One of the most commonly-raised objections to the design argument is the so-called “who designed the designer?” objection, which charges that any designer invoked to explain complexity in the universe will feature complexity of its own, and thus require explanation in terms of design. There are two distinct versions of this objection in the contemporary literature, with it being couched in terms of: (1) Complexity of designer: a designer exhibits complexity, which calls for explanation in terms of design; (2) Complexity (...) of ideas: a designer’s ideas exhibit complexity, which calls for explanation in terms of design. To each of these versions of the objection there corresponds various responses from proponents of design. These proponents adopt a very particular strategy when crafting their responses: they argue that the objection can be neutralised simply by appealing to one or more of God’s attributes. In this paper I argue that this strategy is inapt, and unable to yield a successful response to either version of the objection. I also argue that a more promising way of tackling the objections is to identify their own peculiar weaknesses, for once these are exposed the objections cease to be a credible threat to the design hypothesis. (shrink)

Review of Neil Manson's excellent anthology on arguments for design.

According to the comparative Bayesian concept of confirmation, rationalized versions of creationism come out as empirically confirmed. From a scientific viewpoint, however, they are pseudo-explanations because with their help all kinds of experiences are explainable in an ex-post fashion, by way of ad-hoc fitting of an empirically empty theoretical framework to the given evidence. An alternative concept of confirmation that attempts to capture this intuition is the use novelty criterion of confirmation. Serious objections have been raised against this criterion. In (...) this paper I suggest solutions to these objections. Based on them, I develop an account of genuine confirmation that unifies the UN-criterion with a refined probabilistic confirmation concept that is explicated in terms of the confirmation of evidence-transcending content parts of the hypothesis. (shrink)

The theories of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design appear to be locked in an intractable debate, partly because they offer rival scientific explanations for the phenomenon of descent with modification in biology. This paper analyses the dispute in two ways: firstly, it seeks to clarify the exact nature of the logical flaw that has been alleged to lie at the heart of Intelligent Design theory. Secondly, it proposes that, in spite of this error, the Intelligent Design theory advocated by Michael (...) Behe takes at least one significant step in the right direction. Although Behe's suggestion is promising, it is shown to be not nearly radical enough. (shrink)

This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both ‘God the World’ and ‘God the Good’. ‘God the World’ captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is ‘in’ God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is ‘of’ God. ‘God the Good’ encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato’s Form of the Good as developed by Iris Murdoch, which (...) is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of ‘conjoined’ panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better. (shrink)