Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

228 J.J. Haldane
analogical sense to that of ‘body’ as it is predicated of a piece of stone, say.
Stones are bodies in as much as they are exhaustively characterized by their
material properties, persons have bodies in as much as they have material
attributes. A further implication of this view which is of particular relevance
to theism, is that such hope as we may have for a future life depends upon the
possibility of resurrection. This is one, though not the most important, reason
why Christians should maintain the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. For
as St Paul writes, ‘if Christ is not raised then believers in Christ who have
died are lost. . . . Christ has been raised from death, as the guarantee that
those who sleep in death will also be raised’ (1 Corinthians 15: 18 and 20).
Part of my case against materialism had to do with the claim that concepts
cannot be identified with or reduced to natural properties (even when they are
modes of presentation of them). Since these are the constituents of thought,
it itself is not something physical. The question I was then concerned with
was the origin of concepts (and thereby the origin of abstract thought). This
brings me to the ‘Prime Thinker’ argument which can be summarized as
follows:
(1) Innatism and abstractionism fail as general accounts of human conceptformation
(see p. 102).
(2) In order to come to possess a concept: (a) one has to have a prior
predisposition or potentiality to form concepts under appropriate conditions;
and (b) the conditions in question have themselves to include
concept possessors (thinkers).
(3) Condition (b) is provided for by the influence of members of a human
linguistic community.
(4) The members of such a community are themselves ones who came to
possess concepts.
(5) Given (2) to (4) a regress ensues.
(6) This regress is halted by postulating the existence of a concept possessor
which did not come to possess concepts, and which is the cause of the
possession of concepts by members of the human linguistic community.
(7) The role identified in (6), namely that of active Prime Thinker, is provided
for by God.
In proposing this argument my aim was not to fashion a detailed and incontestable
proof, but, first, to show that design arguments can be carried beyond
the usual range of biological functioning; second, to advance a line of reasoning
that should engage the interest of those familiar with contemporary
philosophy of mind and language, within which the issue of thought and
concepts has been prominent; third, to suggest connections between this
reasoning and other aspects of my broadly neo-Thomist case on behalf of