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.
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.
>
> 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.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog:
scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
