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

Hi Ted,

You wrote: "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."

This is interesting. I found a web page that makes a similar claim:

"In 1837 he published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, to reconcile his
scientific beliefs with Christian dogma. Babbage argued that miracles were
not, as Hume write, violations of laws of nature, but could exist in a
mechanistic world. As Babbage could program long series on his calculating
machines, God could program similar irregularities in nature."

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html

Would it be correct to suppose that Babbage's argument was a response to
Hume's arguments about miracles?

"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."

My ID views have long centered around front-loading which ironically stem
from a peripheral line from Behe's first book. Anyway, I just found
Babbage. My views are not nearly as ambitious, as I am reluctant to attach
theological significance to them. I more modestly ponder the possibilities
of designing the future through the present and how our increasingly
enhanced understanding of evolution makes this more and more plausible.

-Mike Gene

>I am commenting on this exchange. My comments are at the end.
>
>>>> PvM 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 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 Tue Jun 17 20:15:08 2008