Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

Reply to Smart 171
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Reply to Smart
J.J. Haldane
1 Methodology
Jack Smart’s challenge to theism is direct and systematic. Again and again
he expresses dissatisfaction with claims to the effect that theism is better
placed than physicalism to account for aspects and elements of reality with
which common experience and scientific investigation have made us familiar.
In his ‘Reply’ he revisits much of the territory covered in chapter 1 and urges
the adequacy of naturalistic explanations, or where these are not in sight he
commends faith in their existence.
Thus Smart expresses disbelief at my claim that theories of physical
interaction are insufficient to explain the origins of life, i.e. of intrinsically
functionally organized, teleologically ordered activity; and that theories of
natural selection are inadequate to account for speciation in general and the
emergence of minded animals in particular. He argues that, on the contrary,
there is nothing about thought and meaning that places them beyond the
realm of matter or renders them opaque to scientific enquiry. As he puts it at
one point ‘Read the biologists and make up your own mind whether you
think the naturalist story or the supernaturalist story is the more plausible’
(chapter 3, p. 159).
In responding to the cosmological argument and to my discussion of the
being, nature and activity of God, Smart moves from scientific to more purely
philosophical assumptions, and contends that the version of theism for which
I argue is fraught with metaphysical difficulties surrounding the notions of
time, necessity, substance, existence, causation and action. Indeed, reading his
reply one should notice how technical philosophical claims become increasingly
prominent as the text proceeds.