Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

86 J.J. Haldane
3 Some Varieties of Explanation
In the following two sections I shall explore a series of design arguments,
including that which Smart takes most seriously, viz. the argument from ‘fine
tuning’. I do not have equal confidence in each, in part because of my own
ignorance of the relevant scientific data but also because I doubt that the
current state of our philosophical development is such that we are yet in a
position finally to decide upon them. The latter point arises from the variety
of forms of description and explanation, a variety that the reductionism of
modern philosophy has tended to obscure.
With the seeming exception of the ontological argument, which maintains
that it is part of the very concept of God that that concept is necessarily
instantiated, all theistic arguments involve claims about causation. I shall not
discuss ontological proofs because to the extent that I have a settled interpretation
of them I am in essential agreement with the sorts of objections Smart
presents. That said, and I believe this may have been the view of St Anselm
(1033–1109) himself, ontological reasoning might have a legitimate role in
philosophical theology in serving as a bridge between the conclusion – reached
by non-ontological arguments – that there is a cause of things, and further
claims about the nature of that cause, such as that it is perfect. 6
The other sorts of arguments – from natural regularity and purpose, from contingency,
from change, from the existence and nature of special features such
as minds and values, and so on, are all species of causal arguments. They maintain
that the natural order, or something encountered as, or inferred to be, part of
it, could not exist save for the existence and efficacy of something else that is
not itself part of that order (or not essentially so – for Christians believe that in
the person of Jesus Christ God the Creator entered into His own creation).
In antiquity and in the Middle Ages philosophers held that there were
a variety of distinct types of causes. That is to say, their reflections led them
to identify a range of productive factors that might be cited in descriptions or
explanations. Following Aristotle these philosophers identified four causes, or
four kinds of ‘because’ explanations, 7 the so-called ‘material’, ‘formal’, ‘efficient’
and ‘final’ causes; but this taxonomy always had the appearance of artificiality
(not to say numerology: the number 4 has been held to be a ‘significant’
number – but then again so have the numbers 3 and 5), and once one begins
to consider the variety of statements in which one thing is explained by or
related to another it is not at all clear how many basic types of ‘cause’ there
may be. Consider, for example, the following: ‘6 is even because it is divisible
by two’; ‘I am still alive because my heart and brain are still functioning’; ‘my
heart and brain are still functioning because I am still alive’; ‘the quadrangle
seems exposed because the design of the north-east corner is unresolved’;