In November I flew to San Francisco where I attended I attended the  Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), The Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS), The Evangelical Philosophical Society Apologetics Conference and The Annual Meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and American academy of religion.(AAR). While I would love to give detailed commentary on each session, to do so would require several blog posts of inordinate length, instead I will simply summarise what went down.

I arrived in San Francisco at around 4pm  on the 15^th. I presented my first paper at 8:30am the next morning. My paper was a critique of Walter Sinnott Armstrong’s arguments against divine command theory meta-ethics. Armstrong contends that the nature of moral obligation is best explained by identifying moral obligations with the natural property of harming others without justification, and, focusing largely on Craig’s work, argues this is superior to divine command ethics. I argued: (a) his argument fails to note the conditional nature of Craig’s (his main target’s) contention that if theism is true moral obligations are best explained as divinecommands (b) Armstrong’s does not provide a better account of moral objectivity (c) Armstrong’s account is not more economical than a divine command theory. (d) Even if it were an economical account, it does not explain various features of obligation such as (i) the social nature of moral obligations (ii) the fact that moral obligations constitute a decisive reason for acting and (iii) the specific moral content of obligations; as well as a divine command theory. All in around 30 minutes!!! The paper was very well received, with several people asking me to forward them a copy. I plan to get it published later this year.

The discussion so far can be found here:

My initial article was Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election

Rauser’s response: Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director Revisited: A Response to Andrew

Before I begin, I should point out that I have been on the Kapiti coast for the last week at a TSCF (Tertiary Student Christian Fellowship, a cousin of Inter-Varsity) retreat where I was without internet. Hence it’s only in the last day that I’ve learned that Professor Rauser has kindly taken the time to respond to my initial article. So I apologize for my delayed response.

I would also like to point out that while my intention was to provoke Rauser’s response, it was not to be rude, and I apologize if that’s the impression he has received. I have a great deal of respect for Rauser, particularly given (as I pointed out in my last article) that he is a Professor of Historical Theology with an obvious background in analytic philosophy, while I am a mere undergrad with far more ambition than actual ability. The last thing that I want is for this discussion to devolve into the kind of vitriol that plagues almost all other web based discussions of the philosophy of religion and/or theology. I say this, largely because I fear (from the tone of his response) that he has received the impression of ill intent on my part.

Secondly, I appreciate that Rauser took the time to respond to my article, and I appreciate that he also took the time to counter my personal testimony with that of his own.

But now to specifics: How does Rauser respond to my claim that the arbitrariness objection (at least if it is to be an objection) begs the question against Calvin’s doctrine of election? On the face of it, he doesn’t seem to challenge my point that God may not be acting unjustly if we are undeserving of salvation. To the contrary, Rauser seems to admit for the possibility that the tortures may be justly deserved. But if that’s the case, then, as I tried to point out in my first post, there’s no real injustice or immoral state of affairs that obtains if God so desires to instantiate those punishments. Paradoxically though, Rauser refers to my theology as “brutal” and “morally incoherent”. Both of these terms, emotionally provocative as they are, seem to suggest that there is something nasty, horrible, evil (whatever negative adjective your heart desires) about a God that selects some for salvation while selecting others for damnation. But if, as Rauser seems to allow, the tortures are justly deserved, then none of those adjectives can rightly be said to stick. After all, if the tortures are justly deserved, and God decides to carry out those tortures, then God can only be said to be doing what the demands of morality and/or justice require. So wherein does the moral incoherence obtain?

But according to Rauser, I would still be missing the point. After all, he (Rauser) says, the Camp Director Analogy was not intended to show that God, given Calvinism, is “unjust”, but rather that He cannot be seen as “maximally loving”. I see no real reason to deny Rauser the liberty to make this distinction, but its relevance is, at best, unclear.

Thankfully, Rauser does seem to hint at one possible way in which we could interpret this as an objection. He seems to engage in something of a pair-wise comparison between two possible scenarios that are supposed to be relevantly similar to the Arminian and Calvinist conceptions of election respectively.

• Scenario 1: The director arbitrarily selects some children for beatings and others for loving rehabilitation.
• Scenario 2: The director selects all children for loving rehabilitation.

According to Rauser, were God to bring about scenario 2, we would state that He is more loving were he to bring about scenario 1. There are three things that I have to say to this:

1. Even if I were to grant this assumption (which I don’t), the most it establishes is that the God who brings about scenario 1 is less loving than the God who brings about scenario 2. But notice that this is not equivalent to saying that God is “objectively unloving” in the sense that we are able to predicate of God (in that situation) terms like “cruel” and “brutal” et al. To get to the conclusion that God is “objectively unloving” which (given the words he has elected to use to describe my theology) is evidently his goal, Rauser would need to show that anything less than complete love for all creatures is tantamount to cruelty. Given what I have hitherto argued regarding the fact that God’s arbitrary choice may not necessarily be unjust or immoral if Calvinism is true, and given that he (Rauser) seems to allow for this possibility, I don’t see how he can plausibly do that.
2. Once again, it seems as if Rauser pre-supposes the falsity of Calvinism to infer to its falsity. The only way that I can see Rauser’s conclusion (that were God to bring about scenario 2 He would be more loving than were he to bring about scenario 1) would have a shot at truth, is if we assume that the “L” of the acrostic TULIP is false. If the scope of God’s love extends only to His elect, while the rest are totally depraved to the extent of total opposition to God, (the T of the acrostic TULIP), then for Him (God) to leave the elect to suffer the pestilence of the others, is cruelty on His part. Consider by way of illustrative analogy, a father who allows his small child to suffer continuous beatings from school bullies. For the father to fail to remove the child from that situation is for that father to shirk his responsibilities as a father, and to be downright cruel. Now note, I’m not saying that the God of Arminianism is crueller than the God of Calvinism (though that is an interesting idea), I am merely trying to show that the God of Calvinism is at least as loving as the God of Arminianism (a comparatively small task). To sum up then, to establish that scenario 1 makes God more loving than does scenario 2, Rauser has to smuggle in the assumption that the T of the acrostic TULIP is false. So unfortunately, it’s another case of question begging on Rauser’s part.
3. The final problem for Rauser consists in the fact that much of what he says entails Universalism. If God brings about scenario 2 AND God loves his children in the way that Rauser loves his daughter, then we are left, not with Classical Arminianism, but with Karl Barth’s Universalism. After all, it should be intuitively obvious that a good father will forcibly pull a child out of harm’s way, particularly if that harm is akin to the fire of hell. Suppose, for instance, that a child is sitting in the way of a stampede of elephants. A good father does not sit idly by, watching from the sidelines and protest that the child must freely get up and run. Rather, a good father sprints into the middle and hauls the child out of the way. This kind of causal sufficiency for salvation in conjunction with God’s salvific love for all humans entails Universal Redemption.

It’s not too late Rauser, you need not think of God as a bad father who stands idly on the sidelines while hell bears down on His children. To sinners like you and I, Calvin’s message of Irresistible Grace and the Perseverance of the Saints ought to be a great comfort. It means that Salvation is a guarantee, and that we needn’t rest on our own failing ability to trust in the Lord. In truth though, returning would be merely speeding up the inevitable. As my Pastor puts it, it’s determined that you will be a Calvinist even if it’s not in this life.

Presently he is in San Francisco where this morning he gave the first of his talks, “Can Traditional Theism Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality? A Reply to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Critique of William Lane Craig” to the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. By all accounts it was well received with Matt already being in receipt of several requests from scholars in his field for copies of the paper.

This afternoon he attended a panel discussion  featuring William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, David Bagget and Jerry Walls on divine command theory and the moral argument. Regular readers will know how much he would have enjoyed that!

Tonight an email came through from the Westminster Theological Journal, a rather prestigious journal, informing him that his article “Feticide, the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint” has been accepted for publication.

No prizes for guessing that I am extra proud of him today

Thanks go to Matthew Flannagan for pointing me in the direction of this response to the problem.

A while back Professor Randal Rauser issued a blog entitled “Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director” in which he criticised the Calvinist understanding of election.

For those of you who are unaware of the Calvinistic understanding of election, very roughly, it’s the idea is that God elected some for salvation and did not elect others for salvation. Now obviously there’s FAR more to Calvin’s doctrine of election than merely the claim that some are elected and others are not. But that at least, is the centre point of Rauser’s criticism, and more particularly, it’s that element of Calvin’s doctrine that I seek to defend in this article.

Before we begin, it’s interesting to note that barely three months ago I was a staunch Arminian when it came to soteriology. I reacted against Calvin’s doctrine with the greatest of revulsion. How could it possibly be, I thought, that God could be “good” and yet actively choose some for salvation while leaving others to die?! It made no sense to me! In-fact, I remember going to scripture one Sunday morning actively seeking to find that knock down scriptural blow against the Reformed understanding of election. Interestingly, the first scripture I read was the parable of the wheat and the tares Matthew 13:24-29/13:36-43. While I read it, it struck me that this challenged my Arminian understanding of Salvation. But I didn’t want to believe it, so I left it for a week hoping that there would be some other explanation. But none was forthcoming. Very quickly I found myself speaking in terms that a week earlier I would never have been revolted to hear myself say. I was not yet a practicing Calvinist. I was what you might call “soteriologically agnostic”.

Now the reason I say this is not because I hope to establish myself as any authority on the matter. To the contrary, Rauser, being a Professor of Historical Theology at Taylor Seminary is far more of an authority on the matter than I can hope to be at this stage of my life. So it’s with much fear and trepidation that I dare post this article contradicting Rauser’s arguments. So why do I give my testimony of how I came to Calvinism? Well I myself am a little unsure. Nevertheless, I suspect that the main reason I give such testimony is that I find it and irony worth sharing that I am writing an article that barely three months ago I would never have even dreamed of writing. If I was going to write anything, it would have been about how Calvinism completely destroys any sensible understanding of God’s justice and love.

But now let’s get down to business. Precisely what is Rauser’s objection? More than anything else, it appears to be a moral objection. The problem, Rauser urges, is that it makes God’s choice about who save entirely arbitrary. Why, he asks (referring to one of his dialectic opponents apparently named Tom) should God bring glory to him (Tom) and not another say Saddam Hussein? This picture, Rauser asserts, completely undermines the idea that God is loving. In order help us to see this point. Rauser entreats us to consider the following illustrative analogy:

“Imagine that there is a camp for troubled youth. The camp director has a rather unorthodox method of dealing with the campers. Some of them are beaten severely with whips in a wholly punitive or retributive (i.e. not restorative) manner while others are chosen by the director to receive care, love and nurture in a way that restores them.

You are contemplating sending your child to the camp but you want your child to be lovingly restored, not viciously beaten, even if the beatings are just. So you enquire: what is it that makes the director decide to beat the children rather than nurture them? Is it the nature of their crimes? Their race? Gender? What?

The answer comes back. There is absolutely nothing that differentiates the two groups. The bottom line is that for some inexplicable reason the director arbitrarily selects some children to be beaten and others to be nurtured.

Now imagine that somebody came up to you with a positive testimonial. “The director loved our child! He nurtured her. She’s much better now. He is very loving to those he chooses.” Wouldn’t you want to scream back “But what about the children he opts to beat? How can you call that loving? How can you focus only on those he nurtures and completely ignore those he beats? Doesn’t it bother you that his choice to nurture your child was wholly arbitrary?”

What Rauser neglects to include in his analogy, and truthfully it’s essential, is that humans do not deserve salvation. The Calvinist maintains that (in virtue of our Total Depravity) morality and/or justice does not impose on God a duty to save us from death. As such, if God is to save us, it is totally unmerited in all senses of the word. It goes, as it were, beyond the call of duty, and is as such, “supererogatory”. That is to say, it might be a nice deed for God to perform, but there is no obligation/duty on Him to do so. If it’s the case that any salvific work that God does is “supererogatory” in this sense, then it cannot be said that there’s any injustice associated with picking some and leaving others. Suppose by way of illustration, that some person S has many brothers. Suppose furthermore, that S (out of the goodness of his heart) decides to gift some money to but one of his brothers. Since S was under no obligation to give ANY of his brothers (let alone the one he actually gave it to) any money at all, there’s no injustice or objective unfairness in S benefiting one brother and not benefiting others. None of S’s brothers had done anything that placed a duty on S to provide his brothers with money, and nor was there anything about S’ brothers which meant that they were intrinsically deserving of the money. In a similar way, the Calvinist holds that because of our sinful nature, there is nothing about us or the way we act which means that we deserve salvation. Hence God has no duty whatsoever to save us. That God has no such duty entails that there is no injustice associated with God saving some and not others.

It is the fact that we don’t deserve salvation that Rauser unfortunately fails to include in his analogy. I have no doubt that he attempted to include this in the analogy (the fact that the children are referred to as “troubled” is indication enough), nevertheless it strikes me that what does most of the work in producing the intuition that the camp director’s actions were unjust, is not so much the fact that his actions were “arbitrary”, so much as that the children were not deserving of such treatment. As much as Rauser attempts to include in his analogy the un-deservingness of the children, he does not succeed. Troubled children, we perceive, are never so troubled and don’t commit crimes so horrific as to deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of the camp director in Rauser’s illustration. To the contrary, we are inclined to think that the children deserve better treatment. In Rauser’s analogy then, there is a duty on the camp director to treat the children in a more appropriate manner. It’s this that the injustice of Rauser’s analogy consists in. Not, as he asserts, the mere arbitrariness of the camp directors choice.

By failing to incorporate this aspect into his analogy, Rauser assumes what the Calvinist about election already denies, namely that we are deserving of salvation, and that God has a corresponding duty to save us. So in an important sense, Rauser assumes the falsity of Calvinism in an attempt to show its falsity. To put a long story short, he begs the question against Calvinism.

I am given to understand that Randal Rauser is a prolific blogger, and I sincerely hope for his response.

Twenty years ago, when Madeleine was 18 and not a Christian, she committedwhat she calls “an act of teenage stupidity” and was convicted of theft and had to do some community service. In New Zealand this conviction is covered by clean slate law but this law does not apply to other countries and the US ask all their visitors seeking visa waivers “have you ever been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude?” Anyone answering “yes” has to apply for a non-immigrant visa. Now Madeleine applied for one of these last time she went to the US some 13 years ago and was granted it in 2 days. This time she phoned up and was told provided she applied about 4 weeks out from her planned date of travel she should be fine – especially as her conviction is now 20 years old and she has never been in trouble since and she has been granted a visa before. She applied with nearly 6 weeks in hand but at the point we had to make the call, her application was still “pending” (and it still is as I write this). In addition, the American Consulate are still holding her passport so they can put her visa in it… With no passport and no visa she could not get on the plane.

Given that we were going to Indiana because Madeleine was speaking at Notre Dame and now she is not we decided to change my trip so that I will now just go to San Francisco and deliver all my planned talks (I will now give our joint talk to the SBL by myself). I now will not leave New Zealand until Tuesday 15 Nov.

We have been able to get a lot of refunds thankfully with not too much in the way of penalty fees and we were able to get a new flight for me at the same ticket price so once we know what it will cost for me to go, any left-over donated monies will be held over to next years cluster of EPS and SBL conferences, as at the very least I expect to be travelling to the US to speak at them – Madeleine will come with me if the US Department of State have actually processed her visa application by Nov 2012… (You can check the status of her application by going here and clicking on the link in the right hand column under “CASE STATUS CHECK“ and using “control F” and entering: 20112782761 – that is her)

As you can imagine we are deeply disappointed by this turn of events and we have had a fairly flat few days as a result. I am pleased to be able to share that there is some good news to among the bad, Madeleine was last week offered a job in a law firm working part-time for an employer who understands and is willing to accommodate her pain disability caused by her car accident in 2008. Her trip being cancelled has meant she has been able to start proper this week so that has given her something to focus on.

If you are a member of the EPS make sure you check out the full candidate list and vote!

The “New Teleological Argument” is a theistic argument which attempts to show that theism is more probable than the postulate of an “atheistic single universe”[i]. There are number of reasons why this argument is termed the “New” teleological argument. Chief among these reasons is that its explanandum i.e. the incredible fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics have only been discovered in the past 20-30 years[ii] [iii]. By contrast, the explanandum of “Old Teleological Arguments” has long since been available to theologians and philosophers of religion. Of course the relatively recent origin of the “New” Teleological argument is not the only feature which distinguishes it from its historical counterpart. Whereas historical versions of design arguments (such as Paley’s famous watchmaker argument) rest on an argument from analogy, contemporary versions of the argument rest on what the philosopher of biology Elliot Sober calls the “Likelihood Principle”[iv] [v]. In other words, rather than relying on an analogy between the explanandum and some obviously contrived entity such as (in Paley’s case) a watch, contemporary versions of the teleological argument argue that the explanandum (the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics) is more probable given the hypothesis of theism as opposed to the postulate of an atheistic single universe[vi].

The Conditions of Success
Throughout the rest of this post, I hope to argue that, on purely philosophical grounds, there is little which will allow us to say which version of the argument (be it contemporary or historical) is more or less plausible. In this respect, it seems only fair that we should assess the strength of David Hume’s critiques, since they are popularly regarded as decisive refutations of teleological arguments.[vii] [viii] It’s important to note also, that while the failure of the Humean critiques would not guarantee the conclusion that the design arguments are equally plausible, it is suggestive thereof. After all, if the joint failure of natural theological and atheological arguments should suggest that it’s impossible to arbitrate (on the evidence) between theism and atheism, then similarly, the failure of stock arguments against either of the design arguments should lead us to think that it’s impossible to arbitrate between them.  In spite of the fact that both contemporary and historical versions of the design argument are equally plausible, I will argue that the contemporary version of the argument has a number of key dialectic advantages which may warrant us in thinking that it is “dialectically speaking”, more successful than its historical counterpart. More precisely, I am saying that the relative success of the new teleological argument is a function of the fact that it does not turn on premises that are as deeply controversial as the commitments required by the historical version.

The Contemporary Version of the Argument
The most prolific contemporary defender of the design argument is Robin Collins who, rather than arguing from facts about biology, argues from recent discoveries in physics[ix]. As we noted earlier, this is one of the main reasons why it is termed the “New” teleological argument. Collins frames his rendition of the argument as follows:

(1)     The existence of fine tuning is not improbable under theism[x]

(2)     The existence of fine tuning is very improbable under the atheistic single-universe hypothesis[xi]

Therefore, given the prime principle of confirmation[1] [xii],

(3)     The existence of fine tuning is evidence for theism over the atheistic single-universe hypothesis[xiii]

By “fine tuning”, I mean the very precise arrangement of the fundamental laws and constants of physics that must be met in order for our Universe to fall into the very narrow life permitting range.[xiv] [xv] According to contemporary physics, these conditions seem to be arranged in such a way that, were they to vary by even the tiniest amount, life (or more precisely, sentient life) would not be a physical possibility. For example, as P.C.W. Davies points out, a change in “the weak force”[2] by only 1 part in 100¹⁰⁰ would make the Universe uninhabitable.[xvi] Similarly, if the cosmological constant[3] were just a fraction faster, matter would spread apart so quickly that even relatively small clumps of matter would have insufficient time to form[xvii].

The Plausibility of the Premises
Premise (1) amounts to the claim that if God exists, then it is entirely within His creative capability to create the universe finely tuned as it is. Hence the observation that there is a universe which exhibits teleo-functional properties is not surprising given the postulate of theism. Considering that the traditional conception of God holds that He is an omnipotent being, this is a fairly straightforward premise that we should accept.

Premise (2) amounts to the claim that if God does not exist and if the single universe hypothesis is true, then the apparent fine tuning of the universe is a very surprising fact. After all, the fundamental laws and constants of physics seem to be arranged in such a way that their placement seems guided. But if God doesn’t exist, it doesn’t seem likely that there would be any intelligent, guiding mind such that it could plausibly account for this apparent fine tuning. Hence premise (2) seems more plausibly true than false.

Assuming then, that something much like Sober’s likelihood principle is true, it follows that theism is more probable than the atheistic single universe hypothesis. What’s important to notice however, is that this conclusion is entirely consistent with the claim that the universe is not designed. After all, the atheist might agree that theism is more probable than the atheistic single universe hypothesis, but think that, in actual fact, we live in a multi-verse. Hence Collins’ design argument does not purport to establish that theism is probable tout court. Were this the end of the argument, we would have to say that, as a piece of natural theology, it is quite unsuccessful since it does not attempt to convince non-theists to become theists.

This of course is not the end of the argument. The multi-verse theory holds that there is an infinite number of other universes each with different fundamental laws and constants of physics. In such a situation, so the argument goes, a finely tuned universe such as the one we observe is not just probable but inevitable.[xviii] Put very simply, the invocation of multi-verse theory at this stage of the argument is an attempt to raise the probability of the fine tuning.[xix] However, there are two points that the theist can make. On the one hand, the theist can appeal to the simplicity criterion to show that there’s still reason to prefer theism over the multi-verse theory. Whereas the multi-verse hypothesis postulates an infinite number of universes, with an infinitely large number of variegated and discrete parts, theism postulates just a single entity constituted of a single substance. The upshot is that whereas God is a remarkably simple entity, the postulate of the multi-verse is, to put it lightly, ontologically un-parsimonious. Hence all else being equal, it seems that theism would be a preferable alternative over the multi-verse hypothesis. Furthermore, it is debatable as to whether the multi-verse hypotheses escape the problem of fine tuning. It has been noted by some, that the most favoured contemporary multi-verse theory, Inflationary theory, must invoke a finely tuned set of initial conditions to explain away some of the observed fine tunings such as the apparent homogeneity and flatness of the Universe.[xx]

The Historical Version of the Argument
The most prolific historical proponent of the design argument was William Paley who argued that various biological organisms exhibit what we might call “teleo-functional complexity”.[xxi] [xxii] That is, they have parts which interact in such a way as to achieve a particular purpose. More precisely, the interaction of these parts is such that were one of those parts absent, the entity would cease to function. Paley argues that it is the presence of this property which allows us to discern that an obviously contrived entity such as a watch is designed.[xxiii] Analogously, Paley argued, if teleo-functional complexity in watches is to be accounted for in terms of design, similarly we must also account for the origin of certain biological organisms in terms of design since they also exhibit this property.[xxiv] Hence by analogy, the origin of certain biological organisms is best explained in terms of design. Paley’s argument has, quite aptly, become known as “The Watch

maker Argument”. For the sake of brevity, we can schematize Paley’s argument as follows:

(1)     Purposely designed instruments such as watches exhibit teleo-functional complexity[xxv]

(2)     Certain biological organisms also exhibit teleo-functional complexity[xxvi]

Therefore by analogy,

(3)     Certain biological organisms are purposely designed.[xxvii]

Contrasting the Arguments & Dealing with Criticisms
The first thing to note is that, unlike historical design arguments, contemporary versions are not arguments from analogy. Rather, they argue that given theism, the fine tuning we observe in the Universe is to be expected more so than it would be given the postulate of an atheistic single universe. It is precisely because the contemporary version of the argument does not rest on this argument from analogy that it is, dialectically speaking, more effective than its historical counter-part. As Hume rightly pointed out, an argument from analogy is only as good as the analogy.[xxviii] Hence Paley’s version of the argument inevitably requires its defender to engage in a protracted discussion of the relevance of various differences between a watch and some fact about the world. By contrast, in virtue of the fact that they don’t rely on this analogy, contemporary versions of the argument do not require their defenders to engage in any such discussion. Hence contemporary renditions of the design argument, remain immune to any attack on the propriety of the analogy.

Furthermore, insofar as evolution by natural selection is a well supported scientific theory, it seems that Paley’s watchmaker argument breaks down.[xxix] If grant we grant this fact, it would seem to follow that the contemporary rendition of the design argument is straightforwardly more plausible than its historical counterpart. After all, the latter version attempts only to argue to design from facts about physics rather than facts about biology. However, a discussion of the evidence for evolution by natural selection is beyond the purely philosophical scope of this paper. So let us, for the sake of charity, proceed as if evolution by natural selection is not a well established scientific theory. With that said however, there is something to be said for the dialectic success of an argument from design which does not require its defenders to run against the grain of the mainstream scientific community, and which altogether circumvent any form of Darwinian attack.

One of the most common criticisms of design arguments comes from Hume’s writing in his “Dialogues concerning Natural Religion” wherein he argues that to assert that this designer is “God”[4] is to go beyond the evidence. We must never, so Hume argues, “ascribe to any cause any qualities but what are exactly sufficient to produce the effect”. In other words, we must ascribe to the cause only what is minimally required to produce the effect (the fine tuning of the cosmos or the teleo-functional complexity of biological organisms).[xxx] In order to help us see this point, Alvin Plantinga (in his eloquent little book “God, Freedom and Evil”) spells out what the theist believes. He states that the theistic hypothesis holds, inter alia, that:

1. Some things in the universe (including the universe) were designed;[xxxi]
2. Some things in the universe (including the universe) were designed by exactly one person;[xxxii]
3. The Universe was created ex nihilo.[xxxiii]

Hume’s objection, Plantinga states, is that the argument from design gives us only some evidence for 1 but does not do anything to support 2 and 3.[xxxiv] However, while Hume is right to point out that the design argument does not of itself give us any evidence for 2 and 3, the proponent of the design argument is not debarred from engaging in a conceptual analysis of what a plausible designer might be like. It may be that by engaging in just such a conceptual analysis, the proponent of the design argument can recover a number of theologically significant attributes. For example, it would not do to postulate that designer was a physical being which exhibits teleo-functional complexity akin to that for which Paley demands explanation in terms of intelligent design. After all, if the designer did exhibit such teleo-functional complexity, and teleo-functional complexity demands design, then we cannot without special pleading, halt the regress at the designer. We are off on a potentially infinite regress. Indeed this serves as the basis for one of Hume’s critiques of design arguments.[xxxv] But notice that this reductio applies only to the supposition that the designer is a physical being which exhibits teleo-functional complexity. It does not refute the inference to design outright. After all, the theistic concept of God is that He is a fundamentally “simple” being, where the term “simple” is cashed out in terms of being without distinct parts that interact with one-another. God, so it is said, is an immaterial mind that is made of a single, non material substance.[xxxvi] In such a situation, it’s unclear at best, that the designer exhibits the kind of teleo-functional complexity that Paley argues requires design. Thus it’s unclear that the designer requires design. Similarly, although it is logically possible, it would not do to postulate that a multitude of intelligent designers. After all, in Hume’s own terms, it would go beyond the evidence. In Hume’s own terms, we must only postulate that which is sufficient to account for the effect. If a single designing entity is so sufficient, we should need extra reason for postulating a multitude of designing minds. Hence already, we have some suggestion (by no means an airtight guarantee) that a plausible candidate designer would be a single, non-material entity.

However, where Hume is un-controversially correct, is in asserting that even after this conceptual analysis, we are not taken to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. However, the argument from design was never intended to prove any such thing. Indeed in some cumulative case arguments[5] for theism, the argument from design is intended only to raise the antecedent probability of theism such that the apologist can, further down the line, make a case for the truth of their particular faith tradition e.g. through appealing to alleged miracles without the antecedent probability being vanishingly small.[xxxvii] The important point to note however is just that in this context, Hume’s comments, while quite correct, are not really criticisms.

However, Hume has a number of more weighty objections to design arguments. The first of these objections claims that there exists a dis-analogy between obviously designed objects such as watches and biological organisms. This dis-analogy, so Hume argues, consists in that we have not observed the intelligent designing of the biological organisms whereas we have observed the intelligent designing of contrived objects such as watches.[xxxviii] However, in his seminal book “Natural Theology”, Paley himself has a very good response to this objection. He says:

“Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed; all this being no more than what is true of the remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of all man-kind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture. Does one man in a million know how an oval frame is turned? ignorance of this kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artists skill…but raises no doubt in our minds of the existence and agency of such an artist…”[xxxix]

In other words, our failure to observe the intelligent designing of biological organisms does little to undermine the inference to design. We can put Paley’s point here more forcefully, suppose we were to travel to a distant star system and on one of the (dead) planets therein, we discovered some machinery. In spite of the fact that we have, hitherto no experience with aliens intelligently designing such machinery, we would be obtuse to think that there was no analogy between the apparent design of this alien machinery, and the design present in human machinery.

But supposing we grant that Paley’s analogy is fatally flawed. There still is no in principle objection[6] that has been levied against design arguments. As we noted earlier, the contemporary version of the argument rests on the Likelihood Principle, and not on an analogy.

As of yet, we have seen little in the way of a philosophical refutation of either the historical or the contemporary version of the design argument. Hence it is hard to say if one version of the argument is more or less plausible than the other. However, insofar as the contemporary version of the argument does not rest on premises that are as controversial as those involved in the watchmaker analogy, we might say that it is, dialectically speaking, more effective than its historical counterpart. Such renditions of the argument do not require their proponents to take on the added burden of having to move against the grain of contemporary scientific orthodoxy. Nor does it require its defender to defend a potentially questionable analogy.

A good example can be seen in a recent USA Today article by influential biologist Jerry Coyne entitled, As atheists know, you can be good without God. Coyne, an outspoken atheist, is disturbed that many Americans, including some prominent scientists, believe that our instinctive sense of right and wrong is “strong evidence for [God’s] existence.” He ventures into moral philosophy to explain why this is clearly mistaken.

From the get-go Coyne demonstrates he does not understand the issues.

It is necessary to accurately understand the position Coyne is criticising before we look at the paucity of his critique. The argument that our instinctive sense of right and wrong “is strong evidence for [God’s] existence” found its most important formulation in a 1979 article by Yale Philosopher Robert Adams. In it, Adams noted that we instinctively grasp that certain actions, like torturing children for fun, are wrong; hence, he reasoned, we are intuitively aware of the existence of moral obligations. According to Adams, the best account of the nature of such obligations is that they are commands issued by a loving and just God. Identifying obligations with God’s commands can explain all the features of moral obligation better than any secular alternative. Consequently, the existence of moral obligations provides evidence for God’s existence.

It is important to note what Adams did not claim. Central to Adams’ argument, and to pretty much every author who follows him, is a vital distinction; this is the distinction between the claim that moral obligations are, in fact, divine commands and the claim that one cannot recognise what our moral obligations are unless one believes in divine commands or some form of divine revelation. Adams illustrates this distinction with the example of H₂0 and water.

Contemporary chemistry tells us that the best account of the nature of water is that water is, in fact, H₂0 molecules. This, of course, means that water cannot exist unless H₂0 does. However, it does not mean that people who do not know about or believe in the existence of H₂0 cannot recognise water when they see it. For centuries people recognised, swam in, sailed on and drank water before they knew anything about modern chemistry.

This distinction has important implications. The claim that moral obligations are, in fact, commands issued by God does not entail that people must believe that God exists and has issued commands in order to be able to recognise right and wrong. These are separate and logically distinct claims.

Coyne conflates this distinction from the outset. After noting that some people believe that moral obligations provide strong evidence for God’s existence, he claims that this is an oft-heard argument, “‘Evolution,’ many argue, ‘could never have given us feelings of kindness, altruism and morality…’;” to this he rejoins that, “scientists studying our primate relatives, such as chimpanzees, see evolutionary rudiments of morality: behaviours that look for all the world like altruism, sympathy, moral disapproval, sharing — even notions of fairness.”

This is confused. Apart from the fact that no one who cites morality as evidence for God actually makes the argument about evolution that Coyne sets out, the claim that moral obligations cannot exist independently of God is not the claim that without God people would not have moral feelings. Feeling that one has an obligation to do something and actually having an obligation to do it are clearly different things. People can feel that they have a certain obligation without it actually being the case that they do.

Coyne makes a similar mistake when he argues that secular European countries like Sweden and Denmark “are full of well-behaved and well-meaning citizens, not criminals and sociopaths running amok.” This may well be true but all it shows is that people can recognise moral obligations and live in accord with them without believing in God. That no more shows that moral obligations can exist without God or that moral obligations are not divine commands than the fact that for centuries people could recognise water and swim without knowing anything about modern chemistry shows that water can exist without hydrogen.

Coyne equally fails to address the issue when he asserts that the bible endorses beating slaves, genocide, killing homosexuals, torturing people for eternity, killing children for being cheeky and so on; texts he claims Christians pass over “with judicious silence”. Apart from the fact that Coyne’s interpretation of these texts is in many places dubious and that far from passing over them in silence, Christian theologians working in the field of Old Testament ethics have written voluminous works on how these passages are to be understood, Coyne’s argument here misses the point. The claim that moral obligations cannot exist independently from the existence of a just and loving God is not the claim that the bible is an accurate source of information about what God commands. Someone could, for example, argue that the wrongness of an action is constituted by God’s commands but that we know and recognise what is right and wrong from our conscience and not from a written revelation. Some leading writers on theological ethics have suggested precisely this.

The only time Coyne is remotely on point is when he argues that if moral obligations are constituted by God’s commands then morality becomes arbitrary; anything at all could be deemed ‘right’ as long as God has commanded it – even stealing or infanticide. Coyne suggests this argument is devastating and has known to be so by philosophers for hundreds of years.

In fact, since Adams’ publication, this argument has been subject to extensive criticism in the philosophical literature. So much so that today even Adams’ leading critics grant that it fails. Adams contended that moral obligations are, in fact, the commands of a loving and just God; therefore, it is possible for infanticide or theft to be right only if a fully informed, loving and just person could command things like infanticide and stealing. The assumption that this is possible seems dubious. The very reason Coyne cites examples such as infanticide and theft is because he considers them to be paradigms of conduct that no morally good person could ever knowingly entertain or endorse.

Coyne seems vaguely aware of the response, stating “Of course, you can argue that God would never sanction something like that because he’s a completely moral being, but then you’re still using some idea of morality that is independent of God.” Here he again falls into confusion. What his response shows is that people can have ideas about and recognise what counts as loving and just independently of their beliefs about God and his commands. Now this is true but this does not show that moral obligations can exist independently of the commands of a loving and just God. Coyne again fails to grasp the basic distinctions involved in discussions of God and morality.

Not only does this argument not refute Adams position but precisely analogous reasoning provides a serious challenge to Coyne’s own secular account of morality.  After claiming that moral obligations cannot be constituted by God’s commands, Coyne offers an alternative: morality comes from “evolution”, humans evolved a capacity to instinctively feel certain actions are wrong and others are right. But couldn’t evolution have produced rational beings that felt that infanticide and theft were obligatory or that rape was, in certain circumstances, ok? As Darwin himself noted,

“If men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think  of interfering.”

Coyne faces a dilemma. If the fact that it is possible for God to have commanded that infanticide is permissible proves that morality is not based on God’s commands then the fact it is possible for evolution to have produced rational beings who feel infanticide is permissible must prove that morality is not dependent on evolution.

Believers of God can avoid this conclusion for the reasons I pointed to above; it is unlikely that a loving and just person could command actions such as infanticide or rape whereas, evolution, guided only by the impersonal forces of nature, is not subject to such constraints. Coyne’s argument does not refute Adams’ position but it does appear to refute his own.

Now nothing I say in response to Coyne here is new, much of it has been said in the voluminous literature on God and Morality written and published over the last forty years. All Coyne had to do to realise this was actually read it. Of course, like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and a host of other popular writers, Coyne has not bothered to actually read the literature on contemporary theological ethics before wading in. Instead he hopes that his stature as a biologist and his confident tone will convince many unfamiliar with the field that he has offered a devastating criticism.  He has not and pretending he has is about as sensible as pretending that because I am a theologian I can offer informed commentary on contemporary genetics off the top of my head.

Matt writes a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the October 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
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Contra Mundum: Why Does God Allow Suffering?
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As you all know

A couple of groups within the Christian Apologetics Alliance have indicated keeness to see it happen, we have even had small pledges of money towards helping it happen, but so far no one has been able to say “yes, we will organise it” and we need that to happen asap or we are just going to run out of time. So, can you organise it can you offer support towards anyone organising it? Do you want to see it happen? (If it happens it will be videoed)

After the service, MPC will screen the quarter final rugby match between the All Blacks and Argentina. Game snacks will be available for purchase; the proceeds will go towards our impending trip to America. Before the service, the MPC cafe will offer cheap meals (like mains around $3, desserts $1). So come along and make a night of it!

When: Cafe meals from 6.30pm – service starts 7pm, Sunday 9 October
Where: Massey Presbyterian Church, 510 Don Bucks Rd, Massey, Auckland
Cost: Free (unless you are purchasing food)

Facebook has an event page you can use to RSVP and invite others.