Atheism and Theism 91This ‘eliminativist’ conclusion is at odds with what is generally supposed
to be the case, including the presuppositions of most working scientists. We
do believe there are living things and that they exhibit features additional to
those of matter as that is characterized by physics. The nature of such features
is precisely what the life sciences are concerned to describe and understand.
Moreover, nothing in elementary physics forces us to say that this is an
illusion; there is nothing in physicsthat is incompatible with biology, even
teleology. It is only the philosophicalimperative of reductionist materialism
that requires the denial of ontological and explanatory irreducibility.
Suppose then that this point is conceded, but it is maintained that the
existence and emergence of life do not call for any explanation beyond that
available to naturalism. My objection is now this: if these accounts eschew
eliminativism and allow the veridicality of biological characterizations, then
they have to show why descriptions of beneficial teleology are not also
warranted, and how the laws of nature operating on inanimate matter could
generate life. The former is so to speak a ‘stopping’ problem, the latter a
‘starting’ one. If the existence of complex living forms is allowed why not
grant what appearances also suggest, namely that these forms exhibit bene-
ficial order? Why stop with mere life? And if even mere life is granted how
did it start? The latter question is intended as a philosophical one. I am not
asking what the natural mechanism is, but how it is even conceivable that
there could be one. Given that no conjunction of descriptions of purely
physical states together with non-biological laws entails a description of bio-
logical states, any account of these issues is going to be open to a vitalist
interpretation. The advocate of neo-vitalism, in the Aristotelian sense ex-
plained above, can claim that what has been described is the material-causal
substratum of life not something that is of itself sufficient for it. It may be
countered that this is ontologically extravagant, to which I would respond
that it is not superfluous if a materialistic explanation seems incomplete,
and that only a non-scientific insistence on reductionism motivates the thesis
that it must be no more than mechanism even where there could be no
deductive explanation of how it is so.
The next stage in the defence of teleology concerns not the origins of
life but its evolutionary history. First, however, let me observe that contrary
to some popular expositions evolutionary biologists do not try to show that
every advantageous characteristic is the direct product of natural selection.
Genetic mutations rarely have single effects, and if some of these improve
the reproductivity of breeding populations then while they will tend to be
selected for, other collateral effects may be preserved so long as they are not
seriously disadvantageous. Thus features may emerge that were not them-
selves selected, and some of these may be good, some indifferent, and some
bad – though not so bad as to be fatal. In other words, even within the sphere