It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST
mechanism, of one OR the other. It was as if one should say "My
shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet, hence it is impossible
that they should have been produced by machinery." We know that they
are both: they are made by a machinery itself designed to fit the
feet with shoes. Theology need only stretch similarly the designs of
God. As the aim of a football-team is not merely to get the ball to
a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get up on some
dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed
MACHINERY OF CONDITIONS--the game's rules and the opposing players;
so the aim of God is not merely, let us say, to make men and to save
them, but rather to get this done through the sole agency of
nature's vast machinery. Without nature's stupendous laws and
counterforces, man's creation and perfection, we might suppose,
would be too insipid achievements for God to have designed them.
This saves the form of the design-argument at the expense of its old
easy human content. The designer is no longer the old man-like
deity. His designs have grown so vast as to be incomprehensible to
us humans. The WHAT of them so overwhelms us that to establish the
mere THAT of a designer for them becomes of very little consequence
in comparison.
Pages:
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104