Re: MD Hume, Paley and Intelligent Design

From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Sun Apr 24 2005 - 12:35:41 BST

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    Hi Mark,

    I'm aware I've got some posts hanging and needing an answer at the moment,
    but just wanted to comment on your post in this thread. Ironically enough, I
    spent yesterday morning giving a lecture to 50 or so of my congregation
    about evolution and why the watchmaker argument etc was a big red herring.
    In other words, I agree with everything you said (especially from Hume), and
    I think ID fails, but that's because it seems to me both sides of the
    argument share presuppositions (about what sort of thing God is) which I
    don't share. A belief in a creator has much more to do with attitudes to
    life and choices than the assertion of a position within a scientific
    conversation.

    In Remarks on Colour, §317, Wittgenstein writes: "When someone who believes
    in God looks around him and asks `Where did everything that I see come
    from?' `Where did everything come from?', he is not asking for a (causal)
    explanation; and the point of his question is that it is the expression of
    such a request. Thus, he is expressing an attitude towards all
    explanations. -But how is this shown in his life? It is the attitude that
    takes a particular matter seriously, but then at a particular point doesn't
    take it seriously after all, and declares that something else is even more
    serious. Someone may for instance say it's a very grave matter that such and
    such a man should have died before he could complete a certain piece of
    work; and yet, in another sense, this is not what matters. At this point one
    uses the words `in a deeper sense.'"

    I may say something about this when I get a chance to respond to your other
    posts.

    Cheers
    Sam

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