens.�
v) The winner of January�s state lottery was the nephew of the Lottery Commissioner. The winner of
the February lottery was the niece of the Lottery Commissioner. The winner of the state lottery in
March was the Lottery Commissioner�s brother. The winner in April was the Lottery Commissioner�s
ex-wife who, it is well known, has been trying to sue him for everything he�s got. When asked to
account for this highly improbable string of events the Lottery Commissioner replies, �Sometimes the
improbable happens.�

In none of these cases is the offered explanation even remotely satisfying or convincing. When we lack
the positive knowledge that an event is the outcome of a fair lottery (or its probabilistic equivalent), we
find ourselves unable to accept the answer that �Sometimes the improbable happens.� Our minds
immediately turn to more likely scenarios that would explain the events in question. We automatically
assume that British Railways intentionally arranged the set of stones to be a greeting. We think it highly
likely that my colleague wants to bump me off so he can take my position. We think the firing squad
must be a sham that serves some unseen purpose. We believe beyond any reasonable doubt that the
location of the silk merchant�s thumb is due to greed and dishonesty rather than chance. And no one,
I take it, would believe the Lottery Commissioner�s claim to innocence.

Recall the fine-tuned features of the universe cited above. The fact that all of these life-
permitting features have come together is exceedingly improbable. The defender of the IBE design
argument claims that this situation is more similar to the five cases listed above than to a fair lottery. As
in the five cases above, they think we should be led to seek an explanation that does not appeal to mere
chance. That explanation, they suggest, is that the universe was purposefully created by an Intelligent
Designer.

C. Non-deductive Inference

A third objection to the Inference to the Best Explanation version of the design argument stems
from the fact that the conclusion of the argument is not necessitated by its premises. Neal Gillespie
(1979, pp. 83-84) has stated the objection as follows.

It has been generally agreed (then and since) that Darwin�s doctrine of natural selection effectively
demolished William Paley�s classical design argument for the existence of God. By showing how blind
and gradual adaptation could counterfeit the apparently purposeful design that Paley... and others had
seen in the contrivances of nature, Darwin deprived their argument of the analogical inference that the
evident purpose to be seen in the contrivances by which means and ends were related in nature was
necessarily a function of mind.

Although Gillespie�s objection is aimed at Paley�s analogical version of the design argument, it can be
modified to apply to the IBE version as well. Gillespie takes the design argument to task for thinking
that the apparent design of the universe �was necessarily a function of [an intelligent, creative]
mind.� But neither version of the design argument claims that the fine-tuned features of the universe
are necessarily the product of intelligent design.

The IBE version merely claims that the hypothesis of intelligent design provides the best
explanation for those features. In other words, the design argument does not purport to be a deductive
argument, in which the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion. Instead, it claims
to offer a strong non-deductive argument for the hypothesis of intelligent design. Pointing out that the
premises of a non-deductive argument do not necessitate its conclusion is like pointing out that
Einstein�s general theory of relativity does not explain how to make a great Cabernet. That was never
its intended purpose.

When dealing with non-deductive inferences, such as inferences to the best explanation, we must
ask ourselves how much likelihood or palusibility is conferred upon the conclusion by the premises. If
the IBE design argument is strong, then the facts about fine-tuning make the conclusion about an
Intelligent Designer highly probable. If the argument is weak, then these facts do not make the
Intelligent Design conclusion very probable at all. The key point is that, when dealing with non-
deductive arguments, the issue is always one of probability rather than necessity. Strong, inductive
arguments purport to make their conclusions probable. They do not claim to necessitate their
conclusions. So, pointing out that they do not necessitate their premises cannot count as an objection
against them. The IBE design argument is an inference to the best explanation; not an inference to the
only possible explanation.

References

Brennan, Richard. 1997. Heisenberg Probably Slept Here: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great
Physicists of the 20th Century. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Clark, Kelly James. 1990. Return to Reason: A Critique of Enlightenment Evidentialism and a Defense of
Reason and Belief in God. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Craig, William Lane. 1990. �In Defense of Rational Theism.� In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.),
Does God Exist? The Great Debate. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Darwin, Charles. 1876/1958. Autobiography. Francis Darwin (Ed.). New York: Dover.

Dembski, William A. 1998. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gillespie, Neal. 1979. Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hick, John. 1964. The Existence of God. New York: Macmillan.

Hume, David. 1779/1947. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited with an introduction by N. K.
Smith. New York: Macmillan.

Kant, Immanuel. 1781/1965. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N. K. Smith. New York: St. Martin�s Press.

Leslie, John. 1989. Universes. London: Routledge.

Moreland, J. P. 1987. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book
House.

Moreland, J. P. 1990. �Yes! A Defense of Christianity.� In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.), Does God
Exist? The Great Debate. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Moreland, J. P. 1994. �Introduction.� In J. P. Moreland (Ed.), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific

Evidence for an Intelligent Designer. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Parsons, Keith. 1990. �Is There a Case for Christian Theism?� In J. P. Moreland & Kai Nielsen (Eds.),
Does God Exist? The Great Debate. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Plantinga, Alvin. 1990. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God,
paperback edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Strobel, Lee. 2000. The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity.
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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