Recommended book

The Intelligent Design Movement.

Introduction to the Controversy.

Howard Taylor

Faith and Reason.

Faith is believing in things for which there is no evidence. Or is it? That is certainly what many people are led to think. But it is not true of the Christian Faith.

Rather faith in Christ is the commitment of ones life to something for which, in spite of the fact that the object of faith is unseen, there is ample evidence that it exists.

In other words faith is reasonable.

Furthermore this reality which is unseen is very personal. Hence the commitment will be personal and not mechanical and involve us in our deepest being.

Some say that all knowledge must be subject to ‘measurement’ or ‘testing’. However we know our families and friends by personal relationship not by measurement or testing. This leads to a real (though not complete) knowledge of something real that we could never know by measurement or testing. Indeed if we try to put tests to friendship attempting to measure it we would spoil the friendship and that way of knowing would cease. By the way this is what the Bible means when it says our relation with God is faith not law.

The 17th C French mathematician and philosopher, Pascal, in his Pensees (12) said:

Men despise religion (he meant Christianity). They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

There is such a thing as faith without evidence. Physical science examines physical things therefore it could never show that non-physical things don’t exist. It has been very successful in examining physical things (however mysteries about the physical world get greater not less with the advance of science). It could hold the lesser view that the physical world is entirely self contained. However it could never reach that view unless it had reached a theory of everything (TOE). Not only has it not reached that point but, as noted, mysteries about the physical world’s behaviour increase (not decrease) the further physical science advances. Some have claimed that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem shows that, in principle, a TOE can never be reached. Yet in spite of all this many people continue to hold to naturalism – the belief that only physical things exist - or that non-physical realities are not needed to explain the physical world. However successful physical science has been in explaining some of the physical world, it does not follow that the physical is everything in nature or creation.

This is a faith without evidence – so this kind of blind faith does exist after all!

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Introduction to the Controversy.

The present day argument, considered here, is between those who hold to so-called Intelligent Design and those who accept the prevailing opinion that natural processes alone can account for two things (a) biogenesis - the origin of life (before the alleged processes of evolution could get started) and (b) the subsequent development of life.

At the outset I should say that personally I prefer the term ‘Mind’ to ‘Intelligent Design’ because there is a history of thought going back thousands of years linking non-material mind with matter in various relationships. For example in our own time Roger Penrose FRS, formally professor of Maths at Oxford, believes that a non-material transcendent reality is the source of all truth, beauty and goodness. The term intelligent designer is probably included in this view of the transcendent world but the source of matter and life is much greater than this. However, for the purposes of this paper, I will be referring to the modern term ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID).

Opponents of ID includes many Jews and Christians - even evangelical Christians[1] - who believe that natural processes for the origin of life and evolution can be reconciled with Genesis 1. They usually hold that the matter of the universe including the natural laws of nature (such as gravity) were created by God and finely tuned to allow, stars, galaxies, planets like earth, and then life to form. In this view God endowed His creation with a 'fruitful potentiality' to produce all that we see around us today. (For short we refer to this view as TE meaning Theistic Evolution or Theistic Evolutionist.)

The first group says that life is so so complex and information-rich, that an Intelligent Design is needed to explain it.

 

An important part of the argument is that the complexity of the simplest form of life contains information in the form of 'code' or 'words' or 'language' (DNA and RNA for example). It is contended that the origin of any code has to be Mind. If one is examining ancient markings on a rock, which are not just complex patterns but a language, one will conclude that they are the products of an intelligent mind.  A detailed support for this view comes from the mathematician Bill Dembski who has written extensively on mathematics and information.

Advocates of ID are not proposing a belief in a young earth or a particular religion, even though some of them may hold also to a young earth view that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. They simply are saying that life requires Mind for its origin and also its development as the amount of its information content increases. (There is more information in the DNA of an elephant than of a bacterium.)

Against this view is the view of evolutionists and theistic evolutionists that the ID people are invoking the 'god of the gaps'. It is true, they say, that there in no viable theory of the origin of life - but one should not put any 'god' in that gap to explain it. Science is about finding physical causes for physical phenomena, not invoking God every time science is faced with a mystery.

Those holding to TE say that to invoke God to explain part of creation is to attempt to introduce Him as part of the data of natural science and that is unacceptable. The Jewish/Christian doctrine of Creation says creation is separate from God and therefore one must not look for God in Creation.

To summarise so far: whereas naturalistic science says science is defined as that study, which always looks for physical explanations, ID says 'no', science means 'follow the evidence' and the evidence leads to ID.

It might be wiser for ID to argue like this: As Einstein recognised science examines the rational structure of the material world but it can't explain why it is rational- or has the fundamental properties that it does. (He said: The only thing incomprehensible about the universe is that it is comprehensible.) The intelligent (Einstein's word) non-material source of matter's rational structure, he called The Old One or The Dear Lord.

It seems to me that ID is just taking this one step further. It is saying that the properties of the living world cannot be reduced to the properties (rational structure) of the non-living material world but it has a rational structure of its own.

My exposition of the convictions of the ID movement[2].

ID maintains that the origin, nature and development of life (the subject of biology) needs non-material and intelligent Mind as its source.

However it holds that in the final analysis materialist explanations for any physical phenomenon are inadequate. The answers to the questions ‘What is matter?’ and ‘What is energy?’ raise fundamental mysteries about the nature and the origin of the intelligibility of all material existence. Biological complexity is just one particularly striking example of this.

We can summarise the convictions under the following four headings:

I.        Science.

¨       Science has revealed a biological world in its simplest form, (before the alleged processes of evolution could get started) that is full of information and complexity - a complexity that exceeds the complexity of the most intricate of man made machines. Intelligent mind is needed to explain the origin of life.

¨       ID also casts strong doubt on the orthodox theories of neo-Darwinism, believing that they are completely inadequate to explain the development of life. Intelligent mind is needed to explain the development of life.

¨       Alleged evidence for natural selection from ‘beneficial’ mutations in bacteria or viruses is not evidence for evolution because the changes only involve the switching on or off or shuffling of parts of the already existing DNA or RNA molecules and do not produce any new organs or features to the existing life form, or add and extra level of complexity to the bacteria or virus. On the contrary they do the opposite. As every computer scientist knows the transfer of information cannot produce more information only a change (usually a detrimental change) in the original.

¨       Gödel (of the famous Incompleteness Theorem) believed that mechanism in biology is a prejudice of our time which will be disproved. In this case one disproval, in Gödel's opinion, will consist in a mathematical theorem to the effect that the formation within geological times of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of a similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is about as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.[3]

II.      Philosophical

ID rejects Philosophical Naturalism, which makes the false assumption (in principle an improvable assumption) that the physical world's existence and properties are self-explanatory.

¨       Origin of the physical world. Either the origin of all things is eternal impersonal particles/energy and laws of physics or the origin is Eternal Mind. ID holds the latter view because the origin or matter cannot be matter itself!

¨       Mind and Matter Interact.

Everyday we see mind and matter interacting.

¨       Human thinking (which cannot be completely material) affects the physical world and vice versa.

¨       Therefore solely material explanations for the behaviour of material things must be inadequate.

¨       Therefore the existence of Divine agency in the material world should not present surprises.

III.    Theological and Biblical.

¨       The Bible teaches that it is Uncreated Mind or Word, who seeks to know and be known, who is the origin and sustainer of all physical things.

¨       The Creation was not one event.

There were a small number of stages. Among these were: (1). Matter-Energy, (2). Non-conscious life  (3). Conscious life and (4). Conscious life that is capable of abstract reasoning.

ID concentrates on (2). - The origin and development of living things studied by biology and genetics.

IV.   Ethical

¨       In the long term the conviction that human life is valuable cannot be sustained unless there is a belief in an overall purpose

¨       Morality and Ethics would be bound to disintegrate in confusion.

We see the effects of this all around us.

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COMMENTARY.

ID maintains that the origin and nature and development of life (the subject of biology) needs non-material and intelligent Mind as its source.

However it holds that in the final analysis materialist explanations for any physical phenomenon are inadequate. The answers to the questions ‘What is matter?’ and ‘What is energy?’ raise fundamental mysteries about the nature and the origin of the intelligibility of all material existence. Biological complexity is just one particularly striking example of this.

I.       Science.

ID proponents hold that all of nature points to Mind. However its main interest is in two things namely

1. The origin of life or self replicating molecules.

2. The development of life.

1. Science reveals the inner workings of the simplest forms of life to be composed of intricate circuits, miniaturised motors and enough digital code to fill an encyclopaedia. All these things exist in a cell without any brain, nervous system, liver, eyes, ears, blood, lungs, leaves, feathers, bark, roots, petals, etc. Digital code is a form of language and all languages arise from mind. Writing cannot be accounted for from the chemistry of the ink and paper (say) but must have its origin in mind.

2. All the above must have been present before the alleged processes of evolution could get started.

3. ID people also doubt evolution as an explanation for the whole history of life. Random mutation through the sieve of natural selection may be able to account for small changes in living organisms. However sustainable mutations have their limits.

4. Therefore these changes cannot account for the huge changes from a simple bacterium to all the life forms (including ourselves) that we see around us.

5. Gödel believed that mechanism in biology is a prejudice of his time which will be disproved. In this case one disproval, in Gödel's opinion, will consist in a mathematical theorem to the effect that the formation within geological times of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of a similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is about as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.

6. ID proponents believe there are mathematical tests for design in the origin and development of life. They show that the type of complexity found in biological systems cannot be the result of mindless algorithms or the properties of matter but must have intelligent mind as its source. For example language needs a mind and we find codes (types of language) in all living things.

The inference of Design is used and universally accepted in several sciences. For example if someone falls off a cliff, forensic science determines whether he/she was pushed or she fell by accident. Was there a purpose (intelligent design) or was it an accident? Forensic science tells us which.

7. The world famous atheist philosopher, Professor Anthony Flew, has given up atheism for theism. What is the basis for his change of mind? The extraordinary complexity of the supposed 'simple' form of life discovered by modern biology. In a Philosophy Journal which interviews him he says: "It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design."

 

II.    Philosophical

What exists? (Ontology)

Resistance to the ID view comes from (a). Those who deny that non-physical entities exist or (b) those who hold that non-physical entities may exist but do not affect the physical.

Since physical science examines physical things there could be no evidence to support the position (a).

Position (b) only could have support if it could be shown that the physical universe is a closed system of cause and effect - nothing non-physical affecting what goes on in it.

If physics provided us with a TOE (Theory of Everything) it would have gone along way to reaching that goal. However there are several problems:

1. The advance of science reveals more and more mystery.

2.  Many have argued from Godel's theorem that it can be proved that the universe will never be understood from within itself alone.

Origins.

It makes no sense to say that the origin of matter and energy is matter or energy.

Since personal beings (with minds) certainly exist in the universe, it is reasonable to believe that the origin of all reality, at least, must be Personal Mind.

Mind and Matter.

ID holds the view that non-material minds have effects in the physical world. Therefore we should expect that the Eternal Mind also to affect the physical world.

Thinking (what minds do) cannot be simply the sum of material processes. If we discover a physical cause (say a virus in the brain)  for a belief or a thought then that belief and thought would lose its value.

If all our thoughts were exclusively the movement of physical entities in our brains, then there would be no way, by thinking, of determining which 'thought' was correct and which was incorrect since that determining by thinking, itself would be a mere physical process.

One difference between physical events and thoughts of the mind.

Any physical process, unlike a thought, is neither true nor false, it just is.

However thoughts may have the additional property of being true or false.

So thoughts cannot be identical to physical processes or a combination of exclusively physical processes.

For example a river running through a valley is neither true nor false (though thoughts about the flow of the river may be true or false). Its running through the valley just exists.

Thus there is a fundamental distinction between physical processes (such as the flow of water), which merely exist, and thoughts, which not only exist but also may be true or false. Thus thoughts cannot be mere physical processes.

Bertrand Russell said:

If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts’, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. [4]

Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from minds. (Minds are conscious.)  - minds that have agreed on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences and that express both desire and intent.

The atheist Richard Dawkins writes:

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, nor a 'spark of life'.   It is information, words, instructions . . .   Think of a billion discrete digital characters . . .   If you want to understand life, think about information technology.[5]  

If we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say:

Messages, languages and coded information never come from anything else besides a mind.  No-one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind.

Languages etc can be carried by matter or energy (eg sounds, ink, electronic and radio signals) but they are none of these things. Indeed they are not matter or energy at all. They are not ‘physical’.

The physical universe can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes, crystals, stalactites, tornados, turbulence and cloud formations etc.   But non-living and non-conscious things cannot create language. They cannot create codes.

Drusilla Scott tells us of Michael Polanyi's reaction to the claim that the discovery of the DNA double helix is the final proof that living things are physically and chemically determined.

No said Polanyi it proves the opposite. No arrangement of physical units can be a code and convey information unless the order of its units is not fixed by its physical chemical make-up. His example is a railway station on the Welsh border where an arrangement of pebbles on a bank spelled the message - "Welcome to Wales by British Rail". This information content of pebbles clearly showed that their arrangement was not due to their physical chemical interaction but to a purpose on the part of the stationmaster ...   The arrangement of the DNA could have come about chance, just as the pebbles on that station could have rolled down a hillside and arranged themselves in the worlds of the message, but it would be bizarre to maintain that this was so ... [6]

Of course many committed to materialism (without evidence) insist that the mind is no more than an aspect of the physical brain/nervous system. We should remember the words of Gödel: That the mind is the brain is the great prejudice of our age.

Mind and Matter interact.

My thoughts (non-physical) may affect the physical river if I decide to have go for a swim in it. I make a splash. So our everyday experience of thinking (and deciding) can affect the physical world - making us move our physical bodies and other things too. Thus minds can and do affect physical reality. This was Karl Popper's argument. How mind acts on matter remains a mystery.

ID believes that not only the origin of matter comes from non-material mind, but that that Mind continues to act in His creation.

John Polkinghorne believes that God’s action in the material world does not involve and extra “push” but and input of information.

This means that the physical sciences are bound to reach points in their research when they come up against a brick wall. They are right to search for physical explanations, but they must have in the back of their minds the fact that all materialist explanations are ultimately inadequate to account for the existence and properties of the physical world.

III.  Theological and Biblical.

The Bible teaches that it is not uncreated impersonal particles/energies/laws of physics that are the eternal origin of all things, but an Uncreated Mind or Word who seeks to know and be known. This is how the New Testament which Christians at least accept puts it:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.[7]

ID people may have different interpretations of Genesis 1, but they believe that the Creation was not one event. There were a small number of stages. Among these were (1). Matter-Energy, (2). Non-conscious life  (3). Conscious life and (4). Conscious life that is capable of abstract reasoning.

This means that the sciences should expect to find discontinuities in their examination of nature.

1. The understanding of matter and energy cannot be reduced to 'nothing'.

2. The understanding of non-conscious life cannot be reduced to a complex form of matter and energy. (Biology cannot be wholly reduced to chemistry and physics).

3. The understanding of conscious life cannot be wholly reduced to a complex form of non-conscious life.

4. The understanding of abstract reasoning cannot be reduced to the consciousness of animals.

POSTSCRIPT – FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS.

The Argument from Design – Bertrand Russell and David Hume.

Russell.

Bertrand Russell greatly respected the argument from design especially as expounded by Leibniz. (He regarded Leibniz, in whom he specialised, as "one of the supreme intellects of all time") BR writes: "This argument contends that, on a survey of the known world, we find things which cannot plausibly be explained as the product of blind natural forces, but are much more reasonably to be regarded as evidences of a beneficent purpose."

He regards this familiar argument as having no "formal logical defect". He rightly points out that it does not prove the infinite or good God of normal religious belief but nevertheless says, that if true, (and BR does not give any argument against it) it demonstrates that God is "vastly wiser and more powerful than we are". 

(See his chapter on Leibniz in his History Of Western Philosophy.)

Hume[8].

It is important to appreciate that, religious sceptic though he was, (but not one who ever characterised himself as an atheist), Hume shows no sympathy to the approach we calling “methodological materialism”. That is, in Hume there is no trace of the idea that teleological concepts such as “intelligence” and “design” are inappropriate on methodological grounds in the context of biological explanation. As was usually the case with thinkers prior to Darwin, the basic question for Hume was how much soundly based knowledge can the Argument from Design yield. In Hume’s view, in turns out, the answer to this most general of questions is “not as much as previous philosophers have hitherto imagined”, but this conclusion does not depend in any way on the notion that the concept of “design” itself is in some sense inadmissibility at the outset of an investigation into the features and origin of organic nature.

What is Hume’s most general verdict on natural theological reasoning? The third sentence of his earlier work The Natural History of Religion of 1751 will surprise those who, without properly studying him, hail Hume as a committed metaphysical atheist. Hume in fact writes as follows:

“The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no

rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a

moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism

and Religion.”

ID – A threat to science?

Some allege that it is. But what do they mean? They are usually unconsciously using a definition of science which says it is that subject which only looks for physical causes for physical effects.

But what is the basis of that definition? It assumes that physical nature is a closed system of cause and effect. However we can’t assume that. There is no evidence for that belief. Some have argued from an interpretation of Godel’s theorem that the physical world is not a closed system. Why not define science as that discipline which seeks to explain physical effects by following the evidence wherever it leads rather than be bound by an unprovable metaphysics which denies that non-physical realities impinge upon the physical world?

One seamless whole?

It is often claimed by theistic evolutionists and atheists that nature is ‘one seamless whole’. That is to say it must be regarded as one without the need to postulate further creative acts. But what is the basis of this belief? It isn’t scientific because science has not shown it to be true - there is still no viable theory of how lifeless matter turned into living organisms. It is not philosophical because there is no convincing ontology to give basis for the belief.[9] It is not theological because the Bible does not teach it. It is a prejudice.

God of the gaps.

It is often alleged that ID people are evoking the dreaded ‘god of the gaps’. This criticism is based on the assumption that all physical effects have physical causes. Just because many physical effects have been found to have physical causes, does not mean that we can assume that all will. That is an unwarranted assumption. Further the ‘god of the gaps’ gets less as science advances.

However with the biological understanding of life, the advance of science has revealed a world of marvels unthought-of before.  The ‘gaps’ or mysteries are getting greater.[10]

False dualisms in criticism of ID by some Christians.

I.        Spiritual/Physical.

It is alleged that Genesis 1 and other Biblical passages are ‘spiritual’ or ‘theological’ and not ‘physical’. However Genesis 1 and other passages have as their subject God and the physical world. Theology is concerned, not only with the spiritual, but also with the physical. Hence, although the Resurrection of Christ had a spiritual dimension, it was nevertheless a Resurrection of the Body.

II.     Creation/Redemption.

Many Christians accept the miracles of Redemption as seen in Jesus but reject the Divine creative input expounded in Genesis 1. The Incarnation holds together the Creation and Redemption and therefore they should not be treated as totally distinct.

ID makes no predictions as normal scientific theories do.

This is a common criticism of ID. However it should be remembered that the theory of evolution makes no predictions either. Jerry Coyne an evolutionary biologist writing in Nature acknowledges in a recently published book review,

"If truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits… Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture… Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution." [11]

It is ‘immunised’ (Karl Popper’s phrase – see below) against such a test. Actually ID does make predictions. It predicts that there will always be a discontinuity between non living matter and living matter. Exclusively physical properties between non-living matter and living matter will never be found. The basis of this prediction is that the DNA and RNA (essential to life) are a form of code – see section above entitled: Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from minds.

Karl Popper.

He says Evolution is not a scientific theory because it cannot be tested. He regards theories as ‘immunised’ as those that are protected against all future discoveries because they can be reconciled with anything[12]. His theory of falsification says that for a theory to be counted as scientific, the proposer must be able to stipulate what new facts if found in the future would falsify his theory. Evolution in its modern form fails this test and is ‘immunised’ against all possible future discoveries.  He regards this as a bad thing. He says ‘Evolution’ is at best a philosophical framework in which other scientific disciplines can find their home. He therefore reluctantly accepted it.

But can it provide such a framework? This leads us to the next topic.

Two opinions

Not being in the same scientific league as many geneticists I cannot argue with their biology. However it is often said that Darwinian evolution provides the paradigm within which all biological research is carried out. For example Denis Alexander who has made his case against ID, says in his otherwise very good book ‘Rebuilding the Matrix:

The theory gives coherence to an immense varied array of research fields, including and behavioural psychology, to name but a few [13].

Now compare that statement with the following statement from Professor Philip S. Skell, Member, National Academy of Sciences (a very prestigious body), Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus Penn State University. He researched researchers. He asked them to consider a world where there was no theory of evolution. What difference would it have made to their research?

In 2005 he said:

I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.

I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.

 

Many of the scientific criticisms of (neo-Darwinism) are well known by scientists in various disciplines, including the disciplines of chemistry and biochemistry, in which I have done my work. I have found that some of my scientific colleagues are very reluctant to acknowledge the existence of problems with evolutionary theory to the general public. They display an almost religious zeal for a strictly Darwinian view of biological origins.
Darwinian evolution is an interesting theory about the remote history of life. Nonetheless, it has little practical impact on those branches of science that do not address questions of biological history (largely based on stones, the fossil evidence). Modern biology is engaged in the examination of tissues from living organisms with new methods and instruments. None of the great discoveries in biology and medicine over the past century depended on guidance from Darwinian evolution---it provided no support.

Dawkins and the Origin of Complexity.

So who made God? This question is the essence of Richard Dawkins' argument on page 141 of his ‘The Blind Watchmaker’[14].

He says a Creator, in order to make such a thing as the DNA would have to be at least as complex as the DNA. If we have to explain the origin of the DNA's complexity then we must explain the origin of the complexity of God.
What is wrong with this argument? It assumes that the laws of nature (i.e. cause and effect) apply to that which is beyond nature - a patently false assumption. If God exists then He is, by definition, beyond nature.
Dawkins goes on to say:

"You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that sort of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or 'Life was always there'. and be done with it."

Although, no doubt Dawkins means this as a rhetorical sentence, its rhetoric can only be effective if the sentence makes any sense. But it doesn't.
It is beyond dispute that DNA and life were not always there! No one pretends that they were. We do not know the laws that relate to the Eternal existence of God who is beyond nature, but what we do know is that life has not always existed.
 

It is a common claim of Richard Dawkins and others that a cause for nature’s complexity must be more complex than nature itself. Thus that complex cause’s existence must call for explanation. However is this true? For example a war between nations maybe very complex, but the cause of the war maybe one man’s greed, jealousy or ambition. Just as we invoke non-complex but personal causes for complex situations, why not invoke a Personal cause for the existence of life?[16] Indeed Thomas Aquinas argues that God must be simple i.e. He must have no component parts.

Howard Taylor (howardtaylor1944@yahoo.co.uk)