PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

206 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS

That is, if we take our experience with artifacts as the clue to operational
functionality in natural objects, often various humans cooperate in the
production of an artifact, or make changes in it; the evidence cited by the
argument from design suggests a committee as much as it does a single
intelligence. A standard response is that one is justified in positing no more
intelligences than is necessary to explain the data.

(2) Experience further teaches that earthen pots and similar

things are produced by intelligent agents possessing material

bodies, using implements, not endowed with the power of a Su-

preme Lord, limited in knowledge, and so on; the quality of be-

ing an effect therefore supplies a reason for inferring an intelli-

gent agent of the kind described only.^30

That is, if we take our experience with artifacts as the clue to operational
functionality in nature, its intelligent causes are embodied^31 and possess
limited intelligence and power.

(3) Consider the following point also. Does the Lord produce His

effect with His body or apart from His body? Not the latter, for

we do not observe causal agency on the part of any bodyless be-

ing; nor is the former alternative admissible, for in that case the

Lord’s body would be permanent or impermanent. The former

would imply that something made up of parts is eternal; and if

we say this we may as well admit that the world itself is eternal,

and then there is no reason to infer a Lord. And the latter alter-

native is inadmissible because in that case there would be no

cause of the body different from it (which would account for the

origination of the body). Nor could the Lord Himself be assumed

as the cause of the body, since a bodyless being cannot be as-

sumed as the cause of a body. Nor could it be maintained that the

Lord can be assumed to be “embodied” by means of some other

body; for this leads us into a regress in infinitum.^32

Here, the reply is more complex. Suppose that God, like human artificers,
must have a body in order for God to produce operational functionality in
anything. Then God, able to produce operational functionality only
through use of a body that is already is operationally functional, did not
produce operational functionality in that body. God’s own body, construed
on the analogy with human artificers, has an operational functionality not
produced by God. But then why not simply view all bodies as having some
such intrinsic not-produced-by-God operational functionality? Ramanuja,
then, concludes that