is not possible to know that by looking at the natural world alone. The
question of purpose is closely related to the question of whether something
like the God of Western monotheistic religions can be known to exist by
studying the order, goodness, and grandeur of the universe. Already around 1750
David Hume pointed out that if one is looking at evidence of design, then all
of the evidence must be taken into account: not only order and goodness but
disorder and evil as well. He seems to think that some sort of creator is
possible (in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously
in 1779, it is not clear which character represents Hume's own views). But if
so, we can know next to nothing about the creator's qualities: an intelligence,
for all we know, as much like ours as our intelligence is like the rotting of a
turnip–one deity or a team; alive or dead; a juvenile or superannuated deity.
Nothing can be known of any plan for the future perfection of the world or the
cannot infer the purposes of a benevolent creator from evidence in the natural
world, then how can I (and my co-religionists) claim to know the world's
purpose? The answer is too complicated to spell out here, but I take it to
involve detailed comparisons of competing traditions on the basis of the
support they draw from their own peculiar kinds of evidence (for Christians,
historical events as in the life of Jesus and the early church, and carefully
evaluated religious experiences). In addition, each tradition must be evaluated
on the basis of the intellectual crises it faces. Two crises facing what I call
the scientific naturalist tradition (originating in Hume's and others'
writings) are the questions of whether it is possible adequately to explain the
phenomenon of religion naturalistically, and whether the tradition can provide
grounds for morality.
Continue here if reading from print version.
research on the practices and beliefs of religious adherents is relevant to the
research is also relevant to some of the crises facing theistic traditions, and
so knowledge of nature is not irrelevant to the issue of purpose. For example,
a long-standing challenge to Christianity is to explain why a good God permits
so much suffering of humans and animals at the hand of nature. Why are there
tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, and ghastly diseases? Before the development of
modern science (and still in some Christian circles) these were all seen as
caused by sin (the Fall) and as fitting punishment for sin.
know that animals suffered for millions of years before humans evolved. We also
know that all of these catastrophes are produced by the ordinary working of the
processes of nature, such as plate tectonics. Yet one can then ask why God did
not create a more benevolent natural order. If it is the strength of gravity
that causes broken bones when children fall, why not a kinder, gentler
one point where greater knowledge of the natural world bears on a theological
problem. Since the writings of Brandon Carter in 1974 we have had increasingly
detailed knowledge of the way in which fundamental constants and physical laws
appear to be fine-tuned to produce a universe that supports life. Change any of
the numbers slightly, and the development of the entire universe would have
gone quite differently, making the evolution of life impossible. For example,
the ratio of the strength of gravity to one of the other basic forces, the
nuclear weak force, had to be adjusted as accurately as one part in 10 to the
100th power to avoid either a swift collapse of the universe or an explosion.
scientific developments can be used to argue that, if there is a designer God
whose purpose for the universe includes life, especially intelligent life, then
the laws and constants had to be almost exactly what they are. Thus, if we are
to be here, the natural world must contain almost exactly the amount of danger
and destruction that it does.
the study of the natural world cannot show that it has a purpose–the
fine-tuning is not an adequate argument for the existence of God–it is indeed
indirectly relevant to the question of the universe's purpose.
Nancey Murphy is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary.