Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism
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Further Reflections on <strong>Atheism</strong> 215<br />
based, in various clays. Crystals of the clays could have replicated themselves<br />
as crystals do when in a suitable solvent. Dawkins even fantasises a not<br />
impossible scenario as to how there could be changes in <strong>and</strong> natural selection<br />
of clays. Eventually by chance an evolved clay might serve as a template for<br />
a replicating precursor of DNA <strong>and</strong> RNA.<br />
At present we do not know how life began. Nevertheless there are various<br />
plausible conjectures (admittedly incomplete) as to how it might have occurred.<br />
This should allow us to think that no miracles were needed. Indeed, if the<br />
origin of life was a lucky accident that could be expected to occur once in<br />
millions of years, the short time span of a laboratory experiment might not<br />
allow for the beginning of carbon-based life to be reproduced experimentally.<br />
It may be worth making a comparison with the various differing but not<br />
implausible <strong>and</strong> non-miraculous accounts of the historical Jesus furnished by<br />
the higher criticism of the New Testament. We may not be able to decide<br />
which of these is the most plausible, or even whether the truth about Jesus<br />
is captured by any of them, but they may convince us as possible accounts <strong>and</strong><br />
that there is no need to believe the stories of miraculous or supernatural<br />
events.<br />
What are the alternatives to the scientific conjectures about the origin of<br />
life? ‘Intelligent design’ by itself does not tell us much. With human design,<br />
say, of a watch, there are stories of how the design is carried out. With God<br />
it is as if there is word magic in saying ‘Let it be the case that p’ so that this<br />
leads to it being the case that p. Hence I am not doing a service to the<br />
theologian by making the story too simplistic. It is like saying that ‘Open<br />
Sesame’ causes the robbers’ entrance to the cave to open. (It is obvious that<br />
the author of the story did not imagine that the robbers had an electronic<br />
voice recognising device triggering a relay that started the cave-opening<br />
machinery.) I can concede that I am being too simplistic but so is the attribution<br />
of design without details of how the design in God’s mind is translated<br />
into configuration of biological ‘hardware’. (Here hardware need not be hard.<br />
It can be squashy.)<br />
9 A Possible Olive Branch (or maybe Twig) to the Theist<br />
The Bayesian formula accounts for the severity of tests. If an hypothesis<br />
enables us to predict something we had thought highly unlikely this provides<br />
a severe test, as compared with a hypothesis that predicts things that we know<br />
already or which are not surprising. Hypotheses in physics get explained by<br />
more inclusive <strong>and</strong> abstract theories. What happens if we get to an ultimate<br />
‘theory of everything’? Since the theory is ultimate it could not be derived<br />
from some other theory. In choosing between theories when there is no