[moderator's note: This treads VERY close to the line, in my
view, of what is acceptable in this newsgroup. Because it is
simply a book review, I've elected to allow it. I am not going
to allow further discussion of "Design" here. - JAH]

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Neil A.Manson (editor)

GOD AND DESIGN

The teleological argument and modern science

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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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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. So far as biology is concerned, most
people today think design has been decisively discredited by
Darwinism. Contrary to what was so often alleged, the appearance
of design in the natural world is just that - appearance but
nothing more.

If design is pretty well dead so far as biology is concerned,
however, the same is not true of cosmology. Since the middle of
the twentieth century it has been increasingly recognized,
first, that the Universe began in the Big Bang, and second, that
it has laws and properties that make it suitable for life but
which apparently could easily have been quite different; even
small changes in some of these values would have made it
impossible for life to occur.

Although most scientists are reluctant to conclude from this
that the Universe has been designed, it seems difficult to deny
that it appears to have been designed, and theists have
naturally taken up this idea and run with it. In the absence of
any very obvious reason why the Universe should have the
features that it does, such arguments can be hard to counter.

The editor of this book, Neil A.Manson, took the rather unusual
step of including sections on the biological as well as the
cosmological arguments, since he does not see why they should be
treated differently. However, I don't think that the resultant
discussion justifies this even-handedness.

The principal scientific spokesman on behalf of design in
biology today is Michael Behe, and he duly figures here, with
his well-known claim for what he calls irreducible complexity in
nature which is inexplicable by Darwinism. However, this seems
to me to amount to little more than what Richard Dawkins has
memorably called the Argument from Personal Incredulity. In any
case, Behe's position is thoroughly demolished in chapters by
Kenneth R.Miller and Michael Ruse (who, it is interesting to
note, does believe in God but for aesthetic rather than
scientific reasons).

Another chapter in the biology section is by Simon Conway
Morris, a Darwinian who believes in God. He puts forward his
reasons for thinking that beings pretty much like humans would
evolve anywhere in the universe where there is life, although he
thinks the existence of life outside the Earth is very unlikely
and we may even be alone. Unlike Behe, who carefully avoids
explicitly stating that the Designer is God, Morris concludes
with a frank plea for Christianity.

There are two sections on cosmology. In the first, Paul Davies
puts forward his view that the Universe is really adapted for
the production of life, including intelligent life, and that
this tells us something important about the way it has evolved.
He does not, however, conclude that there is evidence for a
Creator. The second section looks at the idea that there are
very many universes (multiverse), which has been espoused by,
among others, Martin Rees, who contributes a chapter.

If there are innumerable universes, the argument goes, there
will be some which, by chance, happen to have the right
conditions for life, and of course ours has to be one of those,
otherwise we would not be here. It's difficult not to feel that
there is something of desperation in this recourse to
multiplicity; and other contributors criticize the logic on
which the multiverse solution to the problem is based.

The main trouble I find with this book as a whole is that its
tone is extremely uneven. Davies, Rees, and one or two other
contributors write for non-specialist readers, but the majority
are professional philosophers and they seem be writing for
fellow-academics. Much of this material is frankly pretty
obscure to non-professionals (this non-professional, anyway);
the language is often technical and is scarcely enlivened by the
quite frequent use of formal symbolic notation. In other words,
I don't think the editor has made a clear decision about whom
the book is aimed at.

I didn't find that any great illuminations arose in my mind as a
result of reading the book. It reinforced, if that were
necessary, my conviction that Darwinism has decisively disproved
the appearance of design in biology. As for cosmology, I already
was aware that leading physicists today mostly concede that
there is a case to be answered; we do not know why the universe
has the properties it does or why these are so surprisingly
favourable to life. But an explanation has already been found in
the case of biology and it seems perfectly possible that it will
eventually be found for cosmology as well.

14 December 2006
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%%T God Design
%%S The teleological argument and modern science
%%A Neil A.Manson (editor)
%%I Routledge
%%C London and New York
%%D 2003
%%G ISBN 0-415-26343-3
%%P xvi + 376 pp
%%K philosophy, science