natural theology, argument from design, Wolfe, and other matters

Daniel Fusch · 04 Nov 1999, 23:57 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: "Daniel Fusch" <dfusch at hotmail.com>
Subject: (urth) natural theology, argument from design, Wolfe, and other matters
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 1999 15:57:35 PST
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0380 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0028/0380.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Jeremy:

(snip)
"I believe you are referring to "natural theology" or the argument from=20
design, which is the belief that since the world was created by a=20
supernatural being, we (humans) can detect the hand of this god in nature."

I think you may have a few very different things mixed up here.

The "argument from design" is a much more modern theological supposition=20
that argues:

1) A design implies the existence of a designer.
2) The universe conforms to an orderly and precise design.
3) The universe implies the existence of its designer.

Natural theology, on the other hand, is a much older and more complex=20
ideology. As I understand it, natural theology argues, among other things,=20
that because the world was created by a supernatural being, that being can=20
intervene in the affairs of the world, producing miracles.

Wolfe, however, is presenting us with a third set of philosophical=20
suppositions, quite separate from these other two. (And I don't know whethe=
r=20
Wolfe is advocating these ideas or not--remember that Wolfe often presents=20
us with very different views on theology from different characters at=20
different points in the book.) The view here is that:

1) The rational or physical explanation of a miracle does not make the=20
miracle less miraculous.

2) A sort of chicken-and-the-egg paradox: did the miracle occur because of =
a=20
particular law of physics, or was that law of physics established because=20
the miracle needed to occur? (This is the sort of paradox that Wolfe is=20
constantly bringing up.)

The second of these points in a philosophical puzzle. The first point is=20
simply romanticism in a nutshell. That is, natural events are wondrous and=20
miraculous regardless of their scientific explanation.

Do you remember that chapter in "Charlotte's Web" when Dr. Dorian tells=20
Fern's mother that everyone has been so busy debating the recent miracles=20
that they've lost sight of the notion that the spider's web itself is a=20
miracle? That the spider's web-spinning instinct--and indeed all=20
instinct--is itself a miracle? In other words, knowledge of biochemistry=20
makes instinct no less miraculous.

Anyway, I think these are the ideologies at work in that passage.

--Daniel

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net