data.
Notes
1 Theodore M. Drange,
Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), p. 41.
2 See also John L. Schellenberg,
Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
3 For a good example of data mining, see my discussion of the experiment by Elisabeth Targ and collaborators in Victor J. Stenger,
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 250-53.
4 Karl Popper,
The Logic of Scientific Discovery,
English ed. (London: Hutchinson; New York: Basic Books, 1959). Originally published in German (Vienna: Springer Verlag, 1934).
5 Rudolf Carnap, “Testability and Meaning,”
Philosophy of Science
B 3 (1936): 19-21; B 4 (1937): 1-40.
6 Philip J. Kitcher,
Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982). Note that the author was refuting the common creationist claim that evolution is not science because it is not falsifiable. Kitcher need not have bothered. Evolution is eminently falsifiable, as we show in chapter 3.
7 I discuss several examples in Victor J. Stenger,
Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990).
8 Karl Popper, “Metaphysics and Criticizability,” in
Popper Selections,
ed. David Miller (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 214. Originally published in 1958.
9 Ibid.
10 National Academy of Sciences,
Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science
(Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1998), p. 58. Online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5787.html (accessed March 5, 2006).
11 Phillip E. Johnson,
Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism
(Dallas, TX: Haughton Publishing Co., 1990);
Darwin on Trial
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991);
Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995);
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997);
The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001).
12 Nicholas Everitt,
The Non-Existence of God
(London, New York: Routledge, 2004).
13 Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier, eds.,
The Impossibility of God
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).
14 Ibid.
15 Douglas Walton, “Can an Ancient Argument of Carneades on Cardinal Virtues and Divine Attributes Be Used to Disprove the Existence of God?”
Philo
2, no. 2 (1999): 5-13; reprinted in Martin and Monnier,
The Impossibility of God,
pp. 35-44.
16 James Rachels, “God and Moral Autonomy,” in
Can Ethics Provide Answers? And Other Essays in Moral Philosophy
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), pp. 109-23; reprinted in Martin and Monnier,
The Impossibility of God,
pp. 45-58.
17 Martin and Monnier,
The Impossibility of God,
p. 59.
18 Theodore M. Drange, “Incompatible-Properties Arguments—A Survey,”
Philo
1, no. 2 (1998): 49-60; in Martin and Monnier,
The Impossibility of God,
pp. 185-97.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 J. L. Cowen, “The Paradox of Omnipotence Revisited,”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
3, no. 3 (March 1974): 435-45; reprinted in Martin and Monnier,
The Impossibility of God,
p. 337.
Chapter II
The Illusion of Design
Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings animated and organized, sensible and active!… But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences… How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness!
—David Hume
Paley’s Watch
P erhaps no argument is heard more frequently in support of the existence of God than the
argument from design.
It represents the most common form of the God of the gaps argument:
the universe and, in particular, living organisms on Earth are said to be simply too complex to have arisen by any conceivable natural mechanism.
Before the age of