Teleology

Ch.1, §1: ‘Deserved Respect’ (pp.31–41) – a brief addition.

A quick clarification.

In a post some time ago, I said that theology was very likely to claim that there was some ‘purpose or goal, some kind of teleology to the world’ but that ‘it does not have to do so in such a way as to get into a direct argument with scientific explanation.’

All that I meant was that it would be perfectly coherent for a theologian to claim both that the world and its development could be wholly and accurately described in terms of efficient causality, with no gaps left in the explanation that might require recourse to some other kind of explanation – and that the same theologican could claim that this explicable world nevertheless also can be read as travelling towards some goal. And it would be possible for that theologian to speak of that goal as the goal for which the world was created, without that claim in any way undercutting or interfering with the comprehensiveness and completeness of the description of the world in terms of efficient causality. Of course, there are all sorts of questions about whether a theologian could have good grounds for making this sort of claim – I don’t deny that. Nevertheless, I don’t see anything logically preventing the theologian from making it should he or she believe that there are such grounds. I am also not claiming that this is exactly what theologians will or should want to say – I was simply setting it out as a possibility.

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