Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Atheism and Theism 109
From what he says about putting aside ‘the “as if ” teleology in modern
biology’ I take it that Smart and I are agreed that purpose in nature cannot be
a brute phenomenon and consequently that explanations invoking it cannot
be truly basic. If my arguments against mechanistic reductions have been
effective, then the local (and, if they can be established, any global) purposes
we find in nature must be imposed and derive from the agency of a designer
whose purposes they are, or whose purposes they serve or realize. Such an
explanation will not be complete if the source of design is itself vulnerable
to external influence or reliant upon the contingencies of nature. If natural
teleology is not basic or eliminable then it is only ultimately explicable by
reference to a transcendent Designer, a source of the flea’s power to reproduce
and of man’s ability to speak – et hoc dicimus Deum.
Some other objections remain but since these apply to all design arguments
and not just those I have developed thus far it will be better to deal with
them later. Next, I shall examine the argument from cosmic regularity to
extra-cosmic design.
5 ‘New’ Teleology
The comparative brevity of this section is made possible by the fact that
Smart gives a clear and detailed discussion of the ‘fine tuning’ argument. He
is right to point out the absurdities of some treatments of the anthropic
cosmological principle, and I aim to steer a course through these that is
parallel to his own. Some discussions reduce it to a trivial tautology that
cannot introduce anything worth thinking about; others elevate it to a metaphysical
mystery so great that it defies comprehension. Both are mistaken.
If the necessary conditions of our existence did not obtain we would not
be; and if the necessary conditions of the necessary conditions of our existence
had not obtained then neither we nor many other aspects and elements
of the present universe would have been. Any scientific theory that is incompatible
with things having been as they had to have been, in order for the
universe to be as it is, is thereby refuted. None of this may be very profound
and it did not take science to establish it; but it does raise a question: is the
obtaining of the necessary conditions in question explicable, and if so how?
At this point some writers career to another lane on the far side of the via
media and argue that our existence necessitates the laws of the universe – we
made it be the case that the cosmos is congenial to our existence. This is not
only fallacious reasoning; it betrays a lack of intuitive judgement that is unsettling
when exhibited by intelligent people. If you think you have an argument
to show that the fact of your existence determined the initial conditions of
the universe, think again, and again, and again.