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History/traditions: Design Arguments for Theism

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  1. Natural Theology and Natural Religion.Andrew Chignell & Derk Pereboom - 2020 - Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.
    -/- The term “natural religion” is sometimes taken to refer to a pantheistic doctrine according to which nature itself is divine. “Natural theology”, by contrast, originally referred to (and still sometimes refers to)[1] the project of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of observed natural facts. -/- In contemporary philosophy, however, both “natural religion” and “natural theology” typically refer to the project of using all of the cognitive faculties that are “natural” to human beings—reason, sense-perception, introspection—to investigate (...)
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  2. Responses to Ryan, Fosl and Gautier: SKEPSIS Book Symposium on 'Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy', by Paul Russell.Paul Russell - 2023 - Skepsis: A Journal for Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Research 14 (26):121-139.
    In the replies to my critics that follow I offer a more detailed account of the specific papers that they discuss or examine. The papers that they are especially concerned with are: “The Material World and Natural Religion in Hume’s Treatise” (Ryan) [Essay 3], “Hume’s Skepticism and the Problem of Atheism” (Fosl) [Essay 12], and “Hume’s Philosophy of Irreligion and the Myth of British Empiricism (Gautier) [Essay 16].
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  3. The Problem of Nomological Harmony.Brian Cutter & Bradford Saad - forthcoming - Noûs.
    Our universe features a harmonious match between laws and states: applying its laws to its states generates other states. This is a striking fact. Matters might have been otherwise. The universe might have been stillborn in a state unengaged by its laws. The problem of nomological harmony is that of explaining the noted striking fact. After introducing and developing this problem, we canvass candidate solutions and identify some of their virtues and vices. Candidate solutions invoke the likes of a designer, (...)
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  4. Charles Darwin and the argument for design.David Redvaldsen - 2019 - In William Gibson, Dan O'Brien & Marius Turda (eds.), Teleology and Modernity. Routledge.
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  5. God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? [REVIEW]Scott D. G. Ventureyra - 2014 - Science Et Esprit 66 (3):486-490.
  6. Augustine as an Apologist: Is Confessions Apologetic in Nature?Scott D. G. Ventureyra - 2015 - American Journal of Biblical Theology 16 (32):1-34.
    This paper explores the apologetic nature of Augustine’s Confessions. It first takes a brief look at Augustine’s intricate view of the relationship between faith and reason, in order to provide a background to his employment of apologetic elements throughout Confessions. Both positive and negative apologetic elements are examined throughout the paper. Some positive apologetic elements include Augustine’s presentation of the implied ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the argument from the experience of beauty, and the demonstration of the (...)
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  7. The nomological argument for the existence of God.Tyler Hildebrand & Thomas Metcalf - 2021 - Noûs 56 (2):443-472.
    According to the Nomological Argument, observed regularities in nature are best explained by an appeal to a supernatural being. A successful explanation must avoid two perils. Some explanations provide too little structure, predicting a universe without regularities. Others provide too much structure, thereby precluding an explanation of certain types of lawlike regularities featured in modern scientific theories. We argue that an explanation based in the creative, intentional action of a supernatural being avoids these two perils whereas leading competitors do not. (...)
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  8. Why God Did Not Choose All Souls: New Scriptural Evidence.Jeff Grupp - 2020 - Philosophy and Theology 32 (1):93-117.
    An analysis of Scripture uncovers a new model of God’s election and predestination of souls, which fits under the umbrella of the Calvinist theologies, but where this model involves an answer to the long-standing question of why God chose some, rather than all. It will be explored how before souls were elected (or condemned), God looked at them and knew them in a pre-election state, which God used to predestine each soul in physical reality. This analysis reveals why it could (...)
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  9. Atheism Considered.C. M. Lorkowski - 2021 - Palgrave MacMillan.
    Atheism Considered is a systematic presentation of challenges to the existence of a higher power. Rather than engage in polemic against a religious worldview, C.M. Lorkowski charitably refutes the classical arguments for the existence of god, pointing out flaws in their underlying reasoning and highlighting difficulties inherent to revealed sources. In place of a theistic worldview, he argues for adopting a naturalistic one, highlighting naturalism’s capacity to explain world phenomena and contribute to the sciences. Lorkowski demonstrates that replacing theism with (...)
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  10. De Ciuitate Dei I in Light of Seneca’s De prouidentia.Patricio Domínguez Valdés - 2021 - Heythrop Journal 62 (2):311-322.
  11. Is Thomas Aquinas's account of creation compatible with contemporary science?Brandon Zimmerman - 2020 - The Australasian Catholic Record 97 (3):320.
    Q: Is Thomas Aquinas's account of creation compatible with the account of the natural world given by the contemporary empirical sciences?
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  12. Causation and the Origin of Suboptimal Design in Biology.Michael Berhow - 2020 - Philosophia Christi 22 (1):85-102.
    This paper seeks to demonstrate why the existence of suboptimal design in biology does not offer a reason for Christians to reject the biological case for Intelligent Design. In it, I argue that Christians who critique ID based upon alleged deficiencies within biology fail to imagine the various ways in which a divine designer might bring about certain biological effects. That is, such critics presumably envision a simplistic notion of divine causation—where God either directly brings about every biological effect, or (...)
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  13. Response to “Mere Theistic Evolution”.William Lane Craig - 2020 - Philosophia Christi 22 (1):55-61.
    Murray and Churchill argue correctly that theistic evolution as they define it is theologically compatible with orthodox Christian doctrines concerning divine providence, natural theology, miracles, and immaterial souls. I close with some reflections on mutual misunderstandings of Intelligent Design proponents and theistic evolutionists that arise because each sees the other as a distorted mirror image of himself.
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  14. Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Charge of Deism.Robert Larmer - 2018 - Philosophia Christi 20 (2):415-428.
    Christians who are theistic evolutionists and Christians who are proponents of intelligent design very frequently criticize one another on the basis that the other’s position is theologically suspect. Ironically, both camps have accused the other of being deistic and thus sub-Christian in their understanding of God’s relation to creation. In this paper, I consider the merit of these charges. I conclude that, although each position has both deistic and nondeistic forms, theistic evolution in its treatment of life’s history is typically (...)
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  15. The Imago Dei and Blaise Pascal’s Abductive Anthropological Argument.Jonathan Mark Threlfall - 2018 - Philosophia Christi 20 (2):379-400.
    Blaise Pascal argued abductively for Christianity by presenting Christian anthropology as the best explanation for the existential paradoxes of human greatness and wretchedness. Surprisingly, however, the doctrine of the imago Dei never surfaces in his Pensées. I argue that considerations arising from the doctrine of the imago Dei strengthen Pascal’s abductive argument by providing more details for and encompassing more instances of humans’ paradoxical duality. Specifically, the imago Dei helps explain the existential paradoxes of happiness and misery, certainty and uncertainty, (...)
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  16. Hunky Panentheism.Roberto Rodighiero - 2019 - Sophia 58 (4):581-596.
    Panentheism, a frequently discussed view in recent theological debate, claims that the world is ‘in God’ but that God is ‘more than’ the world. Different theories of the structure of the world produce distinct panentheist views. According to the hunky structure, the world is composed of an infinite number of layers and lacks an ungrounded level. To depict this model, I employ the concepts of ‘grounding’ and ‘emergence.’ The outcome is that if the world is hunky and material reality emerges (...)
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  17. The Blurred Line Between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design.Mikael Leidenhag - 2019 - Zygon 54 (4):909-931.
    It is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely (...)
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  18. Collins' case for cosmic design.Paul Draper - 2008 - In God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence.
    Robin Collins argues that three facts implicate a designer of the universe--that life depends upon the precise tuning of physical constants, that the laws of physics show evidence of beauty, and that the universe is intelligible. But Collins' case is pervaded by vague arguments which shift between defending theism specifically and defending a more generic design hypothesis. This provides the appearance of having all of the advantages of the generic design hypothesis, such as greater initial plausibility, while masking the implication (...)
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  19. General Revelation and the God of Natural Theology.Andrew I. Shepardson - 2019 - Philosophia Christi 21 (1):207-213.
    In Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover? Postmodernism and Natural Theology, I defend natural theology against its postmodern evangelical detractors, including Myron Bradley Penner. Penner rejects natural theology because it attempts to ground knowledge of God in human reason, and he claims that my treatment of Acts 17:16–34 is fatal to my argument. However, Penner does not engage my explication of the doctrine of general revelation. The catastrophic effects that Penner perceives turn out to be only against a straw man (...)
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  20. Grounding the Good.Troy Catterson - 2019 - Philosophia Christi 21 (1):85-102.
    I argue that moral goodness is necessarily self-predicating. That is to say, the property of being morally good is morally good. I then argue that reductions of moral goodness to natural properties, particularly utilitarian specifications, are not necessarily self-predicating. Therefore, such reductions are not successful. Finally, I consider the possibility of defining the good as “fulfilling God’s design plan.” I show that, under an Aristotelian construal of property existence this property is provably self-predicating.
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  21. On Elliott Sober’s Challenge for Biological Design Theorists.Troy M. Nunley - 2007 - Philosophia Christi 9 (2):443-457.
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  22. Causation, Cosmology and the Limits of Reason.Paul Russell - 2013 - In James Harris (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth-Century,. New York, NY, USA: pp. 599-620.
    For well over a century the dominant narrative covering the major thinkers and themes of early modern British philosophy has been that of “British Empiricism”, within which the great triumvirate of Locke-Berkeley-Hume are taken to be the dominant figures. Although it is now common to question this schema as a way of analyzing and understanding the period in question, it continues to command considerable authority and acceptance. (One likely reason for this is that no credible or plausible alternatives structures or (...)
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  23. Two Sorts of Natural Theology.Martin Jakobsen - 2018 - Studia Theologica 72 (2):173-197.
    Usually, natural theology is understood as the project of providing arguments for the existence of God. This project is endorsed by Moreland and Craig. McGrath, on the other hand, says that this project fails. In the first part of this article, I show how McGrath’s dismissal of arguments for the existence of God follows from his view of natural theology. In the second part, I argue that McGrath’s natural theology contains an accurate critique of Moreland and Craig’s way of doing (...)
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  24. How Not to Detect DesignThe Design Inference. William A. Dembski.Branden Fitelson, Christopher Stephens & Elliott Sober - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):472-488.
    As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premisses that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive features by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design argument developed as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument in fact encompasses a larger set of issues. William (...)
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  25. The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack.Christoffer H. Grundmann - 2012 - Zygon 47 (4):1015-1017.
  26. atural Theology. [REVIEW]G. G. Stokes - 1893 - Ancient Philosophy (Misc) 4:464.
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  27. The Way Out of Agnosticism. [REVIEW]Francis Ellingwood Abbott - 1890 - Ancient Philosophy (Misc) 1:129.
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  28. On foundations of technological support for addressing challenges facing design-based science learning.Swaroop S. Vattam & Janet L. Kolodner - 2008 - Pragmatics and Cognition 16 (2):406-437.
    Design experiences can provide valuable opportunities for learners to improve their understanding of both science content and scientific practices. However, the implementation of design-based science learning in classrooms presents a number of significant challenges. In this article we present two significant challenges, bridging the design-science gap and overcoming time and material constraints, and a strategy for addressing them through software design in which explanation-construction scaffolding integrates with modeling and simulation. We present two software systems developed based on our strategy and (...)
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  29. Mellor's ‘Bridge–Hand’ Argument: B. L. HEBBLETHWAITE.B. L. Hebblethwaite - 1986 - Religious Studies 22 (3-4):473-479.
    In his article ‘God and Probability’, 1 Hugh Mellor introduced the notion of the ‘bridge-hand fallacy’, allegedly committed by those who think they can appeal to probabilities in arguments for design. I should like to give this notion another airing, partly because of its recent criticism in two interesting books - R. G. Swinburne' The Existence of God and D. J. Bartholomew's God of Chance - and partly because it seems worth asking how it fares in relation to the most (...)
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  30. ‘Lord only of the ruffians and fiends’? William Whewell and the plurality of worlds debate.Laura J. Snyder - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 38 (3):584-592.
    By the middle of the nineteenth century, the opinion of science, as well as of philosophy and even religion, was, at least in Britain, firmly in the camp of the plurality of worlds, the view that intelligent life exists on other celestial bodies. William Whewell, considered an expert on science, philosophy and religion, would have been expected to support this position. Yet he surprised everyone in 1853 by publishing a work arguing strongly against the plurality view. This was even stranger (...)
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  31. Review of William Paley, Natural Theology, edited with an introduction and notes by Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight: New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, xxxvii + 342 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-280584-3. [REVIEW]Glenn Branch - 2009 - Sophia 48 (1):99-101.
    Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight’s new edition of William Paley’s Natural Theology deserves to become the standard scholarly edition of what is a historically, theologically, and philosophically important work, despite a certain neglect of philosophical issues on the part of the editors.
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  32. On the argument from design in nature, with some illustrations from plants.James W. Powell - unknown
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  33. Improving the Design of Intelligent Systems: Outstanding Problems and Some Solutions.L. J. Kohout & I. Stabile - 1998 - Journal of Intelligent Systems 8 (3-4):225-238.
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  34. EDITORIAL: Intelligent E-Commerce.Bhanu Prasad - 2005 - Journal of Intelligent Systems 14 (1):1-2.
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  35. An intelligent interface for simulation design.Benita Cox - 1995 - Journal of Intelligent Systems 5 (2-4):203-224.
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  36. The God of the Gaps, Natural Theology, and Intelligent Design.Erkki V. R. Kojonen - 2016 - Journal of Analytic Theology 4:291-316.
    The “God of the gaps” critique is one of the most common arguments against design arguments in biology, but is also increasingly used as a critique of other natural theological arguments. In this paper, I analyze four different critiques of God of the gaps arguments and explore the relationship between gaps arguments and similar limit arguments. I conclude that the critique of the God of the gaps is substantially weaker than is commonly assumed, and dismissing ID´s biological arguments should rather (...)
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  37. Design, Contingency and Complexity: Philosophical Teleology and the Evolutionary Argument For Design.Gordon Mclean - unknown
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  38. The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities.William A. Dembski - 1998 - Cambridge University Press.
    The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating their key trademark: specified events of small probability. Just about anything that happens is highly improbable, but when a highly improbable event is also specified undirected natural causes lose their explanatory power. Design inferences can be found in a range of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This challenging and provocative 1998 book shows how incomplete undirected causes are for science (...)
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  39. Unintelligent Design.Scott Atran - unknown
    Science, then, may never replace religion in the lives of most people and in any society that hopes to survive for very long. But neither can religion replace science if humankind hopes to unlock nature's material secrets. And parodies of science, like the so-called "theory" of intelligent design, only cripple science education.
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  40. Design discourse and the cognitive science of design.Jeroen de Ridder - 2014 - Philosophia Reformata 79 (1):37-53.
    Much of Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies will contain few surprises for those who have been following his work over the past decades. This —I hasten to add — is nothing against the book. The fact alone that his ideas on various topics, which have appeared scattered throughout the literature, are now actualized, applied to the debate about the conflict between science and religion, and organized into an overarching argument with a single focus makes this book worthwhile. Moreover, (...)
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  41. Bradley Monton, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. Peterborough, ON & Buffalo, NY 2009: Broadview Press. 177 pages. ISBN 9781551118635. [REVIEW]Jeroen de Ridder - 2010 - Philosophia Reformata 75 (1):85-88.
  42. Pennock, Robert T., ed. Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives. [REVIEW]Brendan Sweetman - 2003 - The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 3 (3):640-642.
  43. Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, by William Dembski and Michael Ruse.PhD Sweetman - 2005 - The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5 (2):423-425.
  44. O Paley'u, Epagogé, zmyśle technicznym i argumentacji a fortiori.Piotr Lenartowicz & Jolanta Koszteyn - 2002 - Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 7:79-83.
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  45. Wat ‘maakt’ ons intelligent?Corijn van Mazijk - 2016 - Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 108 (2):195-199.
    Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.
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  46. The Intelligent Individual and Society. [REVIEW]E. N. - 1938 - Journal of Philosophy 35 (11):304.
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  47. Symposium: Is There Evidence of Design in Nature?William L. Gildea - 1890 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 3:49-76.
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  48. Alan Hodgkin. Chance and Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 412. ISBN 0-521-40099-6. £40. [REVIEW]Jon Agar - 1993 - British Journal for the History of Science 26 (2):255-256.
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  49. John Bellamy Foster;, Brett Clark;, Richard York. Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present. 240 pp., index. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008. $15.95. [REVIEW]Michael Ruse - 2009 - Isis 100 (4):883-884.
  50. Ten archetypes of nature in design.Mitchell Joachim - 2016 - Technoetic Arts 14 (1-2):127-130.
    What we mean when we use the word ‘nature’ critically affects design culture. Since nature has many different interpretations, the following lexicon is not intended to be an exhaustive exploration of the word’s etymology or usage by designers. Instead, I offer ten archetypical perspectives of nature that can help designers and non-designers alike clarify the different, sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting ways in which we understand the fundamental relationships between humans and our environment.
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