Timeline for Is the teleological argument for God completely refuted?
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| May 29, 2013 at 16:40 | comment | added | Rex Kerr | @MoziburUllah - You can always induce an infinite regress by asking why at the next level of abstraction. It doesn't matter if God appears in some of the answers. (Some Christian apologists state that God is a self-proving entity in an attempt to block the regress, but you can always ask: why? how do we know? Is that even possible? Is God the only self-proving entity? Isn't that a circular argument? If you just mean "everything is what it is" isn't that a vacuous statement and one which you could make about the universe minus God?) It works better to save knowledge with e.g. coherentism. | |
| May 29, 2013 at 14:34 | comment | added | Mozibur Ullah | That is the explanatory power of being self-sufficient is an illusion. | |
| May 29, 2013 at 11:13 | comment | added | Mozibur Ullah | lets put that aside for the moment - I'm not suggesting that its an easy problem to assign teleology. What I am pointing out is that there is an infinite regress - mathematically model-wise. Do you agree with that? | |
| May 29, 2013 at 6:26 | comment | added | Rex Kerr | @MoziburUllah - That we can explain regularities with a mathematical model does not imply that any problems are solved or ameliorated by adding a hypothetical entity that builds models. You still have the regress too (why is the model-builder designed that way). | |
| May 29, 2013 at 5:52 | comment | added | Mozibur Ullah | There isn't. It was just a comment. It does seem to me that in fact the argument from design always applies. For why are the laws as they are, that is why are they designed that way. Here I'm not talking about the constants, but also the model (ie the laws themselves). If we build a better theory which that model was the unique solution (as some solutions of fine-tuning propose) then we still need to tackle the same question a 'level' up. That is we get an infinite regress. I don't see how you can escape that regress. I can see that as leaving 'wriggle' room for teleology. | |
| May 29, 2013 at 5:43 | comment | added | Rex Kerr | @MoziburUllah - There is, but what is the relevance for the teleological argument? (I'd call this "expectedly small".) | |
| May 29, 2013 at 5:15 | comment | added | Mozibur Ullah | Well there is one carefully worked out theory where c the speed of light changes. Its used to account for inflation without inflation in the early universe. | |
| May 29, 2013 at 4:15 | history | answered | Rex Kerr | CC BY-SA 3.0 |