Re: [asa] Great quote from Charles Babbage on God and Design

I am commenting on this exchange. My comments are at the end.

>>> PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> 6/7/2008 1:16 AM >>>
Great way of reconciling science and faith by keeping them separated
by initial conditions that lie outside our realm. God as the provider
of the 'Laws of nature', not exactly what the original IDers had in
mind but I agree with Mike that this is the only scientific and
theological defensible position. However by using the front loading
argument, it seems that one has also explained why science will remain
unable to detect ID or be able to differentiate it from 'natural'
initial conditions.

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Nucacids <nucacids@wowway.com> wrote:
> I like this quote -
>
> "Many excellent and religious persons not deeply versed in what they
> mistakenly call "human knowledge" but which is in truth the
interpretation
> of those laws that God himself has impressed on his creation, have
> endeavoured to discover proofs of design in a multitude of apparent
> adaptations of means to ends, and have represented the Deity as
perpetually
> interfering, to alter for a time the laws he had previously ordained;
thus
> by implication denying to him the possession of that foresight which is
the
> highest attribute of omnipotence. Minds of this order, insensible of the
> existence of that combining and generalising faculty which gives to
human
> intellect its greatest development, and tied down by the trammels of
their
> peculiar pursuits, have in their mistaken zeal not perceived their own
> unfitness for the mighty task, and have ventured to represent the Creator
of
> the universe as fettered by the same infirmities as those by which their
own
> limited faculties are subjugated."
>
> http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/bridgewater/b1.htm
>
> -Mike Gene

****

Ted comments:

Charles Babbage's so-called "Ninth Bridgewater Treatise" contains one of
the most subtle, and IMO most convincing, philosophical arguments for
front-loaded design that I have ever seen. Pim is correct to emphasize this
aspect of the book. In the 1830s, Babbage and William Whewell were arguing
for design as seen in the laws of nature, not in what Whewell called
"insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular
case...", a passage that Darwin put prominently opposite the title page of
the "Origin of Species."

A specialist in the history of biology once verbally denied my claim that
Darwin quoted one of the Bridgewater treatises in this way, but the evidence
is there for all to see. She had denied it, b/c of her positivist
conviction that Darwin simply would not have used a pro-design book in such
a prominent way. Although she was wrong about the facts, she was right in
her instincts that Whewell advanced the argument from design. I want to
pick up on that fact to add that Whewell also believe in special creation,
so his argument about avoiding miracles wasn't hard and absolute. He was
convinced, for example, that the fossil record belied Robert Chambers'
evolutionary speculations on common descent--there were far too many
discontinuities, essentially, to get past separate creations.

And Babbage may well have had a similar view. As Pim notes, the passage
quoted above seems strongly to favor only front-loaded design. But I want
to urge some caution here. I think what Babbage was really saying is that
God foreknows and foreordains all of natural history, so that the designs
are conceived in God's mind before they are actually carried out in the
natural world. When they are carried out, however, they may well involve
sudden jumps -- here I believe the equivalent of separate creations -- that
are nevertheless lawlike, if one knows the larger picture visible to the
creator. This is highly sophisticated material, and (again) I urge some
caution in interpreting it. In other words, Pim, I think Babbage was
arguing for *both* front-loaded design *and* special creation. See esp
chapter 2 ("ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF DESIGN FROM THE CHANGING OF LAWS IN
NATURAL EVENTS") and chapter 8 ("ARGUMENT FROM LAWS INTERMITTING ON THE
NATURE OF MIRACLES"), available at the same URL above. One of his motives
was to undermine David Hume's argument that we should never credit the
testimony for a miracle more than our confidence in the uniformity of the
laws of nature. For Babbage, miracles were real, and plausible; at the same
time, they were also lawlike, in that they conformed to a higher law unknown
to us mere mortals. And, the whole point of his book was to prove that
design was detectable all over the place. Contrary to Pim's view, Babbage
thinks that he has written natural theology of the highest order: nature
*cannot* do this by itself, only an omnipotent and benevolent creator could
have "foreseen all these changes, and to have provided, by one comprehensive
law, for all that should ever occur, either to the races [ie, species]
themselves, to the individuals of which they are composed, or to the globe
which they inhabit, manifests a degree of power and of knowledge of a far
higher order."

Finally, The spirit and intent of Babbage's brilliant text is against the
mindless, purposeless process that Darwin had in mind a bit later on. In
favor of front-loaded design, for sure; but design absolutely and fully
demonstrated from science. This was ID--yes, not the kind of ID that most
"original IDers had in mind" (as Pim puts it), though I would probably
exclude the original IDer Walter Bradley from this--but clearly it is about
intelligence being inferred in a spectacular way from our knowledge of
nature.

One of the problems with garden variety ID, IMO, is that it so often fails
to rise to the level of Babbage's work. But Babbage fits in beautifully
with ID. And also with those who want to see the divine hand in
evolution--as long as that hand is clearly visible.

Ted

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Received on Mon Jun 9 20:59:33 2008