Englignment Responses | Classics in the Philosophy of Religion

ENLIGHTENMENT RESPONSES

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

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CONTENTS

• James Oswald: Knowledge of God through Common Sense (from Appeal to Common Sense)

• William Paley: Natural Theology and the Watchmaker Argument (from Evidences of Christianity, Natural Theology)

• Immanuel Kant: God as Noumenal Limit and Moral Postulate (from Prolegomena, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Religion within the Boundary of Reason Alone)

The philosophers in this chapter represent three different attempts to answer the religious skepticism expressed in Hume's writings. Each accepts the growing authority of science and the force of modern criticism, yet each believes that Hume's conclusions do not settle the matter. James Oswald argues that the mistake lies in assuming that God's existence must be proven through abstract reasoning. For him, belief in God is rooted in common sense, a rational faculty that gives us immediate knowledge of basic truths. William Paley takes a different route. He accepts the regularity of nature but maintains that special divine actions are possible, and that the growing scientific knowledge of biological complexity strengthens the case for a designing intelligence. Immanuel Kant offers the most influential response. He agrees with Hume that we have no theoretical knowledge of God and that traditional proofs fail. Yet he argues that moral life requires us to postulate God, freedom, and immortality as prerequisites for the highest moral good. Kant's position reshaped the entire landscape of philosophy. After him, belief in God could no longer rest on metaphysical certainty or empirical proof. Its only justification could be moral, while at the same time the concept of God itself remains beyond the reach of theoretical knowledge.

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JAMES OSWALD:

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THROUGH COMMON SENSE

James Oswald (1703–1793) was born in the parish of Dunnet in Caithness, Scotland, into a clerical family and was educated at King's College, Aberdeen. He was ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1726 at a time when its theology and intellectual culture were shaped by the Calvinist and "reformed" tradition. He spent most of his long career as minister of Methven, a rural parish near Perth. Late in life he became interested in the religious questions raised by the new sciences and philosophers such as Locke and Hume. He then entered public debate with An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion (1766–1772), a two‑volume work associated with the Scottish common‑sense school of Thomas Reid. Although Oswald never held an academic post, his writings circulated widely and contributed to the broader Scottish effort to defend moral and religious belief against the excesses of modern philosophy. He remained in Methven until his death in 1793. The selections below are from his Appeal to Common Sense.

Oswald is the most important historical representative of a movement in contemporary philosophy of religion now called "reformed epistemology", associated with Alvin Plantinga. Its underlying position is that belief in God rests on an immediate awareness granted to all rational creatures, not on elaborate proofs. According to Oswald, our knowledge of God comes from a common sense instinct, and not from any effort at human reasoning. According to him, there are two distinct faculties of human rationality: (1) discursive reasoning, where we draw conclusions from evidence with which we are presented, and (2) primary principles of common sense, which rational creatures are born with. Many well-meaning religious philosophers, he argues, have wrongly maintained that we can know God through discursive reasoning, such as through proofs for God. But when these proofs inevitably fail, it encourages skepticism. For Oswald, we should simply accept that religious truths are primary principles of common sense, and leave it at that.

In the section below on common sense reason vs. discursive reasoning, Oswald opens by challenging the Lockean tradition that treats human beings as primarily discursive thinkers who build knowledge by comparing ideas and drawing inferences. He argues that this picture overlooks the faculty that truly marks rational nature. Rational beings possess an immediate power of judgment that perceives certain truths directly. This power is absent in brutes, idiots, and madmen, even though they may reason in limited ways. Oswald insists that rationality consists in this capacity for direct perception, and that philosophers have mistakenly elevated discursive reasoning above it. In the section on common sense primary truths and sense perceptions, he explains how this judging power operates. Just as the mind perceives color through the eye, it also perceives non‑sensory truths such as substance, motion, and causal connection. When we watch billiard balls collide, we do not merely observe successive movements. We perceive the communication of motion itself. These intellectual perceptions are immediate and unavoidable, and they belong only to rational creatures. They supply the primary truths on which all later reasoning depends. In the section on the primary truths of religion and morality, Oswald argues that religious and moral truths belong to this same class of primary perceptions. People may abandon religious practice because they become skeptical of its first principles, but such skepticism is as irrational as doubting the existence of matter or motion. For Oswald, the primary truths of religion have the same kind of evidence as the primary truths of nature. They are perceived by the same faculty of judgment and stand on the same footing.

In the section on the obvious primary truths of science and mathematics, Oswald illustrates how many basic truths cannot be proved by reasoning and yet must be believed. We believe in our own existence even though we cannot prove it. We believe in personal identity over time even though every physical and psychological feature may change. We believe in the existence of external objects because denying them is nonsense. We perceive figure, size, number, motion, animal life, and even animal virtues such as courage and fidelity by simple judgment. These judgments form the foundation of mathematics, natural philosophy, and ordinary life. In the section on the foolishness of denying primary truths, he argues that the primary truths of religion and morality share this same authority. The existence and providence of God, the difference between virtue and vice, and the connection between moral conduct and reward are all primary truths. To doubt them is to fall below rational dignity. Finally, in the section on the existence of God, Oswald criticizes the attempt to prove God's existence through discursive reasoning. He agrees that the order of nature reveals an intelligent author, but he maintains that this recognition comes from direct judgment rather than argument. When philosophers attempt to prove the design inference, they invite endless skeptical objections. A disputant can always invent hypothetical conditions of chance or complain about particular features of nature, just as an ignorant critic might complain about a machine he does not understand. For Oswald, these debates show that discursive reasoning is misplaced in matters that are already obvious to common sense. God's existence is known in the same way we know motion, identity, and the reality of external objects. It is a primary truth perceived by rational judgment.

COMMON SENSE THE SOURCE OF ALL INDUBITABLE PRIMARY TRUTHS (Appeal to Common Sense, Vol. 1.4)

Common Sense Reason vs. Discursive Reasoning (Vol. 1.4.1)

Hitherto man hath been represented as a reasoning rather than a rational animal. Philosophers having furnished him with a variety of sensations, external and internal, in common with the lower animals, have super-added a power of comparing, compounding, dividing, and abstracting these his sensations, and deducing consequences from them; in which power they have placed the chief, if not the sole, excellency of the human mind: to which account of things we cannot agree. We acknowledge the powers to be real, and own our obligations to those great men who have pointed out their use and excellence; but will by no means allow that they make the whole of rationality, or are the sole, or even the chief characteristic of the human mind. A great deal hath been already said about the ill consequences of overlooking the judging power, or of giving the discursive faculty the preference to it. But too much can hardly be said to persuade mankind to put less confidence in the faculty of reasoning, and more in the faculty of judgment, than they commonly do.

Mr. Locke, who led modern philosophers into this wrong way of thinking, appears however not satisfied about [discursive] reasoning being the characteristic of rationality. Though he seems to overlook the distinction between [common sense] reason and [discursive] reasoning in tracing the origin of our ideas, yet he points it out clearly enough when he speaks of madmen, idiots, and brutes, in contradistinction to rational beings. He affirms, that brutes exercise their [discursive] reasoning faculty; but only on particular ideas, just as they receive them from their senses. He also allows the exercise of this faculty to idiots; but only a little imperfectly about things present, and very familiar to their senses. Speaking of madmen, he expresses himself thus:

"They do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths, and err as men do who argue right from wrong principles. Having by the violence of their imagination taken their fancies for realities, they make deductions from them." [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.11.13]

Mr. Locke would surely exclude idiots and madmen, as well as brutes, from the rank of rational beings; and yet, you see, he allows them the faculty of [discursive] reasoning: from whence it is evident, that, in his judgment, [discursive] reasoning is not the characteristic of rationality. Let us then, with the consent and approbation of this great philosopher, as we otherwise ought, search for this characteristic. . . .

Common Sense Primary Truths are Perceived like Sense Perceptions (1.4.1)

We must be excused for looking into this subject with some care, and showing some concern to preserve our rank and dignity, when so many of our own species, with a preposterous zeal, employ all the arts of sophistry to reduce us to a level with the brutes, and thereby to deprive us of the chief source of our glory and happiness, religion and virtue.

We have seen that rational beings are distinguished from the irrational, not so much by the discursive faculty, as by a perception and judgment of certain obvious truths, which for quickness, clearness, and indubitable certainty, is called sense; and on account of its being possessed in some degree by all the rational kind, is called common sense. Let us then proceed to take into consideration certain perceptions peculiar to the rational mind, that give the same information of primary truths which our bodily organs give of the objects of sense.

It is not the eye that sees colors, nor the ear that judges of sounds, nor do the fingers feel, nor doth the palate distinguish between sweet and bitter: but it is the soul itself, or, if you will, the man himself, who by the help of these organs performs these acts, and enjoys these perceptions. But these are not the only perceptions that rational beings are capable of. Besides the perceptions we have in common with the lower animals, we are possessed of perceptions of undoubted realities which they have not, and of which they are incapable.

Along with the perceptions of hard, smooth, hot, cold, which we have by the sense of feeling, we get, and cannot avoid, the idea of something which is hot, cold, rough, or smooth: which something, being no object of sense, does not enter into the minds of idiots and the lower animals. By the external organ of sight we have the same perception of bodice [i.e., bodies] in motion which idiots and the lowest animals have: but by the intellectual sight, we apprehend motion itself; which idiots and the lower animals do not. Six billiard-balls being placed in a line, we see not only the impulse given the first, and the motion performed by the last, but we clearly perceive the communication of motion from the first to the last, and see in a manner motion run through the whole. . . .

Primary Truths of Religion and Morality Also from Common Sense (1.4.3)

We do not imagine that mankind will ever be so silly as to give over planting and building, or grow remiss in any of the necessary or useful arts of life, from a suspicion of the primary truths of nature. But we suspect that many have given up religion, or have grown remiss in the discharge of its duties, through a certain degree of skepticism concerning its primary truths. And though this skepticism is perhaps more the pretended than real cause of their impiety, it may not be improper to take the primary truths of religion into consideration, and to show, that, with respect to their evidence, they are upon a footing with other primary truths; and that we act as much below the dignity of our rational nature, and approach as near to the level of brutes and idiots, in doubting of them, as we would do in doubting of other primary truths.

RATIONAL AUTHORITY OF PRIMARY TRUTHS (Volume 2.1)

Obvious Primary Truths of Science and Mathematics (2.1.1)

As young children, who have been led too long by the hand, or too long accustomed to go by a hold, are timid, apt to stagger, and be in danger of falling when they first make trial of their legs; so the learned, and after them the unlearned, have been so long accustomed to arguments and proofs for almost every truth they believe, that you shall find them hesitate and waver, and be in danger of skepticism, in judging of the plainest and most obvious truths, when unsupported by those arguments, proofs, and reasons, as they are called, to which they have been so long accustomed. Nevertheless there are truths in nature, not a few, and those too of great consequence, which, in all reason, they may, and which, if they do not give up with all pretensions to reason, they must believe, without assigning any particular reason, proof, or argument, for this belief. The truths which may, and ought to be believed in this manner, are fundamental to all the arts and sciences, and fundamental maxims of civil, moral, and religious conduct; and the little acquaintance men have with them, and the little confidence they put in them, is one of the chief causes of the errors and follies they run into perpetually, both in theory and practice. It may therefore be fit to take these truths into particular consideration, and try the strength of our minds upon them: And this we shall do, without demanding any degree of credibility to the primary truths of religion and morality, beyond what is allowed to other primary truths, and without being satisfied with less: for as no primary truth hath, or can have, any other evidence than the simple dictates of reason and common sense; and as this kind of evidence is as full and complete for the primary truths of religion, as for any other first principles; so we know no right a man can have to think more nonsensically on religion than on any other subject.

The severe treatment given to Monsieur Des Cartes for attempting a proof of his own existence, will, it is probable, prevent a repetition of the same folly; and we find accordingly, that the greatest sceptics are willing to take their existence for granted, and say boldly, that they believe they do exist. They affirm, that they are conscious of their existence; and this consciousness they seem to consider as a proof, and rest upon it. But in that they act less philosophically than Mons. Des Cartes; for if consciousness is to be used as a proof, it must be applied to thinking, and not to existence, as we may be conscious of an action, but hardly can be said to be conscious of mere existence. The truth is, that we must believe our existence on this ground solely, that we should be great fools to call it once in question. So here is one truth, which, without any proof, argument, or reason, as it is called, we believe, and must believe, if we are not willing to give up with all pretensions to rationality.

We have the same evidence for our identity that we have for our existence: for as we know, with the utmost certainty, that we exist; so with the same certainty we know, that we who exist now, are the same persons we were last week, last year, and twenty years backward. So here is another truth, which, if we do not mean to play the fool, we must believe, not only without any particular reason, argument, or proof, but in opposition to many plausible arguments and reasons to the contrary: for it is demonstrable, that in twenty years time, every lineament of a man's countenance, and every affection and sentiment of his soul, may be changed, and he remain the identical person he was twenty years before. What then is identity? and wherein doth it consist? In this we are at as complete a stand as we can be on the most abstruse point of religion and morality. Here then is a truth, that, in all conscience, ought to stagger sceptics; for how shall they believe that of which they can give no rational account, and for which they have no particular evidence? – and yet believe they must. Yes, Gentlemen, you must believe, or give up all pretensions to rationality.

We have the same perception of the existence and identity of the objects around us, that we have of our own identity and existence; and can as little doubt the one as the other. It is true, that of late we have been taught to separate qualities [i.e., attributes] from substances, and to regard the first as proper objects of knowledge and belief, but not the last. This, however, is no new device: As soon as the church of Rome adopted the doctrine of the real presence, they found themselves under the necessity of making this separation. But all Protestants reject the doctrine as flat nonsense. It is nonsense to talk of a round, hard, smooth, white, nothing; and therefore, in defiance of the refinements of bigots and sceptics, we must affirm, without hesitation, that the houses, trees, rivers, and animals, which we perceive, are not mere ideas, but realities existing without us. And having thus, by the exercise of that faculty of judging by which we are distinguished from idiots, and the lower animals, attained a firm belief of our existence and identity, with the existence and identity of the objects around us, we have reached that solid foundation on which all the arts and sciences rest, and on which we may, with great safety, raise any superstructure we choose of useful knowledge.

Figure, size, number, and situation, are the first things that occur to our observation on the objects around us, and on all these we pronounce with the same certainty, and by the same faculty of judging, with which we pronounce on their existence. We cannot, without applying a rule, fix the number of feet or inches by which one object exceeds another in height or distance; but if we are not idiots, we can, by mere inspection, and without the help of any medium, affirm, that the house is higher than the trees in the garden, and that one animal stands nearer to the wall than another. Without calculation, we cannot pronounce on the number of trees or animals that are objects of our attention; but we can say with certainty, that the number is considerable. And, finally, we can, without the help of reasoning, and by a simple act of judgment, discover a great variety of truths, concerning figure, dimension, and number; and those obvious truths make the first principles of mathematics.

By a simple act of judgment on the obvious qualities of those objects we get acquainted with, we settle the first principles of natural philosophy. We are positive, that heavy bodies will go to the ground; that lead will sink in water; that fire will consume wood, and other combustibles; that bread is fit to nourish our bodies: and whoever seems to hesitate about the truth of these first principles, comes under the suspicion of idiotism.

We know with certainty, that beasts, birds, and fishes, have a power of perception and feeling, with a power of giving themselves motion in all variety of directions, which stones and timber have not; and this we denominate animal life. But what is animal life? and wherein doth it consist? Of this we know just as much, and no more, than we know of other subjects which are deemed mysterious: yet none but fools will doubt of its reality.

By attending to the procedure of animals, we observe a foresight, a skill and sagacity, in providing for their own and family's safety; which we must acknowledge, not only as a reality in nature, but worthy also of high admiration, unless we affect to be idiots. To observe beasts run, birds fly, and fishes swim, and deny that they have a power of doing so, is as great nonsense as to deny their existence: and to acknowledge the parental care of animals in feeding and rearing their young, and not admire it, or not acknowledge it to be worthy of high admiration, betrays the same folly as to deny their power, or even their existence. And further, by attending to the behavior of some animals, of dogs in particular, we see plain symptoms, not only of admirable sagacity, but of benevolence, of courage, and fidelity, that are intitled both to our love and esteem; and to deny or doubt of these realities, or of the esteem and affection due to them, is to renounce all pretensions to the understanding of a man, as effectually as by denying, that two and three make five; for we have equally good reason for giving our assent to the one truth as to the other.

Foolishness of Denying Primary Truths of Religion and Morality (2.1.3)

The primary truths of religion and morality are evidently on a footing with the primary truths of all the arts and sciences, and with the first principles of wise and just conduct of every kind. They must stand or fall together. If you believe the one, you must believe the other; and if you doubt of one, you must also doubt of the other; for all have the same authority. And when this authority is better understood, more reverenced, and felt more sensibly, than it is or can be at present, he who calls in question the being and providence of God, the essential difference betwixt vice and virtue, the punishment due to the former, and the reward due to the latter, will be thought as great an idiot, as he who calls in question the reality of matter and motion, of gravitation, or animal life, or of any the most obvious principles of prudence or common sense. We have undoubtedly made progress in learning; but a little further proficiency will shew us, that we have not yet got clear of the mists of false science, are hardly yet conscious of our own dignity, and scarce dare to pronounce with firmness on the simple dictates of reason and common sense.

Ask a celebrated [skeptical] philosopher [i.e., Hume], whether there is any reason for believing first principles? and he will tell you, that he knows of none; but being long accustomed to believe them, he will say, that we must believe them. Make your complaint to another philosopher of note, less heterodox than he, and he will tell you, that we are so constituted, that we must believe obvious truths; but chooses rather to have recourse to an instinctive feeling than to the authority of reason. Apply to those philosophers who are professedly orthodox, and all agree, that we must of necessity believe, and exclaim against all attempts to doubt of obvious truth; but are generally shy of founding on the simple dictates of reason, or even of naming its authority. These, you will say, are strange proceedings in men of understanding, endued with a power of discerning betwixt obvious truth and palpable falsity, called Reason, and valuing themselves on that high privilege by which their maker has distinguished them. But you are not to suppose, that the learned are altogether above the power of prejudice. When they are as much accustomed to the authority of reason as they have been to the force of [discursive] reasoning, they will pay as great, and a greater, regard to the former, than is paid to the latter; and then all primary truths will be on a footing; and he who doubts of the primary truths of religion and morality, will be deemed as great a fool as he who hesitates about the axioms of the schools.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (Volume 2.2.)

God's Existence too Important to Trust to Discursive Reasoning (2.2.1)

"There is not" (says Mr. Hume) "a greater number of philosophical reasonings displayed on any subject than this, to prove the existence of Deity, and refute the falsities of Atheists; and yet the most religious philosophers dispute, whether any man can be so blinded as to be a speculative Atheist. How shall we reconcile these contradictions? The knight-errants, who wandered about to clear the world of dragons and giants, never entertained the least doubt concerning the existence of these monsters." [David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 12.1.]

Religious philosophers, it must be confessed, have laid themselves open to this raillery. Convinced, as they were, that no man in his senses could doubt the being and perfections of God, they ought to have rested the cause of Theism on an appeal to common sense. But, in compliance with the practice of the schools, which, as Mr. Locke says, had made [discursive] reasoning the touchstone of truth, they would needs be tampering with arguments, and have thereby created some degree of skepticism in wrong-headed men, concerning the plainest, most interesting, and sacred truths in the world.

The inspired writers do not offer a proof of the being and perfections of God. They tell us, that the invisible things of him are clearly seen from the things which he hath made; that the heavens declare his glory, and the firmament sheweth his handy-work; that day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge. They call upon men to open their eyes, and observe that depth of wisdom, immensity of power, and profusion of goodness, which no understanding can fathom, and to which no imagination can set bounds. They expostulate with mankind on the stupidity of imagining, that he who formed the eye should not see, that he who planted the ear should not hear, that he who endued men with understanding should not himself understand; and often reprove them for their inattention to the being, the presence, and perfections of God; but never enter into trains of reasoning to establish a truth that is too obvious to admit of any proof.

When the foolish hearts of men were darkened by the vain imaginations of those who pretended to superior degrees of understanding, God confounded the wisdom of the world, by authorizing a number of illiterate persons to publish a system of truths, which had been overlooked by the vulgar, and were made a subject of dispute with the learned; but which, being made known, commend themselves to the reason, the judgement, and conscience of every one of sound understanding. To set this system full in the view of mankind, and procure the attention and regard due to it, is the business of divines and philosophers, in which they may promise themselves success; but to attempt a proof of what is too evident to admit of any, must always be attended with bad effects.

The demonstration of the being and perfections of God by the Archbishop of Cambray [i.e., François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon], is well known to the public; and every one sees, that this sublime writer, in his first part, sets the phenomena of nature in a light that conveys, and must convey, to every rational mind, the fullest conviction, with the most lively impression, of the being and perfections of Deity. But in his second part, he labors a confutation of Atheism, with a subtility, an obscurity, and even a seeming uncertainty, of metaphysical argumentation, that is fit to stagger a weak believer, and give courage and confidence to a bold objector. Had this great and good man attempted a proof of the reality of matter and motion in the same way, his success would have been precisely the same. Truth, when fairly proposed, must give satisfaction to those who are endued with the capacity of receiving it; but all attempts to establish first principles by reasoning, must end in disappointment.

It is alleged, that our knowledge of the being and perfections of God does not, like our knowledge of vegetation, and other obvious laws of nature, arise from simple attention to the phenomena, but from a process of [discursive] reasoning, which passes in the mind without being observed. From the knowledge we have, that works of deep design, plans of policy, for instance, of war and architecture, are begun and executed by intelligent beings of skill and ability, proportioned to the greatness of the work, it is alleged we conclude, that the formation of the universe, a work of immense perfection, must have been planned and executed by a being of wisdom, power, and goodness, exceeding our comprehension; and that if we had not this previous knowledge, we could not have reached this conclusion. But all these suppositions are injurious to the truth: for though we discover the author of nature by the same faculty by which we discover the author of any other work of design, and though the exercise of that faculty on one subject, may give us a greater facility in its exercise on another; yet our previous knowledge of one is not necessary to our judging of another. As the man who is qualified to judge of a plan of policy, can pronounce upon the ability of its author, independently of architecture, war, or any other work of design; so he who is qualified to judge of the combination of powers which appear in the system of nature, can pronounce upon the perfection of its author, independently of his knowledge of any other work of design; because his judgement is founded, not upon a comparison of one system with another, but on a unity of design executed by an exact adjustment of parts and combination of powers.

Against Discursive Arguments for God from Design: Natural Design only Triggers Belief in a Designer

Some suspect, that a savage, unacquainted with works of design, would be incapable of discerning the being and perfections of God from any views he might get of the system of nature. But this is a groundless suspicion. If a man, whether savage or civilized, is of so weak understanding, as not to distinguish betwixt design and random action, he will, no doubt, be incapable of receiving information of the being and perfections of God from the phenomena of nature: but let it be considered, that the man is in a state of idiotism; for the characteristic of idiotism, as hath been shown, consists in an incapacity to distinguish betwixt chance and design. But, idiotism apart, every one, with proper assistance, will enter into works of design, and pronounce upon the ability of their author.

The supposition of a process of reasoning which passes so quickly through the mind as not to be perceived, is altogether arbitrary; and arbitrary suppositions are extremely injurious to the truth, and give birth to that multitude of chimerical hypotheses by which mankind have been misled. Hitherto a process of reasoning hath been supposed, in proof of the connection betwixt cause and effect; which gave occasion to an ingenious writer to introduce an universal skepticism, by exposing the falsity of such reasoning. It therefore remains, that we do justice to truth, by dismissing frivolous reasoning, founded on arbitrary suppositions, and betake ourselves to the exercise of that perception of obvious truth, by which we are distinguished from idiots and lower animals.

Discursive Reasoning about God's Existence Encourages Skepticism (2.2.2)

We have already seen the impropriety of establishing the belief of primary truths by arguments. The impropriety, for instance, of such reasoning as may be employed to evince the reality of gravitation, vegetation, or any other of those primary truths in nature, which result from the contemplation of the phenomena, has been already exposed: and it is fit to do the same justice to a truth equally obvious, and more important, namely, the being of God, which hath hitherto been exposed to the cavils of sceptics, by an improper application of the art of reasoning.

No process of reasoning can be employed in favor of this capital truth, that will not be found either false or frivolous. For if the premises are taken for granted, the reasoning is frivolous; or if the premises are admitted to proof, there can be no just conclusion. The premises are these: A work that indicates design, must be ascribed to an intelligent author; the world is a work that indicates design, &c.; propositions to which any man of understanding assents on the first hearing, or from which it is not in his power to withhold his assent when he comes to a clear understanding of the terms. But if they are subjected to proof, it will not be so easy establishing their truth as is commonly thought; for this plain reason, that, like all other primary truths, they are too obvious to receive any addition to their evidence from any medium of proof, or form of argumentation.

Let us try the first proposition, which logicians call the major. A work that indicates design must be ascribed to an intelligent author. Nothing is more obviously evident, or more readily assented to by a man of sound understanding; but if a wrong-headed man choose to ascribe this work to chance, he is not to be confuted by arguments. It is vain to tell him, that we know of no such works being produced by chance; because he will affirm, that we are not acquainted with all the powers of chance. You may insist on the improbability, or, if you will, the impossibility, of producing the Iliad or the Aeneid, by casually jumbling the letters of the alphabet; but he will tell you, that he does not ascribe the formation of the universe to any such casualty as we are capable of producing, but to a casual revolution of atoms, immense and eternal. He will tell you, that by repeated throws of the dice, one may cast up any number called for within a given time; and therefore will insist, that any possible state of nature may result from unlimited revolutions of matter: and if he is disposed to put more confidence in the art of reasoning than in the simple dictates of reason, he will not submit.

Mr. [Francis] Hutchison has undertaken to demonstrate the absolute impossibility of producing any such complicated system as this world, or even a system inferior to it, by chance, on account of the infinity of opposite chances that must occur in every part to obstruct the design. And this ingenious author, it must be confessed, has gone as far as human skill can go, to make out the proof. But Mr. Hutchison was too good a philosopher to think it strict proof; and therefore contented himself with calling it almost demonstration: which is in fact giving up the cause to sceptics; for no man will think himself bound to rest in what is not altogether, but almost demonstration.

A man of sound understanding sees at once, that order results from design, and disorder from chance; and that infinite revolutions of chance, if any such thing can be supposed, would produce infinite disorder: but argumentation on this subject can have no other effect, than to put unhappy men on abusing their understanding with chimerical suppositions about the origin of the world, and to give them the boldness of maintaining absurdities, on a most important subject, in contradiction to common sense.

Our success with the minor proposition will be no better than in proof of the major. For though nothing is more evident than the order of the universe, one will have difficulty in maintaining it against a pertinacious disputant. Explain a fire-engine, or any such complicated machine, to one unacquainted with the subject, and he will at first be astonished, and in high admiration of the contrivance; but if he is captious, he will find fault, without your having it in your power to give him satisfaction. He will allege, that many things have an awkward appearance, and that some things are made in so bungling a manner, as not to bespeak the hand of an artist. You may tell him, that you are not enough master of the subject to account for every thing, nor has he capacity to comprehend the whole; but he will insist upon his objections, and stand out against the truth. In this manner do ignorant and self-sufficient people object to plans of government, and to all works of design, which they do not thoroughly understand: and in the same manner do petulant wits object to the plan of providence, and even to the system of nature, and pertinaciously persist in their objections, without the possibility of being confuted by arguments.

It is easy to show them a connection of parts, and unity of design, which they cannot gainsay; but they, on the other hand, point out strange and uncouth appearances, which can as little be denied. You allege, that they have no right to found any argument upon their ignorance; but they affirm, that, as disputants, they have a right to with-hold their assent until they are satisfied. You tell them, that they may be deceived by appearances; but they contend, that until these appearances are cleared up, they are bound to hold their minds in suspense. It deserves notice, that sceptics, and even infidels, do not deny the primary truths, or allege that they are altogether void of evidence, but that they have not that full evidence that is necessary to create a firm belief; and this evidence you cannot procure them by any, or by all the forms of argumentation. All they aim at is to with-hold their assent; and that they will do; and that, it must be owned, they have a right to do, if the subject in question is to be determined by the rules of reasoning, and not by the authority of common sense.

You may unriddle many difficulties, and give satisfaction to several objections. You may do more: By careful inspection, you can show, to the satisfaction of the sceptic, that what appeared irregular, is regular in the highest degree; that seeming discord is harmony not understood; and that a seeming blemish is a beauty in the works of God: but you will not silence him. You have something farther to explain, and something farther still; and cannot give a full answer to his objections, until you explain the whole; and that you cannot do. Good sense requires, that he should be contended with less satisfaction; but he demands proof; and as you have undertaken it, so you must give it without reserve or limitation.

Whether the sceptic is actuated by impertinent curiosity, a spirit of contradiction, or a yet worse principle, it must be owned, that, as a disputant, he has a right to insist in his demand; and on being refused, to with-hold his assent; which he can do with more ease, and with a much better grace, in the course of a dispute, than he could have done, if you had submitted the truth to his judgement by a simple appeal [to common sense].

It is surprising, that this inconveniency attending the method of argumentation, should have been so long overlooked by so many friends of religion, distinguished by their good sense, as well as by their learning: yet any one may recollect similar instances of men of good understanding, disappointing themselves in common life, by too great eagerness to prove truths too obvious to admit of proof of demonstration.

Source: James Oswald, An Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion (1766-1772), adapted

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WILLIAM PALEY:

NATURAL THEOLOGY AND THE WATCHMAKER ARGUMENT

William Paley (1743–1805) was born in Peterborough, England, the son of a schoolmaster, and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he excelled in mathematics, philosophy, and moral theology. After graduating, he remained at Cambridge as a tutor and lecturer, gaining a reputation for an engaging pedagogical style. Ordained in the Church of England, he later held several clerical posts while continuing to write on ethics, politics, and natural theology. His Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) became a standard university text, but his lasting fame rests on Natural Theology (1802), in which he offered the famous "watchmaker" argument for the existence of God, grounding religious belief in the apparent design and purpose found in nature. Widely read throughout the nineteenth century, Paley's works shaped generations of students, including a young Charles Darwin, and was the most influential British proponent of natural theology before the rise of evolutionary theory. He died in Lincoln in 1805 at the age of 61. The selections below are from his Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology.

In the section on miracles as necessary vehicles for divine revelation, Paley argues that miracles become credible once we consider the larger context in which revelation would occur. If God intends a future state for humanity and wishes rational creatures to know this, then some form of communication is needed. Paley maintains that revelation cannot be delivered except through miracles, since no other approach is conceivable. He then responds to Hume's famous criticism of miracles, what is that the evidence from consistent laws of nature will always outweigh reports of miracles which allegedly violate laws of nature. Paley accepts Hume's framing of the issue as a contest of improbabilities, but he faults Hume for ignoring relevant background considerations, such as God's benevolence, God's concern for creation, and the moral importance of the message being conveyed. These considerations reduce the supposed improbability of miracles and make testimony for them capable of overcoming doubt.

Paley's discussion of the watchmaker analogy seeks to strengthen a version of the design argument for God's existence that had frequently been used before him and was criticized by Hume. That argument is this: (1) machines such as watches are the products of intelligent design; (2) the natural world resembles a machine; (3) therefore, the natural world is the product of intelligent design. In the section on the watchmaker analogy, Paley asks the reader to imagine finding a watch in a field. Unlike a stone, the watch displays an evident arrangement of parts that work together for a purpose. Its wheels, springs, chain, pulley, balance, and pointer are all shaped and positioned so that the device can measure time. The parts are made of materials suited to their functions, such as brass for wheels and steel for springs, and the glass cover is chosen so the hour can be seen. Paley emphasizes that the watch's usefulness depends on the precise adjustment of its parts. If any part were shaped differently or placed in another order, the watch would fail to perform its function. From this observation, Paley concludes that the watch must have had a maker who understood its construction and intended its use. He then strengthens the inference by addressing possible objections. It does not matter that we have never seen a watch made, or that we cannot personally construct one. It does not matter that the watch sometimes malfunctions or that some parts are obscure in their purpose. Nor does it matter that some parts might be superfluous. The presence of purpose and contrivance remains. Paley also rejects explanations that appeal to chance, a "principle of order," or the "laws of metallic nature," since none of these provide an intelligent cause. The watch's arrangement points unmistakably to a designing mind.

In the next section on the self-replicating watch, Paley extends the analogy by imagining a watch that produces another watch. Suppose the original watch contains a system of tools and mechanisms that generate a second watch during its movement. Paley argues that this discovery would not weaken the inference to a designer. Instead, it would heighten admiration for the skill involved. The new property would be an additional reason to infer design, not a reason to abandon the inference. Paley then considers the objection that the watch might have been produced by another watch, and that watch by another, and so on indefinitely. He insists that this does not explain the contrivance. A watch may be the immediate cause of another watch, but it cannot be the cause of the design, arrangement, and adaptation of parts. These features still require an intelligent author. Extending the series backward does not reduce the need for a designer, because no matter how far we go, contrivance remains unaccounted for. Paley compares this to a chain: adding more links does not make the chain self‑supporting. Likewise, an infinite regress of watches does not explain the origin of design. The question is not how many watches preceded the present one, but how the first contrivance came to exist. The self‑replicating watch only reinforces the conclusion that intelligence must stand at the beginning of the series.

From here, the majority of Paley's Natural Theology reads like a biology textbook, where he describes in detail the intricate structures and functions of living organisms. In the final section he seeks to infer the attributes of God from the design we see in the biological world. He argues that contrivance shows that the designer must be a personal being, for, only a conscious mind can recognize ends, select means, and direct them toward a purpose. Wherever such capacities appear, a person is present, and Paley maintains that the scale of natural contrivance allows us to conceive this mind as unlimited in range. He turns to the traditional attributes. The vastness and intricacy of nature require power and knowledge far beyond any human measure. We call these omnipotence and omniscience, not because we grasp their full extent, but because the works of nature give us no reason to set limits on divine abilities. He continues arguing that that we can infer God's unity from the uniform laws and coordinated structure of the universe, and God's goodness from the widespread usefulness and pleasure found in nature reveal divine goodness.

IN DEFENSE OF MIRACLES (A View of the Evidences, 1794, "Preparatory Considerations")

Miracles as Necessary Vehicles for Divine Revelation

I deem it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in need of a revelation, because I have met with no serious person who thinks that even under the Christian revelation we have too much light, or any degree of assurance which is superfluous. I desire moreover that in judging of Christianity it may be remembered, that the question lies between this religion and none: for, if the Christian religion be not credible, no one, with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other.

Suppose then the world we live in to have had a Creator; suppose it to appear from the predominant aim and tendency of the provisions and contrivances observable in the universe, that the Deity, when he formed it, consulted for the happiness of his sensitive creation; suppose the disposition which dictated this council to continue: suppose a part of the creation to have received faculties from their Maker, by which they are capable of rendering a moral obedience to his will, and of voluntarily pursuing any end for which he has designed them; suppose the Creator to intend for these his rational and accountable agents a second state of existence in which their situation will be regulated by their behavior in the first state, by which supposition (and by no other) the objection to the divine government in not putting a difference between the good and the bad, and the inconsistency of this confusion with the care and benevolence discoverable in the works of the Deity is done away; suppose it to be of the utmost importance to the subjects of this dispensation to know what is intended for them, that is, suppose the knowledge of it to be highly conducive to the happiness of the species, a purpose which so many provisions of nature are calculated to promote: Suppose, nevertheless, almost the whole race, either by the imperfection of their faculties, the misfortune of their situation, or by the loss of some prior revelation, to want [i.e., lack] this knowledge, and not to be likely without the aid of a new revelation to attain it; under these circumstances is it improbable that a revelation should be made? Is it incredible that God should interpose for such a purpose? Suppose him to design for mankind a future state, is it unlikely that he should acquaint them with it?

Now in what way can a revelation be made but by miracles? In none which we are able to conceive. Consequently, in whatever degree it is probable or not very improbable that a revelation should be communicated to mankind at all, in the same degree is it probable or not very improbable that miracles should be wrought. Therefore, when miracles are related [i.e., reported] to have been wrought [i.e., performed] in the promulgating of a revelation manifestly wanted [i.e., clearly needed], and, if true, of inestimable value, the improbability which arises from the miraculous nature of the things related, is not greater than the original improbability that such a revelation should be imparted by God.

I wish it however to be correctly understood, in what manner, and to what extent, this argument is alleged. We do not assume the attributes of the Deity, or the existence of a future state, in order to prove the reality of miracles. That reality always must be proved by evidence. We assert only, that in miracles adduced in support of revelation there is not any such antecedent improbability as no testimony can surmount. And for the purpose of maintaining this assertion, we contend, that the incredibility of miracles related to have been wrought in attestation of a message from God, conveying intelligence of a future state of rewards and punishments, and teaching mankind how to prepare themselves for that state, is not in itself greater than the event, call it either probable or improbable, of the two following propositions being true: namely, first, that a future state of existence should be destined by God for his human creation; and, secondly, that, being so destined, he should acquaint them with it. It is not necessary for our purpose that these propositions be capable of proof, or even that, by arguments drawn from the light of nature, they can be made out to be probable. It is enough that we are able to say concerning them, that they are not so violently improbable, so contradictory to what we already believe of the Divine power and character, that either the propositions themselves, or facts strictly connected with the propositions (and therefore no farther improbable than they are improbable), ought to be rejected at first sight, and to be rejected by whatever strength or complication of evidence they be attested.

This is the prejudication [i.e., pre-judgment] we would resist. For to this length does a modern objection to miracles [from Hume] go, viz. that no human testimony can in any case render them credible. I think the reflection above stated, that, if there be a revelation, there must be miracles; and that, under the circumstances in which the human species are placed, a revelation is not improbable, or not improbable in any great degree, to be a fair answer to the whole objection. . . .

Hume Ignores Extenuating Circumstances and Probable Hypotheses

Mr. Hume states the case of miracles to be a contest of opposite improbabilities, that is to say, a question whether it be more improbable that the miracle should be true, or the testimony false; and this I think a fair account of the controversy. But herein I remark a want [i.e. lack] of argumentative justice, that, in describing the improbability of miracles, he suppresses all those circumstances of extenuation, which result from our knowledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the Deity, his concern in the creation, the end answered by the miracle, the importance of that end, and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of nature. As Mr. Hume has represented the question, miracles are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant agency of a divine Being, and to him who believes that no such being exists in the universe. They are equally incredible, whether related to have been wrought upon occasions the most deserving, and for purposes the most beneficial, or for no assignable end whatever, or for an end confessedly trifling or pernicious. This surely cannot be a correct statement. In adjusting also the other side of the balance, the strength and weight of testimony, this author has provided an answer to every possible accumulation of historical proof by telling us, that we are not obliged to explain how the story or the evidence arose. Now I think that we are obliged; not, perhaps, to shew by positive accounts how it did, but by a probable hypothesis how it might so happen. The existence of the testimony is a phenomenon. The truth of the fact solves the phenomenon. If we reject this solution, we ought to have some other to rest in; and none even by our adversaries can be admitted, which is not consistent with the principles that regulate human affairs and human conduct at present, or which makes men then to have been a different kind of beings from what they are now.

THE DESIGN ARGUMENT (from Natural Theology, 1802)

Watchmaker Analogy (Chapter 1)

In crossing a heath [i.e. a field], suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given – that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz., that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, an tending to one result: – We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee [i.e. pulley]. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer, and, at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed, (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood,) the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

Strength of the Inference from Watch to Watchmaker

1. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed; all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture. Does one man in a million know how oval frames are turned? Ignorance of this kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist's skill, if he be unseen and unknown, but raises no doubt in our minds of the existence and agency of such an artist, at some former time, and in some place or other. Nor can I perceive that it varies at all the inference, whether the question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a different species, or an agent possessing, in some respect, a different nature.

2. Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and, in the case supposed, would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to show with what design it was made; still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all.

3. Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever. For, as to the first branch of the case, if by the loss, or disorder, or decay of the parts in question, the movement of the watch were found in fact to be stopped, or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would remain in our minds as to the utility or intention of these parts, although we should be unable to investigate the manner according to which, or the connection by which, the ultimate effect depended upon their action or assistance; and the more complex is the machine, the more likely is this obscurity to arise. Then, as to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were parts which might be spared without prejudice to the movement of the watch, and that he had proved this by experiment, these superfluous parts, even if we were completely assured that they were such, would not vacate the reasoning which we had instituted concerning other parts. The indication of contrivance remained, with respect to them, nearly as it was before.

4. Nor, fourthly, would any man in his senses think the existence of the watch, with its various machinery, accounted for, by being told that it was one out of possible combinations of material forms; that whatever he had found in the place where he found the watch, must have contained some internal configuration or other; and that this configuration might be the structure now exhibited, viz., of the works of a watch, as well as a different structure.

5. Nor, fifthly, would it yield his inquiry more satisfaction, to be answered, that there existed in things a principle of order, which had disposed the parts of the watch into their present form and situation. He never knew a watch made by the principle of order; nor can he even form to himself an idea of what is meant by a principle of order, distinct from the intelligence of the watchmaker.

6. Sixthly, he would be surprised to hear that the mechanism of the watch was no proof of contrivance, only a motive to induce the mind to think so:

7. And [seventhly,] not less surprised to be informed, that the watch in his hand was nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic nature. It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the efficient, operative cause of anything. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power; for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing, is nothing. The expression, "the law of metallic nature," may sound strange and harsh to a philosophic ear; but it seems quite as justifiable as some others which are more familiar to him such as "the law of vegetable nature," "the law of animal nature," or, indeed, as "the law of nature", in general, when assigned as the cause of phenomena in exclusion of agency and power, or when it is substituted into the place of these.

8. Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out of his conclusion, or from his confidence in its truth, by being told that he knew nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough for his argument: he knows the utility of the end: he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the means to the end. These points being known, his ignorance of other points, his doubts concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his reasoning. The consciousness of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which he does know.

Design and the Infinite Regress Argument (Chapter 2)

Suppose, in the next place, that the person who found the watch, should, after some time, discover that, in addition to all the properties which he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected property of producing, in the course of its movement, another watch like itself (the thing is conceivable); that it contained within it a mechanism, a system of parts, a mould for instance, or a complex adjustment of lathes, files, and other tools, evidently and separately calculated for this purpose; let us inquire, what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his former conclusion.

1. The first effect would be to increase his admiration of the contrivance, and his conviction of the consummate skill of the contriver. Whether he regarded the object of the contrivance, the distinct apparatus, the intricate, yet in many parts intelligible mechanism, by which it was carried on, he would perceive, in this new observation, nothing but an additional reason for doing what he had already done,—for referring the construction of the watch to design, and to supreme art. If that construction without this property, or which is the same thing, before this property had been noticed, proved intention and art to have been employed about it; still more strong would the proof appear, when he came to the knowledge of this further property, the crown and perfection of all the rest.

2. He would reflect, that though the watch before him were, in some sense, the maker of the watch, which was fabricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a very different sense from that, in which a carpenter, for instance, is the maker of a chair; the author of its contrivance, the cause of the relation of its parts to their use. With respect to these, the first watch was no cause at all to the second: in no such sense as this was it the author of the constitution and order, either of the parts which the new watch contained, or of the parts by the aid and instrumentality of which it was produced. We might possibly say, but with great latitude of expression, that a stream of water ground corn: but no latitude of expression would allow us to say, no stretch of conjecture could lead us to think, that the stream of water built the mill, though it were too ancient for us to know who the builder was. What the stream of water does in the affair, is neither more nor less than this; by the application of an unintelligent impulse to a mechanism previously arranged, arranged independently of it, and arranged by intelligence, an effect is produced, viz. the corn is ground. But the effect results from the arrangement. The force of the stream cannot be said to be the cause or author of the effect, still less of the arrangement. Understanding and plan in the formation of the mill were not the less necessary, for any share which the water has in grinding the corn: yet is this share the same, as that which the watch would have contributed to the production of the new watch, upon the supposition assumed in the last section. Therefore,

3. Though it be now no longer probable, that the individual watch, which our observer had found, was made immediately by the hand of an artificer, yet doth not this alteration in anywise affect the inference, that an artificer had been originally employed and concerned in the production. The argument from design remains as it was. Marks of design and contrivance are no more accounted for now, than they were before. In the same thing, we may ask for the cause of different properties. We may ask for the cause of the color of a body, of its hardness, of its head; and these causes may be all different. We are now asking for the cause of that subserviency to a use, that relation to an end, which we have remarked in the watch before us. No answer is given to this question, by telling us that a preceding watch produced it. There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without any thing capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, and executing their office, in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it. Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to a use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind. No one, therefore, can rationally believe, that the insensible, inanimate watch, from which the watch before us issued, was the proper cause of the mechanism we so much admire in it;—could be truly said to have constructed the instrument, disposed its parts, assigned their office, determined their order, action, and mutual dependency, combined their several motions into one result, and that also a result connected with the utilities of other beings. All these properties, therefore, are as much unaccounted for, as they were before.

4. Nor is any thing gained by running the difficulty farther back, i.e. by supposing the watch before us to have been produced from another watch, that from a former, and so on indefinitely. Our going back ever so far, brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject. Contrivance is still unaccounted for. We still want a contriver. A designing mind is neither supplied by this supposition, nor dispensed with. If the difficulty were diminished the further we went back, by going back indefinitely we might exhaust it. And this is the only case to which this sort of reasoning applies. Where there is a tendency, or, as we increase the number of terms, a continual approach towards a limit, there, by supposing the number of terms to be what is called infinite, we may conceive the limit to be attained: but where there is no such tendency, or approach, nothing is effected by lengthening the series. There is no difference as to the point in question (whatever there may be as to many points), between one series and another; between a series which is finite, and a series which is infinite. A chain, composed of an infinite number of links, can no more support itself, than a chain composed of a finite number of links. And of this we are assured (though we never can have tried the experiment), because, by increasing the number of links, from ten for instance to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, &c. we make not the smallest approach, we observe not the smallest tendency, towards self-support. There is no difference in this respect (yet there may be a great difference in several respects) between a chain of a greater or less length, between one chain and another, between one that is finite and one that is infinite. This very much resembles the case before us. The machine which we are inspecting, demonstrates, by its construction, contrivance and design. Contrivance must have had a contriver; design, a designer; whether the machine immediately proceeded from another machine or not. That circumstance alters not the case. That other machine may, in like manner, have proceeded from a former machine: nor does that alter the case; contrivance must have had a contriver. That former one from one preceding it: no alteration still; a contriver is still necessary. No tendency is perceived, no approach towards a diminution of this necessity. It is the same with any and every succession of these machines; a succession of ten, of a hundred, of a thousand; with one series, as with another; a series which is finite, as with a series which is infinite. In whatever other respects they may differ, in this they do not. In all equally, contrivance and design are unaccounted for.

The question is not simply, How came the first watch into existence? which question, it may be pretended, is done away by supposing the series of watches thus produced from one another to have been infinite, and consequently to have had no-such first, for which it was necessary to provide a cause. This, perhaps, would have been nearly the state of the question, if no thing had been before us but an unorganized, unmechanized substance, without mark or indication of contrivance. It might be difficult to show that such substance could not have existed from eternity, either in succession (if it were possible, which I think it is not, for unorganized bodies to spring from one another), or by individual perpetuity. But that is not the question now. To suppose it to be so, is to suppose that it made no difference whether we had found a watch or a stone. As it is, the metaphysics of that question have no place; for, in the watch which we are examining, are seen contrivance, design; an end, a purpose; means for the end, adaptation to the purpose. And the question which irresistibly presses upon our thoughts, is, whence this contrivance and design? The thing required is the intending mind, the adapting hand, the intelligence by which that hand was directed. This question, this demand, is not shaken off, by increasing a number or succession of substances, destitute of these properties; nor the more, by increasing that number to infinity. If it be said, that, upon the supposition of one watch being produced from another in the course of that other's movements, and by means of the mechanism within it, we have a cause for the watch in my hand, viz. the watch from which it proceeded. I deny, that for the design, the contrivance, the suitableness of means to an end, the adaptation of instruments to a use (all which we discover in the watch), we have any cause whatever. It is in vain, therefore, to assign a series of such causes, or to allege that a series may be carried back to infinity; for I do not admit that we have yet any cause at all of the phænomena, still less any series of causes either finite or infinite. Here is contrivance, but no contriver; proofs of design, but no designer.

5. Our observer would further also reflect, that the maker of the watch before him, was, in truth and reality, the maker of every watch produced from it; there being no difference (except that the latter manifests a more exquisite skill) between the making of another watch with his own hands, by the mediation of files, lathes, chisels, &c. and the disposing, fixing, and inserting of these instruments, or of others equivalent to them, in the body of the watch already made in such a manner, as to form a new watch in the course of the movements which he had given to the old one. It is only working by one set of tools, instead of another.

The conclusion of which the first examination of the watch, of its works, construction, and movement, suggested, was, that it must have had, for the cause and author of that construction, an artificer, who understood its mechanism, and designed its use. This conclusion is invincible. A second examination presents us with a new discovery. The watch is found, in the course of its movement, to produce another watch, similar to itself; and not only so, but we perceive in it a system or organization, separately calculated for that purpose. What effect would this discovery have, or ought it to have, upon our former inference? What, as hath already been said, but to increase, beyond measure, our admiration of the skill, which had been employed in the formation of such a machine? Or shall it, instead of this, all at once turn us round to an opposite conclusion, viz. that no art or skill whatever has been concerned in the business, although all other evidences of art and skill remain as they were, and this last and supreme piece of art be now added to the rest? Can this be maintained without absurdity? Yet this is atheism.

Application of the Argument (Ch. 3).

This is atheism: for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtility, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. . . .

ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

Personality of God (Ch. 23)

Contrivance, if established, appears to me to prove everything which we wish to prove. Amongst other things, it proves the personality of the Deity, as distinguished from what is sometimes called nature, sometimes called a principle: which terms, in the mouths of those who use them philosophically, seem to be intended, to admit and to express an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent. Now that which can contrive, which can design, must be a person. These capacities constitute personality, for they imply consciousness and thought. They require that which can perceive an end or purpose; as well as the power of providing means, and of directing them to their end. They require a center in which perceptions unite, and from which volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind prove the existence of a mind: and in whatever a mind resides, is a person. The seat of intellect is a person. We have no authority to limit the properties of mind to any particular corporeal form, or to any particular circumscription of space. These properties subsist, in created nature, under a great variety of sensible forms. Also every animated being has its sensorium, that is, a certain portion of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; may comprehend the universe; and, being so imagined, may serve to furnish us with as good a notion, as we are capable of forming, of the immensity of the Divine Nature, i.e., of a Being, infinite, as well in essence as in power; yet nevertheless a person. . . .

Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence and Other Attributes (Ch. 24)

It is an immense conclusion, that there is a God; a perceiving, intelligent, designing, Being; at the head of creation, and from whose will it proceeded. The attributes of such a Being, suppose his reality to be proved, must be adequate to the magnitude, extent, and multiplicity of his operations: which are not only vast beyond comparison with those performed by any other power, but, so far as respects our conceptions of them, infinite, because they are unlimited on all sides. . . .

Nevertheless, if we be careful to imitate the documents of our religion, by confining our explanations to what concerns ourselves, and do not affect more precision in our ideas than the subject allows of, the several terms which are employed to denote the attributes of the Deity, may be made, even in natural religion, to bear a sense consistent with truth and reason, and not surpassing our comprehension. These terms are; Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, self-existence, necessary existence, spirituality.

Omnipotence, omniscience, infinite power, infinite knowledge, are superlatives; expressing our conception of these attributes in the strongest and most elevated terms which language supplies. We ascribe power to the Deity under the name of omnipotence, the strict and correct conclusion being, that a power which could create such a world as this is, must be, beyond all comparison, greater than any which we experience in ourselves, than any which we observe in other visible agents; greater also than any which we can want, for our individual protection and preservation, in the Being upon whom we depend. It is a power, likewise, to which we are not authorized, by our observation or knowledge, to assign any limits of space or duration. . . .

Unity of God (Ch. 25)

Of the Unity of the Deity, the proof is, the uniformity of plan observable in the universe. The universe itself is a system; each part either depending upon other parts, or being connected with other parts by some common law of motion, or by the presence of some common substance. One principle of gravitation causes a stone to drop towards the earth, and the moon to wheel round it. One law of attraction carries all the different planets about the sun. This philosophers demonstrate. There are also other points of agreement amongst them, which may be considered as marks of the identity of their origin, and of their intelligent author. In all are found the conveniency and stability derived from gravitation. They all experience vicissitudes of days and nights, and changes of season. They all, at least Jupiter, Mars, and Venus, have the same advantages from their atmosphere as we have. In all the planets, the axes of rotation are permanent. Nothing is more probable than that the same attracting influence, acting according to the same rule, reaches to the fixed stars: but, if this be only probable, another thing is certain, viz. that the same element of light does. The light from a fixed star affects our eyes in the same manner, is refracted and reflected according to the same laws, as the light of a candle. The velocity of the light of the fixed stars is also the same, as the velocity of the light of the sun, reflected from the satellites of Jupiter. The heat of the sun, in kind, differs nothing from the heat of a coal fire. . . .

Goodness of God (Ch. 26)

The proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propositions; each, as we contend, capable of being made out by observations drawn from the appearances of nature. The first is, that, in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial. The second, that the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations, beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain.

Source: Paley, William (1743–1805). A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794); Natural theology or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), adapted

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IMMANUEL KANT:

GOD AS NOUMENAL LIMIT AND MORAL POSTULATE

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was born in Königsberg, in East Prussia, to a modest Pietist family and was educated at the Collegium Fridericianum and later at the University of Königsberg, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences before supporting himself for several years as a private tutor. Returning to the university in 1755, he began a long academic career that included early work in physics and cosmology and eventually led to his appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. Over the next two decades he produced the series of works that defined his critical philosophy: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, rev. 1787), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Critique of the Judgment (1790). All aimed at clarifying the limits and capacities of human reason. Kant rarely left his native city, and continued to write into his later years, though declining health prevented him from completing his final project, the Opus Postumum. He died in Königsberg in 1804 at the age of 79. The selections below are from several of his most important writings.

Imagine that, from the moment you were born, your parents strapped a virtual reality headset on you and put it in passthrough mode. You would not be seeing any video games, but instead only what the headset's forward-facing camera directly displays to you. Year after year, you wonder what the world would look like if you removed the headset. You navigate around the world decently with it on, but you'd like to know what the actual things themselves are, independently of what you see in your headset. What are colors, shapes and three-dimensionality itself truly like? But you never take it off your entire life. According to Kant, this is essentially what is happening with you right now. It is not literally a VR headset that mediates what you perceive about the world. Rather, it is the psychological structures of your mind. The result, though, is the same: you can never move outside of your mental structures and experience things as they are in themselves. In Kant's terminology, the "noumenal realm" is the external world that you can never have direct access to. The "phenomenal realm" is the experience that you do have as filtered by your mental structures. The mental structures that do the mediating he calls "intuitions" and "categories". This is the foundation of all of Kant's philosophy, and it has profound implications on the concepts of God and religion. God, assuming such a being exists, is in the noumenal realm that we can never access. We cannot prove that God exists, or have a direct experience of God, or even claim to "know" that God exists. There may be good reasons to postulate the existence of a divine judge and an afterlife to ensure that ultimate justice is served and that our moral deeds on earth are meaningful. This may help make sense of the notion of morality, considering how, in our present lives, people so often get away with injustice. There may also be good reasons to devise religions and religious allegories to help teach these moral ideals to everyone. But this is essentially all that we can say about both God and religion. The selections below are from four of Kant's works where he develops these positions.

Kant begins arguing that the concept of God is beyond experience. In the section "Knowledge of Nature Cannot be about Things in Themselves", he holds that our knowledge of nature cannot reach the noumenal realm. Nature, as we know it, is the existence of things as determined by universal laws. These laws apply only to appearances, not to things in themselves. Kant insists that we can never know what belongs to things in themselves, either a priori (through intuition) or a posteriori (through experience). A priori knowledge cannot reach them because our concepts only describe what is contained in our own understanding. A posteriori knowledge cannot reach them because experience teaches only what exists and how it exists, never how it must exist. Thus, the noumenal realm is permanently inaccessible, and any attempt to describe God as a noumenal being exceeds the limits of human cognition. In the section "The Categories Cannot Extend beyond Experience", Kant explains why metaphysical claims about God fail. The categories of the understanding, such as substance and cause, apply only to situations that we can possibly experience. When reason tries to extend these categories beyond experience, it produces empty concepts called noumena. These are "beings of thought" without any intuition to give them content. Kant notes that reason is naturally tempted to complete the chain by positing objects such as the self, the world, and God. These are the transcendental ideas. They arise from the structure of reason itself, but when used to describe things beyond experience, they lose all significance. This sets the stage for Kant's critique of the traditional proofs for God's existence.

In the section "All Arguments for God's Existence Fail", Kant reviews the three classical proofs: the design argument, the cosmological argument, and the ontological argument. He argues that none of them succeed. The design argument begins from experience and tries to infer a highest cause, but it cannot cross the boundary of experience. The cosmological argument depends on the ontological argument, and the ontological argument fails because it treats existence as a real predicate. Kant explains that existence adds nothing to the concept of a thing. Saying "God exists" does not add any content to the concept of God; it merely posits the concept as actualized. He illustrates this with the example of a hundred real dollars and a hundred possible dollars. The real dollars contain no more conceptual content than the possible ones. Because existence is not a predicate, no argument can move from the concept of a necessary being to its actual existence. Kant concludes that speculative reason cannot prove God's existence, nor can it disprove it. The idea of God remains a mental blueprint of reason, useful for regulating thought but incapable of theoretical demonstration.

In the section "Limitations to the Idea of God", Kant examines the problems of deism and theism. Deism produces an empty concept of God, since pure reason can only represent a being containing all realities without determining any of them. Theism attempts to give God determinate attributes, but it inevitably borrows them from human experience, which leads to anthropomorphism. Kant argues that anthropomorphic theism is incoherent, because any attribute taken from human understanding or will depends on sensibility and therefore cannot apply to a pure noumenal being. Hume's objections to theism are strong precisely because they expose this unavoidable anthropomorphism. Kant's solution to this problem is "analogical anthropomorphism". That is, we may conceive the world as if it were the work of a supreme understanding and will, but only in terms of the relation between the world and its cause. We do not attribute human properties to God in themselves. Instead, we use analogies to express the relation between the world and an unknown cause. This gives us a concept of God that is sufficient for practical purposes without claiming knowledge of God's inner nature.

In the section "The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason", Kant turns from theoretical reason to moral reason. The moral law commands us to pursue the highest good, which is the harmony of virtue and happiness. In the empirical world, there is no guarantee that happiness will correspond to moral worth, since life is often unfair. To make the highest good possible, we must postulate a cause of nature capable of bringing about this harmony. This cause must act through intelligence and will, and therefore must be God. Kant emphasizes that this is not a theoretical proof but a practical necessity. It is morally necessary to assume God's existence because the pursuit of the highest good requires it. Finally, in the section "Morality Does Not Depend upon Religion, but Gives Rise to It", Kant explains how morality leads naturally to religion. Morality is self‑sufficient and does not require religion as a foundation. However, morality produces a need to conceive an ultimate purpose for human action. This leads to the idea of a moral creator and an afterlife in which moral conduct receives its appropriate fulfillment. Religion therefore arises from morality, not the other way around. Kant warns against religious delusion, especially forms of devotion that substitute external practices for genuine moral improvement. True religion is the recognition of a moral legislator whose will aligns with the moral law itself.

THE CONCEPT OF GOD IS BEYOND EXPERIENCE (Prolegomena, 1783)

Knowledge of Nature Cannot be about Things in Themselves (Noumena)

Sect. 14. Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined according to universal laws. If nature signified the existence of things in themselves, we could never know it either a priori or a posteriori. [It is] not a priori, for how can we know what belongs to things in themselves, since this never can be done by the dissection of our concepts (in analytic judgments)? We do not want to know what is contained in our concept of a thing (for the [concept describes what] belongs to its logical being), but what is in the actuality of the thing superadded to our concept, and by what the thing itself is determined in its existence outside the concept. Our understanding, and the conditions on which alone it can connect the determinations of things in their existence, do not prescribe any rule to things themselves; these do not conform to our understanding, but it must conform itself to them; they must therefore be first given us in order to gather these determinations from them, thus they would not be known a priori.

A cognition of the nature of things in themselves a posteriori would be equally impossible. For, if experience is to teach us laws, to which the existence of things is subject, these laws, if they regard things in themselves, must belong to them of necessity even outside our experience. But experience teaches us what exists and how it exists, but never that it must necessarily exist so and not otherwise. Experience therefore can never teach us the nature of things in themselves. . . .

The Categories Cannot Extend beyond Experience to Metaphysical Objects in the Noumenal Realm

Sect. 45. We have above shown ... that the purity of the categories from all mixture of sensory determinations may mislead reason into extending their use, quite beyond all experience, to things in themselves; though as these categories themselves find no intuition which can give them meaning or sense in concrete, they, as mere logical functions, can represent a thing in general, but not give by themselves alone a determinate concept of anything. Such hyperbolical objects are distinguished by the term noumena, or pure beings of the understanding (or better, beings of thought), such as, for example, "substance," but conceived without permanence in time, or "cause," but not acting in time, etc. Here predicates, that only serve to make the conformity-to-law of experience possible, are applied to these concepts, and yet they are deprived of all the conditions of intuition, on which alone experience is possible, and so these concepts lose all significance.

There is no danger, however, of the understanding spontaneously making an excursion so very wantonly beyond its own bounds into the field of the mere creatures of thought, without being driven by foreign laws. But when reason, which cannot be fully satisfied with any empirical use of the rules of the understanding, as being always conditioned, requires a completion of this chain of conditions, then the understanding is forced out of its sphere. Then it partly represents objects of experience in a series so extended that no experience can grasp, partly even (with a view to complete the series) it seeks entirely beyond it noumena, to which it can attach that chain, and so, having at last escaped from the conditions of experience, make its attitude as it were final. These are then the transcendental ideas [i.e., the self, the world, and God], which, though according to the true but hidden ends of the natural determination of our reason, they may aim not at extravagant concepts, but at an unbounded extension of their empirical use, yet seduce the understanding by an unavoidable illusion to a transcendent use, which, though deceitful, cannot be restrained within the bounds of experience by any resolution, but only by scientific instruction and with much difficulty.

ALL ARGUMENTS FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE FAIL (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781, 2.3.3-7)

All the paths conducting to this end [to prove God's existence] begin either from determinate experience and the unique constitution of the world of sense, and rise, according to the laws of causality, from it to the highest cause existing apart from the world (or from a purely indeterminate experience, that is, some empirical existence) or abstraction is made of all experience, and the existence of a supreme cause is concluded from a priori conceptions alone. The first is the physico-theological [i.e., design] argument, the second the cosmological, the third the ontological. There are no more and cannot be any more. I will show it is as unsuccessful on the one path (the empirical) as on the other (the transcendental) and that it stretches its wings in vain, to soar beyond the world of sense by the mere might of speculative thought. . . .

Against the Ontological Argument: Existence not a Real Predicate that can be Added to a Subject

Philosophers have always talked of an absolutely necessary being, and have nevertheless declined to take the trouble of conceiving whether—and how—a being of this nature is even cogitable, not to mention that its existence is actually demonstrable. A verbal definition of the conception is certainly easy enough: it is something the non-existence of which is impossible. But does this definition throw any light upon the conditions which render it impossible to cogitate the non-existence of a thing—conditions which we wish to ascertain, that we may discover whether we think anything in the conception of such a being or not? For the mere fact that I throw away, by means of the word unconditioned, all the conditions which the understanding habitually requires in order to regard anything as necessary, is very far from making clear whether by means of the conception of the unconditionally necessary I think of something, or really of nothing at all.

Nay, more, this chance-conception, now become so current, many have endeavoured to explain by examples which seemed to render any inquiries regarding its intelligibility quite needless. Every geometrical proposition—a triangle has three angles—it was said, is absolutely necessary; and thus people talked of an object which lay out of the sphere of our understanding as if it were perfectly plain what the conception of such a being meant.

All the examples adduced have been drawn, without exception, from judgements, and not from things. But the unconditioned necessity of a judgement does not form the absolute necessity of a thing. On the contrary, the absolute necessity of a judgement is only a conditioned necessity of a thing, or of the predicate in a judgement. The proposition above-mentioned does not say that three angles necessarily exist, but, upon condition that a triangle exists, three angles must necessarily exist—in it. And thus this logical necessity has been the source of the greatest delusions. Having formed an à priori conception of a thing, the content of which was made to embrace existence, we believed ourselves safe in concluding that, because existence belongs necessarily to the object of the conception (that is, under the condition of my positing this thing as given), the existence of the thing is also posited necessarily, and that it is therefore absolutely necessary—merely because its existence has been cogitated in the conception.

If, in an identical judgement, I annihilate the predicate in thought, and retain the subject, a contradiction is the result; and hence I say, the former belongs necessarily to the latter. But if I suppress both subject and predicate in thought, no contradiction arises; for there is nothing at all, and therefore no means of forming a contradiction. To suppose the existence of a triangle and not that of its three angles, is self-contradictory; but to suppose the non-existence of both triangle and angles is perfectly admissible. And so is it with the conception of an absolutely necessary being. Annihilate its existence in thought, and you annihilate the thing itself with all its predicates; how then can there be any room for contradiction? Externally, there is nothing to give rise to a contradiction, for a thing cannot be necessary externally; nor internally, for, by the annihilation or suppression of the thing itself, its internal properties are also annihilated. God is omnipotent—that is a necessary judgement. His omnipotence cannot be denied, if the existence of a Deity is posited—the existence, that is, of an infinite being, the two conceptions being identical. But when you say, God does not exist, neither omnipotence nor any other predicate is affirmed; they must all disappear with the subject, and in this judgement there cannot exist the least self-contradiction. . . .

Being is evidently not a real predicate, that is, a conception of something which is added to the conception of some other thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgement. The proposition, God is omnipotent, contains two conceptions, which have a certain object or content; the word is, is no additional predicate—it merely indicates the relation of the predicate to the subject. Now, if I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (omnipotence being one), and say: God is, or, There is a God, I add no new predicate to the conception of God, I merely posit or affirm the existence of the subject with all its predicates—I posit the object in relation to my conception. The content of both is the same; and there is no addition made to the conception, which expresses merely the possibility of the object, by my cogitating the object—in the expression, it is—as absolutely given or existing. Thus the real contains no more than the possible. A hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars. For, as the latter indicate the conception, and the former the object, on the supposition that the content of the former was greater than that of the latter, my conception would not be an expression of the whole object, and would consequently be an inadequate conception of it. But in caclulating my wealth there may be said to be more in a hundred real dollars than in a hundred possible dollars—that is, in the mere conception of them. For the real object—the dollars—is not analytically contained in my conception, but forms a synthetical addition to my conception (which is merely a determination of my mental state), although this objective reality—this existence—apart from my conceptions, does not in the least degree increase the aforesaid hundred dollars. . . .

Against the Design and Cosmological Arguments

Thus the physico-theological [i.e., design argument] is based upon the cosmological, and this upon the ontological proof of the existence of a Supreme Being; and as besides these three there is no other path open to speculative reason, the ontological proof, on the ground of pure conceptions of reason, is the only possible one, if any proof of a proposition so far transcending the empirical exercise of the understanding is possible at all. . . .

The Idea of God Incapable of Proof, but Practically Valuable

Transcendental theology, notwithstanding its objective insufficiency, is still therefore of importance in a negative respect. It is useful as a test of the procedure of reason when engaged with pure ideas, only a transcendental standard being in this case admissible. For if, from a practical point of view, the hypothesis of a Supreme and All-sufficient Being is to maintain its validity without opposition, it must be of the highest importance to define this conception in a correct and rigorous manner, as the transcendental conception of a necessary being, to eliminate all phenomenal elements (anthropomorphism in its widest sense), and at the same time to avoid all contradictory assertions, be they atheistic, deistic, or anthropomorphic. This is of course very easy, since the same arguments which demonstrated the inability of human reason to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being must be alike sufficient to prove the invalidity of its denial. For it is impossible to gain by pure speculation of reason a demonstration that there exists no Supreme Being, as the ground of all that exists, or that this being possesses none of those properties which we regard as analogical with the dynamical qualities of a thinking being, or that, as the anthropomorphists would have us believe, it is subject to all the limitations which sensibility imposes upon those intelligences which exist in the world of experience.

Therefore, for merely speculative use of reason, a Supreme Being is only an ideal, though a faultless one. It is a conception which perfects and crowns the system of human cognition, but the objective reality of which can neither be proved nor disproved by pure reason. If this defect is ever supplied by a moral theology, the problematic transcendental theology which has preceded, will have been at least serviceable as demonstrating the mental necessity existing for the conception, by the complete determination of it which it has furnished, and the ceaseless testing of the conclusions of a reason often deceived by sense, and not always in harmony with its own ideas. The attributes of necessity, infinitude, unity, existence apart from the world (and not as a world soul), eternity (free from conditions of time), omnipresence (free from conditions of space), omnipotence, and others, are pure transcendental predicates; and thus the accurate conception of a Supreme Being, which every theology requires, is furnished by transcendental theology alone.

LIMITATIONS TO THE IDEA OF GOD (Prolegomena, 1783, 57-8)

Problem: Deism is Empty, Anthropomorphic Theism is Absurd

§ 57. Having adduced the clearest arguments, it would be absurd for us to hope that we can know more of any object, than belongs to the possible experience of it, or lay claim to the least atom of knowledge about anything not assumed to be an object of possible experience, which would determine it according to the constitution it has in itself. For how could we determine anything in this way, since time, space, and the categories, and still more all the concepts formed by empirical experience or perception in the sensible world, have and can have no other use, than to make experience possible. And if this condition is omitted from the pure concepts of the understanding, they do not determine any object, and have no meaning whatever. . . .

But as we can never cognize these beings of understanding as they are in themselves, that is, definitely, yet must assume them as regards the sensible world, and connect them with it by reason, we are at least able to think this connection by means of such concepts as express their relation to the world of sense. Yet if we represent to ourselves a being of the understanding by nothing but pure concepts of the understanding, we then indeed represent nothing definite to ourselves, consequently our concept has no significance; but if we think it by properties borrowed from the sensuous world, it is no longer a being of understanding, but is conceived as an appearance, and belongs to the sensible world. Let us take an instance from the notion of the Supreme Being.

Our deistic conception is quite a pure concept of reason, but represents only a thing containing all realities, without being able to determine any one of them; because for that purpose an example must be taken from the world of sense, in which case we should have an object of sense only, not something quite heterogeneous, which can never be an object of sense. Suppose I attribute to the Supreme Being understanding, for instance; I have no concept of an understanding other than my own, one that must receive its perceptions (Anschauung) by the senses, and which is occupied in bringing them under rules of the unity of consciousness. Then the elements of my concept would always lie in the appearance; I should however by the insufficiency of the appearance be necessitated to go beyond them to the concept of a being which neither depends upon appearance, nor is bound up with them as conditions of its determination. But if I separate understanding from sensibility to obtain a pure understanding, then nothing remains but the mere form of thinking without perception, by which form alone I can cognise nothing definite, and consequently no object. For that purpose I should conceive another understanding, such as would directly perceive its objects, but of which I have not the least notion; because the human understanding is discursive, and can [not directly perceive, it can] only cognize by means of general concepts. And the very same difficulties arise if we attribute a will to the Supreme Being; for we have this concept only by drawing it from our internal experience, and therefore from our dependence for satisfaction upon objects whose existence we require; and so the notion rests upon sensibility, which is absolutely incompatible with the pure concept of the Supreme Being.

Hume's objections to deism are weak, and affect only the proofs, and not the deistic assertion itself. But as regards theism, which depends on a stricter [anthropomorphic] determination of the concept of the Supreme Being which in deism is merely transcendent, they are very strong, and as this concept is formed, in certain (in fact in all common) cases irrefutable. Hume always insists, that by the mere concept of an original being, to which we apply only ontological predicates (eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence), we think nothing definite, and that properties which can yield a concept in concreto must be superadded; that it is not enough to say, it is Cause, but we must explain the nature of its causality, for example, that of an understanding and of a will. He then begins his attacks on the essential point itself, i.e., theism, as he had previously directed his battery only against the proofs of deism, an attack which is not very dangerous to it in its consequences. All his dangerous arguments refer to anthropomorphism, which he holds to be inseparable from theism, and to make it absurd in itself; but if the former [i.e., anthropomorphism] be abandoned, the latter [i.e., its absurdity] must vanish with it, and nothing remain but deism, of which nothing can come, which is of no value, and which cannot serve as any foundation to religion or morals. If this anthropomorphism were really unavoidable, no proofs whatever of the existence of a Supreme Being, even were they all granted, could determine for us the concept of this Being without involving us in contradictions.

If we connect with the command to avoid all transcendent judgments of pure reason, the command (which apparently conflicts with it) to proceed to concepts that lie beyond the field of its immanent (empirical) use, we discover that both can subsist together, but only at the boundary of all lawful use of reason. For this boundary belongs as well to the field of experience, as to that of the creations of thought, and we are thereby taught, as well, how these so remarkable ideas serve merely for marking the bounds of human reason. On the one hand they give warning not boundlessly to extend cognition of experience, as if nothing but world40 remained for us to cognise, and yet, on the other hand, not to transgress the bounds of experience, and to think of judging about things beyond them, as things in themselves.

Solution: Analogical Anthropomorphism

But we stop at this boundary if we limit our judgment merely to the relation which the world may have to a Being whose very concept lies beyond all the knowledge which we can attain within the world. For we then do not attribute to the Supreme Being any of the properties in themselves, by which we represent objects of experience, and thereby avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism; but we attribute them to his relation to the world, and allow ourselves a symbolical anthropomorphism, which in fact concerns language only, and not the object itself.

If I say that we are compelled to consider the world, as if it were the work of a Supreme Understanding and Will, I really say nothing more, than that a watch, a ship, a regiment, bears the same relation to the watchmaker, the shipbuilder, the commanding officer, as the world of sense (or whatever constitutes the substratum of this complex of appearances) does to the Unknown, which I do not hereby cognize as it is in itself, but as it is for me or in relation to the world, of which I am a part.

§ 58. Such a cognition is one of analogy, and does not signify (as is commonly understood) an imperfect similarity of two things, but a perfect similarity of relations between two quite dissimilar things. By means of this analogy, however, there remains a concept of the Supreme Being sufficiently determined for us, though we have left out everything that could determine it absolutely or in itself; for we determine it as regards the world and as regards ourselves, and more do we not require. The attacks which Hume makes upon those who would determine this concept absolutely, by taking the materials for so doing from themselves and the world, do not affect us; and he cannot object to us, that we have nothing left if we give up the objective anthropomorphism of the concept of the Supreme Being. . . .

We thereby acknowledge that the Supreme Being is quite inscrutable and even unthinkable in any definite way as to what he is in himself. We are thereby kept, on the one hand, from making a transcendent use of the concepts which we have of reason as an efficient cause (by means of the will), in order to determine the Divine Nature by properties, which are only borrowed from human nature, and from losing ourselves in gross and extravagant notions, and on the other hand from deluging the contemplation of the world with hyperphysical modes of explanation according to our notions of human reason, which we transfer to God, and so losing for this contemplation its proper application, according to which it should be a rational study of mere nature, and not a presumptuous derivation of its appearances from a Supreme Reason. The expression suited to our feeble notions is, that we conceive the world as if it came, as to its existence and internal plan, from a Supreme Reason, by which notion we both cognize the constitution, which belongs to the world itself, yet without pretending to determine the nature of its cause in itself, and on the other hand, we transfer the ground of this constitution (of the form of reason in the world) upon the relation of the Supreme Cause to the world, without finding the world sufficient by itself for that purpose.

Thus the difficulties which seem to oppose theism disappear by combining with Hume's principle—"not to carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience"—this other principle, which he quite overlooked: "not to consider the field of experience as one which bounds itself in the eye of our reason." The Critique of Pure Reason here points out the true mean between dogmatism, which Hume combats, and skepticism, which he would substitute for it—a mean which is not like other means that we find advisable to determine for ourselves as it were mechanically (by adopting something from one side and something from the other), and by which nobody is taught a better way, but such a one as can be accurately determined on principles.

MORAL ARGUMENT FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE

The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason (Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, 2.2.5).

Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and will. It rests, therefore, on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end and likewise with the essential determining principle of his will. Now the moral law as a law of freedom commands by determining principles, which ought to be quite independent of nature and of its harmony with our faculty of desire (as springs). But the acting rational being in the world is not the cause of the world and of nature itself. There is not the least ground, therefore, in the moral law for a necessary connection between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that belongs to the world as part of it, and therefore dependent on it. For that reason it cannot by his will be a cause of this nature, nor by his own power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as his happiness is concerned, with his practical principles.

Nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, i.e., the necessary pursuit of the highest good (summum bonum), such a connection is postulated as necessary: we ought to attempt to promote the highest good (summum bonum), which, therefore, must be possible. Accordingly, the existence of a cause of all nature [i.e., God], distinct from nature itself and containing the principle of this connection, namely, of the exact harmony of happiness with morality, is also postulated. Now this supreme cause must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a law of the will of rational beings, but with the conception of this law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but with their morality as their motive, that is, with their moral character. Therefore, the highest good (summum bonum) is possible in the world only on the supposition of a Supreme Being having a causality corresponding to moral character.

Now a being that is capable of acting on the conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will. Therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the highest good (summum bonum) is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is God. It follows that the postulate of the possibility of the highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of the reality of a highest original good, that is to say, of the existence of God. Now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the highest good (summum bonum); consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should presuppose the possibility of this highest good (summum bonum); and as this is possible only on condition of the existence of God, it inseparably connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God.

RELIGION AS A MORALITY (Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone, 1793)

Morality does not Depend upon Religion, but Gives Rise to it (Preface)

Morality, insofar as it is grounded in the concept of a human being as free, and therefore as a being that binds itself through reason to unconditional laws, requires neither the idea of a higher being to recognize its duty nor any additional motive beyond the law itself to carry it out. If a person nevertheless feels such a need, this arises from a deficiency within the person's own moral character, a need that nothing external can remedy. For what does not originate from his own freedom cannot compensate for the weakness of his morality. Thus, for its own sake—both objectively, with respect to the will, and subjectively, with respect to the ability—morality does not require religion, but is, by virtue of pure practical reason, entirely self‑sufficient. Since its laws, through the mere form of universal lawfulness in the maxims adopted accordingly, bind together all ends as the supreme and unconditional condition, morality needs no material basis for determining the free will, no purpose to guide or encourage the exercise of duty, and no external incentive to support its demands. When I ask whether I should, or even can, be truthful in testimony before a court, or faithful in returning property entrusted to me, it is unnecessary to consider any purpose I might hope to achieve by doing so, for such purposes are irrelevant to the question of duty. Indeed, anyone who, when lawfully required to confess, still searches for some purpose to justify his truthfulness, already shows himself unworthy in this respect, since the very act of looking for such a purpose reveals a failure to grasp the unconditional nature of the moral law and the purity of the obligation it imposes.

Although morality, for its own purposes, does not require a conception of purpose that would have to precede the determination of the will, it may nevertheless stand in a necessary relation to such a thing, namely, not as its ground, but as the necessary consequence of the maxims that are adopted in accordance with it. . . . But a purpose does emerge from morality; for reason cannot possibly be indifferent to how the answer to the question might turn out: what will then result from this right action of ours, and toward which we, even assuming we do not have this entirely in our power, could nevertheless direct our actions and omissions as a purpose, in order at least to be in harmony with it. . . . Therefore, morality cannot be indifferent to whether it conceives an ultimate purpose for all things, since agreeing on such a purpose, while not increasing the number of its duties, nevertheless provides a special point of reference for the unification of all purposes. For only in this way can the connection between purposiveness arising from freedom and the purposiveness of nature, which we cannot do without, be objectively achieved.

Morality therefore inevitably leads to religion, which expands it to include the idea of a powerful moral legislator outside of man, in whose will the ultimate purpose of world creation is also the ultimate purpose that mankind can and should adopt.

If morality recognizes in the sanctity of its law an object of the greatest respect, then, at the level of religion, it presents in the highest cause that enacts those laws an object of worship, and appears in its majesty.

Christianity as a Natural Religion: Duty without Reward (4.1.1)

Natural religion as morality (in relation to the freedom of the subject), combined with the concept of that which can bring about its ultimate purpose (the concept of God as the moral creator of the world) and related to a human lifespan appropriate to this entire purpose (to immortality), is a purely practical concept of reason. This, despite its infinite fruitfulness, presupposes so little theoretical capacity for reason that one can practically convince every person of it sufficiently, and at least expect everyone to accept its effect as a duty. . . .

As for the very natural human expectation of a fate commensurate with one's moral conduct in relation to happiness, especially given the many sacrifices that had to be made for the sake of the former, he promises a reward in a future world. However, according to the different attitudes in this conduct, those who performed their duty for the sake of reward (or even absolution from a debt owed) are treated differently than the better people who performed it simply for its own sake. He who is ruled by self‑interest, the god of this world, is portrayed (Luke. 16:3‑9) as someone who deceives his master through himself and extracts sacrifices from him for the sake of duty. For when he considers that he will one day, perhaps soon, have to leave this world, and that he cannot take anything he possessed here with him to the next, he resolves to write off from his account what he, or his master, self‑interest, was legally entitled to demand here from needy people. As it were, he thereby acquires payment for it in another world. Accordingly he proceeds more shrewdly than morally, as far as the motivation for such benevolent acts is concerned, but nevertheless in accordance with the moral law, at least in letter. He may therefore hope that this too will not go unrewarded to him in the future. When one compares this with what is said about charity toward the needy, purely out of a sense of duty (Matthew 25:35‑40), where the Judge of the World declares those who helped the suffering without even considering that such actions might be worthy of reward, and who thereby, as it were, bound heaven as a reward, to be the truly elect in his kingdom precisely because they did so without regard for reward. Then one can see that the teacher of the Gospel, when he speaks of the reward in the world to come, did not intend it to be the driving force behind actions. Rather, he intended it only (as a soul‑uplifting image of the perfection of divine goodness and wisdom in the guidance of humankind) to be the object of the purest veneration and the greatest moral pleasure for a reason that judges the destiny of humankind as a whole.

Here, then, is a complete religion, which can be presented to all people in a way that is comprehensible and convincing through their own reason. It has been vividly illustrated by an example whose possibility and even necessity for us to be a model for imitation [i.e., Christ] (as many people are capable of this). This required no other authentication (such as scholarship or miracles, which are not for everyone) for either the truth of those teachings or the reputation and dignity of the teacher. If references to older (Mosaic) legislation and prior learning appear therein, as if they were meant to serve as confirmation, these do not constitute proof of the truth of the teachings themselves. Instead, they were given only as an introduction to people who clung completely and blindly to the old ways. Among such people, whose minds were filled with statutory dogmas and had become almost impervious to rational religion, this task must always be much more difficult than if the teaching had been presented to the reason of uninstructed but also uncorrupted people. Therefore, no one should be surprised if they find a presentation [of the Gospels] that conforms to the prejudices of that time [i.e., the first century CE] puzzling for the present day and in need of careful interpretation. Even though it allows a religious doctrine to shine through everywhere, and at the same time often explicitly points to it, this doctrine must be understandable to every person and convincing without any expenditure of learning.

Subjective Basis of Religious Delusion. (4.2.1)

Anthropomorphism, which is almost unavoidable in the theoretical conception of God and his essence, and which is nevertheless innocent enough (as long as it does not flow into concepts of duty), is extremely dangerous with regard to our practical relationship to his will and for our morality itself. For there we make a god as we imagine him to be most easily gained to our advantage, and to be relieved of the arduous, continuous effort to influence the innermost core of our moral disposition. The principle that man usually adopts for this relationship is that through everything we do solely to please the deity (provided it does not directly contradict morality, even if it contributes nothing to it), we demonstrate to God our willingness to serve as obedient and therefore pleasing subjects. Thus we also serve God (in potential). — It need not always be sacrifices by which man believes he performs this service to God. Celebrations, even public games, as among the Greeks and Romans, have often served this purpose, and still serve it, to make the deity favorably disposed toward a people, or even toward the individual person, according to their delusion. However, the former (penances, purifications, pilgrimages, and the like) have always been considered more powerful, more effective in gaining the favor of Heaven, and more suitable for purification, because they serve to more strongly signify unlimited (though not moral) submission to His will. The more useless such self‑mortifications are, the less they are aimed at the general moral improvement of man, the holier they seem to be. Precisely because they are of no use in the world, yet still require effort, they serve solely as a demonstration of devotion to God, to appear to be purposeful. — Although, it is said, God has not been served in any way by the deed, yet he sees in it the good will, the heart, which is too weak to follow his moral commandments, but makes up for this deficiency by its demonstrated readiness to do so. Here, then, is visible the inclination toward a procedure that has no moral value in itself, except perhaps as a means of enhancing the sensory imagination to accompany intellectual ideas of the end, or, if it might possibly work contrary to the latter, of suppressing it. To this procedure, however, we ascribe in our opinion the value of the end itself, or, what amounts to the same thing, we ascribe to the disposition of the mind to receptivity to devotional sentiments (called devotion) the value of the latter. This procedure is therefore a mere religious delusion that can assume all sorts of forms, in one of which it appears more like the moral one than in another, but which in all is not merely an unintentional deception, but even a maxim to give the means a value in itself instead of the purpose, since by virtue of the latter this delusion is equally absurd under all these forms and is reprehensible as a hidden propensity to deceive.

Source: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), translated by Paul Carus, adapted; Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn, adapted; Critique of Practical Reason (1788), translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, adapted; Die Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft (1793/1794) edited by Karl Kehrbach, independently machine translated from the original German and not based on any existing translation.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to Oswald in An Appeal to Common Sense, how does the judging faculty of common sense differ from the discursive faculty of reasoning?

2. According to Oswald in An Appeal to Common Sense, how does intellectual sight perceive non-sensory realities like causal motion and substance?

3. According to Oswald in An Appeal to Common Sense, why is doubting the primary truths of religion and morality as irrational as doubting physical reality?

4. According to Oswald in An Appeal to Common Sense, why must basic mathematical and physical truths be accepted without formal proof?

5. According to Oswald in An Appeal to Common Sense, why does attempting to prove God's existence through discursive reasoning encourage skepticism?

6. According to Paley in Evidences of Christianity, why are miracles necessary for communicating a divine revelation about a future state?

7. According to Paley in Evidences of Christianity, what relevant background considerations does Hume ignore when calculating the probability of miracles?

8. According to Paley in Natural Theology, what specific features of a watch demonstrate that it was produced by an intelligent maker?

9. According to Paley in Natural Theology, why does the discovery of a self-replicating watch fail to eliminate the need for an original designer?

10. According to Paley in Natural Theology, why does an infinite regress of self-replicating watches fail to account for design?

11. According to Paley in Natural Theology, how does the presence of purposeful contrivance in nature prove that God is a personal being?

12. According to Kant in the Prolegomena, why can human cognition never reach or describe noumenal things in themselves?

13. According to Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, why does treating existence as a real predicate undermine the ontological argument?

14. According to Kant in the Prolegomena, how does symbolical or analogical anthropomorphism avoid the pitfalls of both deism and dogmatic theism?

15. According to Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason, why must God be postulated as a necessary condition for achieving the highest moral good?

16. According to Kant in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, how does morality lead naturally to the concept of a divine moral legislator?

17. According to Kant in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, why does authentic Christian morality reject practicing virtue merely for future reward?

18. According to Kant in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, why are ritualistic self-mortifications and external devotions considered religious delusions?

19. According to Oswald and Paley, how do their respective defenses of divine design differ in their reliance on discursive reasoning?

20. According to Kant and Paley, how do their views on the necessity of miracles in natural theology contrast?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Critics argue that Oswald’s common sense philosophy is dogmatic. Labeling self-evident principles to evade logical critique shields questionable religious assumptions from genuine philosophical examination. How might Oswald respond?

(b) Critics argue that Oswald’s rejection of discursive reasoning undermines natural theology. Dismissing logical arguments leaves believers with no intellectual weapons to persuade committed skeptics. How might Oswald respond?

(c) Critics argue that Paley’s watchmaker analogy rests on a false comparison. Natural biological organisms possess internal generative powers that artificial mechanical devices completely lack. How might Paley respond?

(d) Critics argue that Paley’s appeal to divine benevolence fails. Superadding pleasure to physical sensations does not balance out the immense suffering caused by natural diseases and predation. How might Paley respond?

(e) Critics argue that Kant’s moral postulate of God is wishful thinking. Wanting virtue and happiness to align in the afterlife does not logically guarantee that a supreme judge exists to accomplish it. How might Kant respond?

(f) Critics argue that Kant’s concept of analogical anthropomorphism is empty. Describing God solely through relative relations provides no actual knowledge of divine nature. How might Kant respond?

(g) Critics argue that Kant’s rejection of theoretical proofs destroys objective faith. Reducing God to a practical assumption strips religion of historical truth and factual reality. How might Kant respond?

(h) Critics argue that Paley and Oswald fail to answer Hume’s core skeptical challenge regarding the origin of natural order. Assuming design in physical laws simply begs the fundamental question. How might either Paley or Oswald respond?

(i) Critics argue that Kant’s critique of the ontological argument relies on a flawed distinction between real predicates and logical copulas. Positing necessary existence defines a unique category of being. How might Kant respond?

(j) Critics argue that the Common Sense, Design, and Moral approaches to defending religion fail. These systems remain vulnerable to the destructive skepticism of Enlightenment critics. How might any one of these thinkers respond?