On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:54:18 -0800 "Eubulides"
<paraconsistent at comcast.net> writes:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jim Farmelant" <farmelantj at juno.com>
>
> It would for at least some versions of the AD. Some of the
> most popular versions emphasize the necessity of a
> designer to account for the complexity of the universe
> or at least the complexity of say DNA, as apparently
> Flew does. But if that is the case then it would
> seem likely that a putative designer would be as
> least as complex as the things that he/she/it designed.
> But if we accept that, then by hypothesis it must
> follow that the designer in turn requires still
> another designer to account for its existence
> as a complex entity, and so on, ad infinitum.
> In other words, by Jove, we get ourselves
> into an infinite regress.
>
> -----
>
> And yet the deity a la Duns Scotus, TA, Leibniz and others is
> asserted to
> be metaphysically *simple* and Ockam's razor is used to eliminate
> the
> polytheist [divine outsourcing!] argument.
Well, I think to the extent that such a line of argument would be taken up by a proponent of DA, then that proponent would seem to be leaving behind the reliance upon empirical based analogies which underly most forms of the DA. Most of the appeal of the DA rests with its appeal to the seemingly intuitively obvious analogies such as the analogy between a divine designer and human designers, between the universe conceived of as a designed artifact and the artificacts created by human workmanship. I am not sure that the notion of a metaphysically simple substance to which people like Aquinas, Duns Scotus or Leibniz might appeal to can be grounded in the sorts of empirically based analogies to which the DA appeals to. After all within the realm of human experience, it does seem to be the case that designers, whether humans or even beavers or spiders, do tend to be more complex than the things that they design.
However, if it be granted that God might be a metaphysically simple substance then surely one can ask why can't the universe, taken as a whole, be similarly conceived. After all what are the criteria by which one can judge whether or not a given substance is metaphysically simple or not?
>
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