Only out of rational choice can order have come."
But clearly the alternative is now no longer one between chance and choice.
If natural laws arise by way of necessary consequence from the persistence
of a single self-existing substance, it becomes a matter of scientific
(though not of logical) demonstration that "the fair and orderly universe
that now exists" is the one and only universe that, in the nature of
things, _can_ exist. But to continue this interesting passage from Dr.
Flint's work--interesting not only because it sets forth the previous
standing of this subject with so much clearness, but also because the work
is of such very recent publication.
"The most common mode, perhaps, of evading the problem which order presents
to reason is the indication of the process by which the order has been
realised. From Democritus to the latest Darwinian there have been men who
supposed they had completely explained away the evidences of design in
nature when they had described the physical antecedents of the arrangements
appealed to as evidences. Aristotle showed the absurdity of this
supposition more than 2200 years ago."
Now this is a perfectly valid criticism on all such previous non-theistical
arguments as were drawn from an "indication of the process by which the
order has been realised;" for in all these previous arguments there was an
absence of any physical explanation of the _ultimate_ cause of the process
contemplated, and so long as this ultimate cause remained obscure, although
the evidence of design might by these arguments have been excluded from
particular processes, the evidence of design could not be similarly
excluded from the ultimate cause of these processes.
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