Salmon's Version:
Here is a link to Salmon's Argument:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q18w8051415741k4/fulltext.pdf
Martin's Expanded Version:
1) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created by one or more beings with bodies.
2) In terms of our experience, all large and complex created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created by a group of beings working together.
3) In terms of our experience, most seeming errors or mistakes in the kinds of created entities we have so far examined are the result of the fallibility of one or more creators of entities.
4) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined were created by a being or beings with finite power.
5) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created from preexisting material.
Here is a link to Salmon's Argument:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q18w8051415741k4/fulltext.pdf
Martin's Expanded Version:
1) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created by one or more beings with bodies.
2) In terms of our experience, all large and complex created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created by a group of beings working together.
3) In terms of our experience, most seeming errors or mistakes in the kinds of created entities we have so far examined are the result of the fallibility of one or more creators of entities.
4) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined were created by a being or beings with finite power.
5) In terms of our experience, all created entities of the kinds that we have so far examined are created from preexisting material.
RESPONSE:
Here is a link to a nice article that points out the errors in reasoning that Martin and Salmon make:
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/205/1/shalkowskisa2.pdf
Here is a link to a post by Jeffery Jay Lowder that points out the flaws in Martin's Argument:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/12/atheistic-teleological-arguments-part-4.html#more
Here is a link to a post by Jeffery Jay Lowder that points out the flaws in Salmon's Argument:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/12/atheistic-teleological-arguments-part-3.html#more
MY RESPONSE WOULD BE AS FOLLOWS:
Well, there is certainly something correct about this argument, namely, everything that comes into being has a cause, and all, or almost all of the causes IN the universe have natural explanations. However, I do not think that the main thrust of this argument is any good.
First, this objection construes the conditional probability of some evidence "E" on the hypothesis "H" (there is some natural explanation of a phenomena) against our background knowledge in terms of frequency probability. So, the fact that so many, if not all events IN the universe have natural explanations, this means that the prior probability of any other event IN the universe having a natural explanation is greater than 0. I agree with this. However, to go on and say since each event that we have observed IN the universe means that, probably, ALL events in the universe will have a natural explanation is a much stronger claim than to say that EACH event in the universe, probably, will have a natural explanation. Indeed, it begs the question to reason from EACH event having a natural explanation to the conclusion that ALL will because we must weigh the prior probability against the specific evidence for some supernatural explanation of some phenonema x. Moreover, this type of reasoning is demonstrably fallacious since no matter the prior improbability, if the specific evidence for some supernatural explanation for phenomena x is strong enough, then that can counterbalance any prior improbability. So, the question is, how good are the arguments for theism. To rule them out a prior begs the question.
But, why think that the prior improbability for a supernatural explanation of some oberserved phenomena (i.e. fine-tuning) is always low on this account? Indeed, the major arguments for the existence of God are immune to these sorts of frequency probablitites. In particular, many of the phenomena that are offered today (such as in the kalam argument), have to do with singular events that have never been repeated in the history of our universe, and for which there cannot be any frequency probabilities. What is the prior probability that the universe will have a natural cause? How many universes that have begun to exist have been shown to have a natural cause? This probability is inscrutable since this event is singular, and hence Martin and Salmon's arguments might have force is somebody was inferring design based on an alleged miraculous creation event of something IN the universe, but there argument has no force against an argument from design based on the ORIGIN OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE ITSELF. Put another way, it is fallacious to reason that because each part of the universe that we know of has a natural explanation to the conclusion that the whole universe must have a natural explanation. Once this is pointed out, it becomes obviously clear that Martin and Salmon have gone after a straw man of the contemporary argument from design which infers to a designer based on the COSMIC FINE-TUNING OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE FOR THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF COMPLEX LIFE whereas Martin and Salmon attack an argument from design in the form of an arguemnt FROM ANALOGY BASED ON ORDER IN the universe. Indeed, if the universe did have an absolute beginning in time, and since the initial conditions of the universe were put in at the origin of the universe, there cannot be a natural explanation of these two phenomena.
Third, this sort of frequency probablity would rule out the types of religions that claim that what regulary occurs in the universe is the result of immediate and divine causation. For example, Islam subscribes to occasionalism which says that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other. However, on Christian theism, God is not only distinct from the universe, but has set up the universe to operate according to a system of natural laws that produce events in the universe through a chain of secondary causes so that what science discovers, isn't a mere illusion as it is on Islam. So, it seems to me that this argument would work quite well against certain sorts of claims, but not Christianity.
Fourth, on a Leibnizian view of providence, we would expect the number of miralces that god performs in the universe to be as low as possible so that the theist can agree with the atheist that the prior probability of some alleged miracle is low. Consider the following passage from Michael Murray’s article Natural Providence: Reply to Dembski,
“As I cast the exchange between Newton and Leibniz on the issue of providence over nature, Leibniz makes heavy weather over the fact that the Newtonian God appears to be a designer of less than adequate competence. What sort of God would actualize a creation which would require periodic intervention to keep things from collapsing into disorder and chaos? Leibniz’s answer: only one with less than perfect knowledge, power, or goodness.
There is something very attractive about this position. When I bought my first car, the manufacturer recommended a tune up every twenty thousand miles or so. Cars rolling off the assembly line today hardly need anything like a tune up. With many of these cars, the sort of routine service that would be required every twenty thousand miles need only be done every fifty or one hundred thousand miles. Better engineers with greater understanding and better raw materials are now producing better cars. And I think we suppose that were General Motors to take on a few omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good engineers, cars would be utterly maintenance free (less than wholly good engineers might be able to design such cars, but undoubtedly their greed would get the better of them). The same intuition underlies the Leibnizian picture. If God knows how to bring about all of the states of affairs he wishes to bring about in the course of natural history by deck-staking, what would motivate the creation of a universe that was in need of periodic tune ups?
Christian have argued, that there is something unworthy of a theism which countenances a God who once creates the natural order and yet leaves it without the resources to bring about the desired results. The most vocal advocate of this line in the contemporary arena is
Howard Van Till who argues:
I believe that the universe in its present form is to be seen as a potentiality of the creation that has been actualized by the exercise of its God-given creaturely capabilities. For this to be possible, however, the creation’s formational economy must be astoundingly robust and gapless—lacking none of the resources or capabilities necessary to make possible the sort of continuous actualization of new structures and life forms as now envisioned by the natural sciences. The optimally-equipped character of the universe’s formational economy is, I believe, a vivid manifestation of the fact that it is the product, not of mere accident or happenstance, as the worldview of naturalism would have it, but of intention. In other words, the universe bears the marks of being the product of thoughtful conceptualization for the accomplishment of some purpose.”
The startling implications of the Leibnizian concept of providence then is that a perfect God would bring about his desired ends by "front-loading" the universe through nomically regular means that would be empirically equivalent to a world in which Salmon and Martin argue that we wouldn't expect if a perfect God existed, but then I think we have caught the atheist trying to have it both ways, at least implicitly in this case.
Here is a link to a nice article that points out the errors in reasoning that Martin and Salmon make:
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/205/1/shalkowskisa2.pdf
Here is a link to a post by Jeffery Jay Lowder that points out the flaws in Martin's Argument:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/12/atheistic-teleological-arguments-part-4.html#more
Here is a link to a post by Jeffery Jay Lowder that points out the flaws in Salmon's Argument:
http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/12/atheistic-teleological-arguments-part-3.html#more
MY RESPONSE WOULD BE AS FOLLOWS:
Well, there is certainly something correct about this argument, namely, everything that comes into being has a cause, and all, or almost all of the causes IN the universe have natural explanations. However, I do not think that the main thrust of this argument is any good.
First, this objection construes the conditional probability of some evidence "E" on the hypothesis "H" (there is some natural explanation of a phenomena) against our background knowledge in terms of frequency probability. So, the fact that so many, if not all events IN the universe have natural explanations, this means that the prior probability of any other event IN the universe having a natural explanation is greater than 0. I agree with this. However, to go on and say since each event that we have observed IN the universe means that, probably, ALL events in the universe will have a natural explanation is a much stronger claim than to say that EACH event in the universe, probably, will have a natural explanation. Indeed, it begs the question to reason from EACH event having a natural explanation to the conclusion that ALL will because we must weigh the prior probability against the specific evidence for some supernatural explanation of some phenonema x. Moreover, this type of reasoning is demonstrably fallacious since no matter the prior improbability, if the specific evidence for some supernatural explanation for phenomena x is strong enough, then that can counterbalance any prior improbability. So, the question is, how good are the arguments for theism. To rule them out a prior begs the question.
But, why think that the prior improbability for a supernatural explanation of some oberserved phenomena (i.e. fine-tuning) is always low on this account? Indeed, the major arguments for the existence of God are immune to these sorts of frequency probablitites. In particular, many of the phenomena that are offered today (such as in the kalam argument), have to do with singular events that have never been repeated in the history of our universe, and for which there cannot be any frequency probabilities. What is the prior probability that the universe will have a natural cause? How many universes that have begun to exist have been shown to have a natural cause? This probability is inscrutable since this event is singular, and hence Martin and Salmon's arguments might have force is somebody was inferring design based on an alleged miraculous creation event of something IN the universe, but there argument has no force against an argument from design based on the ORIGIN OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE ITSELF. Put another way, it is fallacious to reason that because each part of the universe that we know of has a natural explanation to the conclusion that the whole universe must have a natural explanation. Once this is pointed out, it becomes obviously clear that Martin and Salmon have gone after a straw man of the contemporary argument from design which infers to a designer based on the COSMIC FINE-TUNING OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE FOR THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF COMPLEX LIFE whereas Martin and Salmon attack an argument from design in the form of an arguemnt FROM ANALOGY BASED ON ORDER IN the universe. Indeed, if the universe did have an absolute beginning in time, and since the initial conditions of the universe were put in at the origin of the universe, there cannot be a natural explanation of these two phenomena.
Third, this sort of frequency probablity would rule out the types of religions that claim that what regulary occurs in the universe is the result of immediate and divine causation. For example, Islam subscribes to occasionalism which says that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other. However, on Christian theism, God is not only distinct from the universe, but has set up the universe to operate according to a system of natural laws that produce events in the universe through a chain of secondary causes so that what science discovers, isn't a mere illusion as it is on Islam. So, it seems to me that this argument would work quite well against certain sorts of claims, but not Christianity.
Fourth, on a Leibnizian view of providence, we would expect the number of miralces that god performs in the universe to be as low as possible so that the theist can agree with the atheist that the prior probability of some alleged miracle is low. Consider the following passage from Michael Murray’s article Natural Providence: Reply to Dembski,
“As I cast the exchange between Newton and Leibniz on the issue of providence over nature, Leibniz makes heavy weather over the fact that the Newtonian God appears to be a designer of less than adequate competence. What sort of God would actualize a creation which would require periodic intervention to keep things from collapsing into disorder and chaos? Leibniz’s answer: only one with less than perfect knowledge, power, or goodness.
There is something very attractive about this position. When I bought my first car, the manufacturer recommended a tune up every twenty thousand miles or so. Cars rolling off the assembly line today hardly need anything like a tune up. With many of these cars, the sort of routine service that would be required every twenty thousand miles need only be done every fifty or one hundred thousand miles. Better engineers with greater understanding and better raw materials are now producing better cars. And I think we suppose that were General Motors to take on a few omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good engineers, cars would be utterly maintenance free (less than wholly good engineers might be able to design such cars, but undoubtedly their greed would get the better of them). The same intuition underlies the Leibnizian picture. If God knows how to bring about all of the states of affairs he wishes to bring about in the course of natural history by deck-staking, what would motivate the creation of a universe that was in need of periodic tune ups?
Christian have argued, that there is something unworthy of a theism which countenances a God who once creates the natural order and yet leaves it without the resources to bring about the desired results. The most vocal advocate of this line in the contemporary arena is
Howard Van Till who argues:
I believe that the universe in its present form is to be seen as a potentiality of the creation that has been actualized by the exercise of its God-given creaturely capabilities. For this to be possible, however, the creation’s formational economy must be astoundingly robust and gapless—lacking none of the resources or capabilities necessary to make possible the sort of continuous actualization of new structures and life forms as now envisioned by the natural sciences. The optimally-equipped character of the universe’s formational economy is, I believe, a vivid manifestation of the fact that it is the product, not of mere accident or happenstance, as the worldview of naturalism would have it, but of intention. In other words, the universe bears the marks of being the product of thoughtful conceptualization for the accomplishment of some purpose.”
The startling implications of the Leibnizian concept of providence then is that a perfect God would bring about his desired ends by "front-loading" the universe through nomically regular means that would be empirically equivalent to a world in which Salmon and Martin argue that we wouldn't expect if a perfect God existed, but then I think we have caught the atheist trying to have it both ways, at least implicitly in this case.
RSS Feed
