"John Wilkins"
uq.edu.au> wrote in message> Malcolm
btinternet.com> wrote:
>>> "Anthony Campbell"
acampbell.org.uk> wrote in message>>>
>>> The Argument from Design has a long history in Western thought
>>> and has often been one of the main reasons advanced to justify a
>>> belief in God. It has, however, been frequently criticised,
>>> notably by David Hume.
>>>
>> No it doesn't.
>> "Natural theology" was invented in Britain in the eighteenth century, and
>> died out in the nineteenth. It never had much infleunce outside the
>> British
>> Empire.
>
> Not sure about either claim. John Ray was one of the founders of natural
> theology, and he lived and worked in the 17th century (with the founder
> of the Royal Society, my namesake). Also William Harvey was a major
> distal source of NT.
>
Ray's book was published in 1690, which makes it seventeenth century. I
stand corrected.
>
> It goes back in one form or another to Augustine, and includes Aquinas,
> and the medieval Arab theologians also tried to argue from the state of
> nature to the nature of God.
>
Not really. An idea as basic as "the heavens proclaim the majesty of the
Lord" can be found in many traditions, without much connection to each
other. That's not the same as a serious philosoiphical "Argument from
Design". The ancient Hebrews, for instance, didn't think of God as a
proposition that needed to be defended.
>>
>> It was finally killed as a serious proposition by Darwin, but had been
>> largely discredited long before then. Newman described it as neither
>> natural nor theology.
>
> Actually it was finally killed by Hume, but the news took a while (about
> a century) to get out. But you'll find post-Darwinians, like John
> Campbell, Duke of Argyll, arguing for it late in the 19thC.
>
Natural theology was widely discredited before Darwin. Hume was one of the
people who criticised it. It an interesting question when an idea become
untenable by serious thinkers, and of relevance to some contemporary debates
about education. However I think it is reasonable to agree with Dawkins that
Darwin really killed off natural theology.
