Teleological argument ≈ Teleological argument
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Students’ “teleological misconceptions” in evolution education: why the underlying design stance, not teleology per se, is the problem Open
Teleology, explaining the existence of a feature on the basis of what it does, is usually considered as an obstacle or misconception in evolution education. Researchers often use the adjective “teleological” to refer to students’ misconcep…
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The Fine-Tuning Argument: Exploring the Improbability of Our Existence Open
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The Teleological and Kalam Cosmological Arguments Revisited Open
A prominent issue in many contemporary philosophy of religion debates concerns whether the universe has a Designer. This book moves the discussion ahead in a significant way by devising an original deductive formulation of the Teleological…
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Augustine on Creation, Providence and Motion Open
Augustine's theology of creation has been criticized for its Platonic tendency to denigrate matter and for a supposedly extrinsic view of divine providence that is reminiscent of design and even deism. This article counters such criticism …
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Naturalizing natural theology Open
We would like to thank the commenters for their stimulating responses to A Natural History of Natural Theology. Natural theological arguments, such as the design, cosmological, and moral arguments,...
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Rival Versions of Objective Spirit Open
To assert the primacy of objective spirit is to claim that certain distinctively human capacities, such as thinking and acting, are not capacities we have as individuals considered singly but are in some way dependent on shared public norm…
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Darwin's Argument by Analogy Open
In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no c…
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James Sterba’s New Argument from Evil Open
This article addresses the main argument in James Sterba’s book, an argument which claims that the existence of a good God is logically incompatible with the evil in the world. I claim to show that his main premise, MEPRI, is implausible a…
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Animism and natural teleology from Avicenna to Boyle Open
Argument Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism…
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A Theologian’s Perspective on Science‐Engaged Theology Open
Peter Harrison's 2011 Gifford Lectures, published under the title The Territories of Science and Religion, surely count as the single most helpful intervention in the field of 'religion and science' since that conversation got seriously un…
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How Torsion as Presented by De Sabbata and Sivaram in Erice 1990 Argument as Modified May Permit Cosmological Constant, and Baseline as to Dark Energy Open
Based on the idea of cyclic conformal cosmology, we discuss how torsion may allow for a cosmological constant, which links the ideas given by Beckwith and QaZi 2023 to a presentation as far as Torsion as given by de Sabbata and Sir-varam, …
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Organisms and the form of freedom in Kant's third <i>Critique</i> Open
In the second half of the third Critique, Kant develops a new form of judgment peculiar to organisms: teleological judgment. In the Appendix to this text, Kant argues that we must regard the final, unconditioned end of creation as human fr…
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How scientific is theology really? A matter of credibility Open
The criteria for what is considered as science have been debated for a very long time. This article assumes the scientific nature of Theology as a given. This article discusses in three concentric circles the scientific nature of Theology …
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Foundational Grounding and Creaturely Freedom Open
According to classical theism, the universe depends on God in a way that goes beyond mere (efficient) causation. I have previously argued that this ‘deep dependence’ of the universe on God is best understood as a type of grounding. In a re…
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Femmes finales: natural selection, physiology, and the return of the repressed Open
Nineteenth-century final causes were ‘barren virgins’, an aphorism attributed to Francis Bacon, but twentieth-century teleology was a ‘mistress’, an adage of uncertain provenance. A study of historical uses of these gendered metaphors is u…
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SYMBOLIC AI AND GÖDEL'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT Open
Over the past decade, variants of Gödel's ontological arguments have been critically examined using modern symbolic AI technology. Computers have unearthed new insights about them and even contributed to the exploration of new, simplified …
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Does Fine-Tuning Need an Explanation? Open
Contemporary physics has shown that the universe is fine-tuned for life i.e. of all the possible ways physical laws, initial conditions and constants of physics could have been configured, only an extremely small range is capable of suppor…
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The Philosophical Proof for God’s Existence between Europe and the Islamic World: Reflections on an Entangled History of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance Open
The Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World…
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THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: CRITIQUING A RECENT DEFENCE Open
In the late 1970s the big bang model of cosmology was widely accepted and interpreted as implying the universe had a beginning. At the end of that decade William Lane Craig revived an argument for God known as the Kalam Cosmological Argume…
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Evil and Divine Power: A Response to James Sterba’s Argument from Evil Open
In this article, I offer a response to James P. Sterba’s moral argument for the non-existence of God. Sterba applies to God the so-called Pauline Principle that it is not permissible to do evil in order that good may come. He suggests that…
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Four (Or So) New Fine-Tuning Arguments Open
Both proponents and opponents of the argument for the deliberate fine-tuning, by an intelligent agent, of the fundamental constants of the universe have accepted certain assumptions about how the argument will go. These include both treati…
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The Random Design Argument Open
The "random design argument" is a popular but questionable mode of justification that can be found in the scientific literature. The first part of this argument is that, if God had designed X, the features of X would approximate randomness…
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Between <i>Old</i> and <i>New</i> Teleology. Kant on Maupertuis’ <i>Principle of Least Action</i> Open
In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic , Kant formulates teleological principles, or rather ideas, and explicates them referring to concrete examples of natural science such as chemistry, astronomy, biology, empirical psychology, …
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DOES CRITICIZING INTELLIGENT DESIGN (ID) UNDERMINE DESIGN DISCOURSE IN THE QURʾĀN? A KALĀMIC RESPONSE Open
Some Muslim thinkers argue against evolution using intelligent design (ID) arguments. One possible impetus for this line of reasoning is the several indications of design mentioned throughout the Qurʾān. Therefore, criticizing ID could be …
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Dismantling Paley’s Watch: Equivocation Regarding the Word “Order” in the Teleological Argument Open
William Paley’s classic version of the Teleological Argument contends that just as a watch is ordered for a purpose and we rightfully conclude that it had a creator who ordered it, the universe is also ordered in many ways and for a variet…
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On the Relationship between Design and Evolution Open
A longstanding question in science and religion is whether standard evolutionary models are compatible with the claim that the world was designed. In The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, theologian E. V. Rope Kojonen constructs a pow…
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Strong and Weak Teleology in the Life Sciences Post-Darwin Open
It is often assumed that direction and purpose in nature—teleology—is a dead relic of the past, a result of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871). But teleology has had a long and complex relationship with sci…
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Exemplars in ‘science and religion’: a theological dialogue with Thomas Kuhn Open
This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , has not been adequately explored by theologians and scholars in the field of science and religion. While many cite Kuhn to suggest that science…
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A reassessment of the design of Carnegie public library buildings with a view to their future use: The case of Evanston Public Library, Illinois (1908) Open
Based primarily on archival sources, this study focuses on the original design of the purpose-built Evanston Public Library, Illinois, opened in 1908. Throughout the course of its lifespan of half a century, the Library earned a reputation…
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What Money Is and Ought To Be Open
Teleological thinking about money reasons from what money is for to both how it ought to be used and what forms it should take. One type, found in Aristotle’s argument against usury, takes teleological considerations alone to decisively se…