God and the Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning From Bacon to Kant

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GOD ANDTHE SECULAR

GOD ANDTHE SECULAR A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant

Robin Attfield

University College Cardiff Press

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Copyright © Robin Attfield 1978 First published 1978 in Great Britain by University College Cardiff Press, P.O. Box 78, Cardiff, CFl IXL, Wales, in association with Christopher Davies (Publishers) Ltd., 52 Mansel Street, Swansea SAl 5EL. Printed in Wales by Salesbury Press Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.

ISBN

90142692 X

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PREFACE Thanks are due to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at University College, Cardiff, for discussion and encouragement, and also to Robert Young, who read an earlier version and from whose criticisms I have benefited. To Professor H. Cunliffe-Jones of the University of Manchester I am grateful for the supervision of research there, as to Professor J. L. Evans for supervision of research at Cardiff. Professor Basil Mitchell also gave invaluable help and advice. David Attfield’s ‘Christ is of God’ must have given rise to a number of ideas incorporated in Chapter 5: I am also grateful for discussion of an earlier version of the present text with him, and also with Leela Attfield, but for whose care of the author and his children this book would not have appeared.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author and publishers are grateful for permission for quotations from the following: Paulo Rossi, ‘Francis Bacon, From Magic to Science’, Marger^^ Purver, ‘The Royal Society; Concept and Creation’ and G. Leibniz, ‘Theodicy’, edited by A. M. Farrer, by permission of Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.; Volume I of ‘Correspondence of Isaac Newton’, edited H. W. Turnbull, by permission of The Royal Society; ‘Freedom and Prediction’, by J. R. Lucas, quoted from ‘Preoceedings of the Aristotelian Society’ Supplementary Volume for 1967 (© 1967 The Aristotelian Society), by permission of the Editor; David Hume, ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’, edited by Norman Kemp Smith, by permission of Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.; ‘Spinoza Selections’, edited by John Wild, by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons; R. H. Kargon, ‘Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton’ and ‘British Moralists 1650-1800’, edited by D. D. Raphael, by permission of Oxford University Press; ‘Early Seventeenth Century Scientists’, edited by R. Harre, by permission of Pergamon Press Ltd; Thomas Hobbes, ‘Leviathan’, edited by M. Oakeshott, and John Plamenatz, ‘The English Untilitarians’, by permission of Basil Blackwell and Mott Ltd.; ‘Kant and the Cosmological Argument’, by Peter Remnant, quoted from ‘Australasian Journal of Philosophy’, 1959, by permission of the Editor; Benjamin Earrington, ‘The Philosophy of Francis Bacon’, by permission of Liverpool University Press; ‘The Argument from Design’, by Richard Swinburne, quoted from ‘Philosophy’, 1968, ‘The Philosophical Works of Descartes’, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, S. Mintz, ‘The Hunting of Leviathan’ and ‘Unpublished Scientific Papers of Sir Isaac Newton’, edited and translated by A. R. and M. B. Hall, by permission of Cam¬ bridge University Press; I. Kant, ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, trans¬ lated by Norman Kemp Smith, by permission of Macmillan and Co. Ltd. and of St. Martin’s Press, Inc.; Sir Isaac Newton, ‘Mathe¬ matical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World’, translated by Andrew Motte, revised by Florian Cajori, (Copyright © by Elorian Cajori), by permission of the University of California Press; ‘The Clarke-Leibniz Correspondence’, edited by H. G. Alexander, by permission of Manchester University Press; ‘Newton’s Philosophy of Nature’, edited by H. S. Thayer, by per¬ mission of Hafner Press; and ‘Descartes, Mathematics and God’, by Leonard G. Miller, quoted from ‘The Philosophical Review’, 1957, by permission of The Managing Editor and of Professor Miller.

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: Section Section Section Section

1; 2: 3: 4:

THEOLOGY AND METHOD MODERN SCIENCE

1: 2; 3: 4: 5: 6:

SELF-DETERMINATION Introductory Determinists and Objections to Determinism

THE SECULARISATION THEORY

THE GROUNDS OF THEISM.

THE GROUNDS OF THEISM. The Teleological Argument The Goodness of God

99 104

MORAL 122 130

I

The Need for Natural Theology The Ontological Argument The Cosmological Argument

CHAPTER 6: Section 1: Section 2:

OF

The Autonomy of Ethics Theology and Utilitarianism

CHAPTER 5: Section 1: Section 2: Section 3:

15 33 49 50

The Nature of Physical Theology 68 Physics Deduced from Theology: Descartes and Newton Supernatural Explanation in Newton 75 Physics Deduced from Theology: Leibniz 80 The Supernatural Explanation of Minds 85 Science and Miracles 89

CHAPTER 4: Section 1: Section 2:

EARLY

THE ASSAULT ON PHYSICAL THEOLOGY

CHAPTER 3: Section 1: Section 2:

IN

Bacon’s Theology and Method Theoretical Physics The Royal Society Some Contrasts and Conclusions

CHAPTER 2: Section Section Section Section Section Section

9

145 152 163

II 182 J9g

CONCLUSION

211

BIBLIOGRAPHY

216

INDEX

227

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