Friday, November 7, 2014
The Relevance of the Origin of Species
One important scientific development unavailable to David Hume or any of his fictional interlocutors is the theory of evolution. For many people today, both theists and atheists, religious believers, scientists and intellectuals, the truth of evolution is bound up with the truth of theism. So what is the significance of evolution for the design argument? Does is it provide evidence for either side of the debate? On this 155th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's seminal Origin of Species, it is fitting to ask: where might a discussion of Darwin have fit into Hume's Dialogues?
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The truth of evolution undermines Hume’s design argument because it demonstrates that our world emerges not from God’s blueprints, but from disorderly chaos. The essential premise of the design argument is that the universe is analogous to a machine; all of its parts mesh perfectly for some greater purpose. Therefore, the universe must have some designer like all human machines have designers. Since the only designer capable enough to create the universe is God, Hume (or rather Cleanthes) argues that God must exist. Evolution, however, presents a process in the world that does not follow some grand, machinelike scheme. Evolution occurs as a result of two phenomena: genetic mutation and natural selection. As a population reproduces, each member of the new generation is subtly unique due to random chance. When such uniqueness offers a survival advantage, the unique organism is more likely to survive to produce offspring with the same uniqueness. Thus, evolutionary changes do not come from a divine plan but from inane tinkering. Nature makes a random change here, another there, keeps what works, and throws out what doesn’t. Such a disorderly method for developing the world does not concur with the orderly machine in Hume’s design argument. Consider, for example, the panda’s thumb is Gould’s article. The “thumb” is really just an enlarged wrist bone that allows pandas to eat more effectively. It is not ideal, merely functional. If the world were God’s intricate machine, the panda’s thumb would be a proper thumb since God has the power to make each part of his machine perfect. However, evolved characteristics are not perfect, only workable. Existing anatomy is constantly remodeled to adapt to changing environments, indicating that the world is not created according to some divine plan. Therefore, evolution would fit alongside Philo’s theory of God as a stupid mechanic in part V of Hume’s dialogues. As Gould puts it, “nature is an excellent tinkerer, not a divine artificer.”
ReplyDeleteAs science strives to develop logical reason behind the creation of the universe, religious theory seems to be systematically undermined. Accordingly, the truth of evolution is founded upon a principle saying that the world has developed into its current form from a series of chaotic events. On the other hand, Hume’s argument for theism claims that the world was created by a god who designed its parts to function with each other as a perfect machine. Many of the previous blogs have claimed that the central theses of the arguments directly contradict one another. John, Jack, Langston, and Corey have said that Darwin’s evolution disproves theism because it claims that the world has developed into its current form by modifying the imperfections in the universe. They continued by saying that Hume’s theism supposes that the world was originally designed as perfect. They all concluded that evolution significantly undermines Hume’s theism.
DeleteOverall, their arguments are all superseded for two reasons that allow evolution to confirm Hume’s theism. First of all, under Cleanthes’ original analogy, evolution itself is just a small part of God’s universal “machine.” Cleanthes never said that world is necessarily unchangeable or that god created it so that it would exist in the same form as it did in the beginning. For example, Cleanthes doubtlessly would have known that an apple can break from its stem and fall from an apple tree. Just because the apple fell from the tree, it doesn’t mean that the world is now any less perfect than it was before. Furthermore, just because the apple is no longer attached to the tree, it doesn’t mean that we can conclude that god’s plans were originally incorrect or imperfect. Analogously, the principle of evolution is no different than an apple falling from a tree because both are simply small changes that occur in God’s machine. Neither before nor after the change was the world any more or less perfect. Insofar that no one would argue that the world “changed” when the apple fell, it is implausible to argue that the world “changed” when pandas grew opposable thumbs. From the very beginning, since god is omniscient, he could also be considered prescient, and because of his ability to see into the future, it is entirely possible that he systematically designed evolution to occur in the way that it does. In the end, evolution was always part of his master plan.
Second of all, their arguments are undermined by the Principle of Sufficient Reason which says that everything in the universe needs to have some sort of reason for its existence. The PSR led to Hume’s second proof of God by setting up a disjunctive argument where either 1 of 2 things are true. Either there is an infinite causal chain of reasons OR there is a necessarily existent being that stands at the end of a finite chain of reasons. Since Hume argues that the infinite chain itself doesn’t have any reason for its existence as a whole, then there must be a necessarily existent being. Here is my main argument. The truth of evolution can be considered one of the many chains of causal reason. Any progression in a creature’s evolution occurs because the creature required an adaptation to better cope with its environment. Therefore, evolution is a series of linked changes that all occur for a reason. When the chain is brought to its very beginning, there must be a reason for the chain itself. Undeniably, that reason is god. Jack attempts to respond to this argument by saying that the principle of sufficient reason doesn’t make sense. He says that everything doesn’t need to happen for a reason. While that may be true, it doesn’t contribute to whether or not evolution specifically verifies or denies theism because his argument can be made in both a world that acknowledges evolution and a world that doesn’t. Overall, regardless of whether or not Hume’s arguments reflect reality, the discovery of evolution only confirms them.
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ReplyDeleteDarwinian evolution has been at the core of biology for over a century. As we learn more and more about not only us as a species, but all of the other species and life forms around us, we look towards Darwin’s theories to explain whatever findings we may make. And yet, as important was this theory is from a biological standpoint, it remains incredibly controversial, with as many on the religious right opposing the teaching of the theory as those on the scientific left who recognize its importance. From the perspective of philosophy, where the existence of God is at the core of so many debates, the theory has the potential to be even more controversial. While first published in 1779, nearly one hundred years before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, it’s easy to see just how important the idea of natural selection would have been in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, as a major section of the work is dedicated towards proving the existence of God, based on the premise that everything in the universe has a purpose and reason for existence, a notable point which Darwin disputes.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that there is some cause or reason for existence for everything in the universe is a common one, yet Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection directly disproves it, thus prompting many religious people to struggle with the ideas put forward by Darwin. Fundamentally, natural selection revolves entirely around randomness – different species have evolved not in the pursuit of some goal of biological “perfection”, but out of fundamental necessity, not because some larger being, or even the species themselves, sought to improve, but as the result of random mutations. This idea is essentially the primary reason for Darwin’s controversy, as the idea that there is no great purpose, nor any deliberate influence on the state of the universe, behind anything that happens directly counters the primary focuses of so many religions. Thus, those who believe so passionately in their religions fall into a sort of “teleological trap” (Randy Dlugosz), in which the legitimacy of Darwinian evolution seems impossible, as such people are trained to believe that there is some fundamental purpose to the universe.
Arguably, one such victim of this trap would be David Hume, who believes so passionately in the idea that there is some great order, some great purpose, to the universe, when, in reality, our universe only exists in its present state due to disorder and purposelessness. As Hume argues in Part II of Dialogues, through his character Cleanthes, the universe resembles a large, intricate machine, “subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and their faculties can trace and explain” (15). Thus, since humans create machines that lack this complex infinite regress, by “all the rules of analogy” (15), the creator of this infinitely more complicated, yet still somewhat analogous, machine, must be something infinitely more complicated than, yet still fairly similar to, man – an infinitely powerful deity. This portion of the argument makes some sense; while there is certainly a degree of correlation-causation fallacy (two similar things need not be caused by two similar things), it is not entirely unlikely that, were two things proven to be incredibly similar, yet differing in one key aspect, their creators could be equally similar, yet equally different. However, this argument fails not due to its misappropriation of the rules of analogy, but due to its ultimate implications – that everything in the universe has a purpose, which disproves the validity of the analogy. Essentially, were the universe really to be a great machine, there would be some great purpose to the universe, for no machine has ever been created without a fundamental purpose. Yet, as Darwin would argue here, since there is no reason for anything in the universe, but rather that everything in the universe has resulted from random chemical reactions and mutations, the universe cannot be considered analogous to a machine, and thus this argument fails.
ReplyDeleteYet this argument truly falls into the teleological trap later in Dialogues, where Cleanthes more directly bases his proof of the existence of God on the hypothesis that there is some great reason for the existence of things. In fact, in a later proof for the existence of God, Demea, another character in Dialogues, argues that the existence of God relies on our own a priori reasoning, and can thus be proven relatively simply. However, the first premise in Demea’s argument, that, simply, “Whatever exists must have a cause or reason of its existence, it being absolutely impossible for anything to produce itself or be the cause of its own existence” (54), sets himself up for failure. It’s almost as if we can expect Darwin himself to travel backwards in time (for we have no proof that Darwin never invented time travel), and interrupt Demea before he can continue falling into a deep, false philosophical hole. Were this statement to be true, then Demea’s ultimate conclusion – that only some perfect deity can carry its own cause, as well as exist as the cause for everything else, and therefore that a deity exists – makes sense given this first premise, as discussed above, this first premise is fundamentally false. In that sense, the remainder of his argument, and his ultimate conclusion, fails. However, this failure is not unique to the arguments presented in Dialogues, as the existence of God, a being that, were he really a sentient being that controls everything in the universe, would provide some non-random reason and purpose to things, directly counters Darwin’s scientific fact. Thus, I negate.
The design argument posed by Hume gives reason for belief in theism. The argument simply states that we can conclude, from the evidence in natural world around us, that there must be a God and about his nature (omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being). When making the design argument, Hume compares the world to a perfectly in-order machine. Starting off with this initial premise, Hume next compares the machine’s creator, being an intelligent human, to the ‘creator’ of the universe, that being none other than God (in Hume’s opinion of course without the foregone discovery of evolution by none other than Charles Darwin). Hume’s argument says similar to how humans design machines that work seamlessly and have functioning individual parts that complement each other, a being more intelligent and more powerful than humans must have created the universe because the universe is much more complex than a machine, despite this too being complex to our brains. In sum, we see because machines and the universe are analogous, their causes must also be analogous. Hume could not have possibly known of the scientific discoveries that would follow in the next 3 centuries; not only Darwin’s work Origin of Species, but also the ‘big bang theory’ which has had more supporters and evidence that validates theory of recent. Nonetheless, Hume’s argument, at least at the time, is said to be one of the best available to theist and believers in God. But with the knowledge of evolution, like many of my classmates, I do not believe that this completely refutes the validity of Hume’s design argument, but it acts as a neutralizer. Starting with the supporters of the design argument, the theory of evolution applies in the sense that God can still have created the world in such a way that amendments can be made to it. In the same way, modifications are made to machines after initial creation by humans. From the proponents of the design arguments point of view, evolution says that it must be something other than God that has created the world because it is still changing by itself. Regardless, Hume’s argument makes sense logically through analogous reasoning, but the argument is exposed by foregone scientific knowledge.
ReplyDeleteEvolution most definitely does not provide any supporting evidence for the design argument. According to dictionary.com, the literal definition of evolution is, “any process of formation or growth” (dictionary.com). Unfortunately for Hume, the design argument does not consist of ANY sort of process. Hume’s concept of design is closely related to the Christian belief that the world was created in some sort of specific design. Evolution simply says… it’s just wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty uncertain as to how Hume would respond to this theory, and more recent evidence, of evolution; it completely defies the entire basis of his design argument. With evolution, humans have been (for the most part), proven to have been derived from a species, or line of species, that is not human at all. The God that Hume claims to have designed the world, designed in such that it would resemble what we know as the human body and form and life. Evolution proves that not only was their most likely not a knowledgeable creator, but also the world and all its beings were not created in any sort of image or design whatsoever. I personally believe that the universe has just exhibited its own evolution, on the largest scale, for an infinite amount of time. Humans are just a small piece of what the evolution of the universe has created.
As far as this recurring concept of design is concerned, I continue to find it both intriguing, yet frustrating that Philosophers seem to love this theory. Hume is no exception in the group of all four philosophers that we have studied that believe in a sort of existence by a natural religion. I am confused that in the beginnings of their accounts, they vow to use logic and gapless structure. All of them have resorted to this subjective faith. Anyone can design their own God figure in their head and then claim their faith to it. In a mere ten seconds, I can come up with a God figure who has three heads, who can sing like Beyoncé, and who likes to eat ice-cream. Easy as that. Note that that did not take the slightest bit of knowledge, just the fact that I was looking for an explanation for why humans like ice-cream, why we think Beyoncé is a good singer and why I cannot get the image of a three headed monster out of my head. Natural design sounds great because it gives us a perfect answer to all of our questions. However, it just does not agree with logic. In recent history, we have come to know logic as evolution. Unfortunately, Hume did not see that in his time. Evolution completely disagrees with Hume and all other Philosophers that even go as far as to reference God in that were just not going to get that perfect answer. Logically speaking, the answers were looking for are just not going to be perfect.
The design argument is an analogy comparing the universe with a machine. The machine is built by an intelligent designer, as is the universe. The universe is much more complex than a machine so therefore the designer must also be much more complex. If you take this analogy completely literal at the time it was written, then the analogy falls apart with the inclusion of evolution. However, it makes no sense to examine an analogy that literally. Even if you do choose to take the analogy literally, evolution can still fit in the framework of the analogy because of recent technological developments.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible that god intended for evolution to occur and that he guided evolution. God is omnipotent, and therefore is defined to have the power to do anything. It is completely logical that god would be able to create organisms that change over time. This alone should be able to keep the analogy possible but if one thinks that this breaks the analogy, I can show that god’s omnipotence can still succeed in creating evolution within the constraints of the analogy. In the past, this may have broken the analogy, but now, I do not think it changes anything. Recent advances in 3d printing have allowed us to build simple self-constructing objects. One of the main principles that the design argument is based on is that god can create things that are much more complicated than anything a human can create. Following this logic, it is possible that god created a very complicated universe that is always changing.
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