Bad Faithwhich plants and animals can come to look designed, but are
not, since the ‘design’ is actually adaptive. By extension, the
Darwinian supposes that the universe itself evolved according
to natural, indifferent processes.
Aquinas is exploring ways, though, not proofs. To try to refute
the so-called arguments for the existence of God as if they were
exercises in logic is itself to mistake their purpose. His fi ve ways
are certainly supposed to show that it is reasonable enough to
look at the cosmos and intuit a God behind and before it. But at
the same time – and this is the crucial point the atheists miss –
the fi ve ways are simultaneously supposed to prove the impos-
sibility of knowing anything positive about God. What Aquinas
intends is to instruct believers in why it is simply not possible
to say much about what it means to confess that God exists.
Say that the universe did spring from nothing in a random
fl uctuation of the quantum vacuum. For the believer – following
a modern version of Aquinas’s ‘proof’ – the implication is not
that quantum theory disproves God, but that God’s ‘uncaused-
ness’ must be more mysterious still. Or consider the teleologi-
cal argument from design. As Hume pointed out, thinking that
a watch is made by a watchmaker presupposes that we already
know who or what makes watches – namely, the fore-mentioned
watchmaker. So while design in the universe might apparently
be seen all over the place – from the fi ne-tuned organs of the
senses to the fi ne-tuned constants of cosmology – the argument
should also highlight the fact that any designer of the universe
would be way beyond anything of which we might have experi-
ence. As Turner summaries again: whatever might show God to
exist equally shows God’s unknowability. The ‘proofs’ are medi-
tations on the mystery, not scientifi c hypotheses.
Missing this fundamental point is to make the same mistake
as taking Socrates’ question in the Euthyphro as an argument
for atheism. This asked whether things are good because the
gods say so, or whether they are good because they are good in
themselves. If the former, then the suggestion is that this makes
morality arbitrary. If the latter, as seems right, then it supposedly