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Was your Adler post supposed to support your claims that Paley was right, or that he wasn't talking about a Christian God? I am baffled why you would post that particular piece since Adler writes:

"I mention all these things because in the first place, I think natural theology, as it has been developed in the nineteenth century, following Bishop William Paley in modern times, is not sound philosophically. It should be regarded as Christian apologetics, which is the use of reason to defend the truths of the Christian religion and to reconcile Christian faith with scientific knowledge. The truths of Christian faith are much more clearly and competently presented in dogmatic or sacred theology, as that was formulated in the great Summas of the Middle Ages."

"This erroneous argument is later presented in Paley's Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1816), in which the watchmaker's design of the time-piece he makes is proposed as the model in terms of which we should think of God's relation to the universe he creates. The creator is not an artist making an artifact; the created universe is not a work of art. In the third place, as I have shown in How to Think About God, the presence of chance in the universe, both in cosmological developments and in biological evolution, lies at the heart of an indispensable premise in the only sound philosophical argument for the existence of God."

"The paleontological discoveries of Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould provide us with ample scientific evidence of chance at work in the course of biological evolution. Twentieth-century particle physics and its cosmology, as influenced by the general theory of relativity, provide similar evidence of chance at work in the eighteen billion years since the Big Bang; and the Big Bang itself, which is not the exnihilation of the cosmos, is itself an unpredictable event.

The doctrine of the miscalled "natural theology," beginning with Paley and coming down to our own day, represents poorly conceived Christian apologetics that has its intellectual background in Newtonian classical mechanics. It is inconsistent with the scientific facts discovered, and scientific theories formulated, in the twentieth century."

What was the point of posting this?

What was the point of posting this?

LOL. I'm wondering, is that a metaphysical question of being? We post, therefore we are? OK, that's a bit corny. I posted the article for your consideration.

I also concur with Adler that there are kinds of arguments and that some of these are rhetorical. I think rhetorical arguments are fine, whenever they lead to a new consideration of things whenever other means have reached their limit.

It just may be that arguments have their limitations. Both sides are quite superstitious concerning the universalizability of their favorite conceptions.

I also think he raises the level of conversation, adds insights that are usually not presented here, and in general is much more rewarding to read than the quick-type dismissives of the unthinking.