Providence and invention

The two proofs of the Qur'an (dalil al-'inaya, dalil al-ikhtira')

Averroes 1126 · 1198Truth cannot contradict truth: philosophy and faith agree.

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What it claims

There exists an agent who wills the world's order and invents beings: it is God.

Why

Everything here below suits human existence, and this fit cannot be chance; whatever is invented has an inventor.

The same idea through history

Averroes1180The version presented here: two proofs that Averroes says he draws from the Qur'an itself, valid for everyone, scholars and ordinary people alike.

William Paley1802William Paley revived the argument from the world's order in the 19th century, with the image of the watch found in a field. The debate with Hume and Darwin is presented on his page.

In short

"Providence and invention" is an argument by Averroes (Exposition of the Methods of Proof (al-Kashf), ch. 1 (1179-1180), 1180) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: theism). Its claim: There exists an agent who wills the world's order and invents beings: it is God. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Exposition of the Methods of Proof (al-Kashf), ch. 1 (1179-1180)

Valid with an implicit premise

How can God's existence be proved to everyone, scholars and ordinary people alike? The Ash'arite theologians of his time start from a difficult demonstration: the world is made of particles and accidents that come to be, so it began, so it has a creator. Averroes judges this path too obscure for the masses and not rigorous enough for scholars. He proposes the two proofs he finds in the Qur'an: the universe is made for man (providence), and life arises where there was none (invention). The scholar and the ordinary person make the same proof; the scholar simply makes it in more detail, like someone who knows the craftsman's trade.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a world where everything is suited to life, with neither pure chance nor intention: a third cause, blind but not random, did the sorting. This is Darwin's idea (third objection). The proof from invention remains valid: P4 is what would have to be disputed.

These are two proofs together. The second (P4 and P5) is valid as it stands. The first needs P3: chance or intention, nothing else. Averroes does not say this; he only rules out chance. The whole modern debate is about this point: Hume, then Darwin, propose a third explanation. Note: the conclusion says "an agent"; that it is unique, and that it is the God of the Qur'an, is a further step, which Averroes takes later in the book.

Analogy. You walk into an unknown house: the table is laid, at your height, with your favourite dish. You do not believe in chance: someone was expecting you. Averroes adds that the scholar is like a visitor who knows how to cook: in every detail he sees even better the care of whoever prepared it all.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Al-Ghazali 1095 · attacks the conclusion

For anyone who holds the world to be eternal, as the philosophers do following Aristotle (and later Averroes), nothing is truly "invented": to act is to bring a thing from non-being into being. If the world has always existed, God is not truly its agent, and the world is not truly his work: saying "Creator" is no more than a figure of speech.

Averroès replies

Averroès

Saying that God's act comes to be is right, for this act is a motion. "Eternal" only means that this motion has neither a first nor a last moment: the philosophers do not say that the world is made of eternal things. The Ash'arites did not understand this. That is why the name "continuous production" (al-huduth al-da'im) suits the world better than "eternity".

The debate goes on (our summary) Al-Ghazali would answer that an act without beginning is no longer an act in the proper sense. The question becomes: is a beginning needed for there to be creation? Thomas Aquinas would later judge that a world created from all eternity involves no contradiction, while believing, by faith, that the world began.

Hume (Philo, in the Dialogues) 1779 · attacks premise 3

Philo, the sceptic of Hume's Dialogues, takes up an old hypothesis: matter, recombining over an immense time, ends up falling into a stable order. So there is no point marvelling that an animal's parts are well adjusted: how could an animal survive if they were not? Whatever is not adjusted disappears.

Averroès replies

No reply possible: objection raised in 1779, after the author's death (1198).

Cleanthes (in the same dialogue) 1779 · An answer within Hume's dialogue

Your hypothesis explains at best what is necessary for survival, not the many extra advantages. Two eyes, two ears are not indispensable; humanity would have survived without horses, dogs or fruit. If no camels had been created for the use of man in the deserts of Africa and Arabia, would the world have been dissolved? Each of these advantages proves a design, and a benevolent one.

The debate goes on (our summary) The exchange shows where the line runs: the adjustment needed to survive can be explained without intention; the "extra" advantages for man, which are precisely the heart of Averroes' proof, seem to require more. That is the point Darwin would attack.

Charles Darwin 1859 · attacks premise 3

There is a third explanation, neither pure chance nor intention: natural selection. Living things vary slightly in each generation, and useful variations are kept. But this selection never produces an organ for the sole good of another species. Darwin writes: if it were proved that some part of a species had been formed for the exclusive good of another, his theory would be annihilated. Yet Averroes' proof says precisely that everything here below is made for man.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1859, after the author's death (1198).

The debate goes on (our summary) Cleanthes' camel thus receives another explanation: it is adapted to the desert for its own sake, and man makes use of it. Today's defenders of design have therefore moved the argument: no longer the organs of living things, but the tuning of the laws of physics that makes life possible (see the fine-tuning argument, and Paley's page). The proof from invention raises another question, still debated: how did life arise in matter?

In the same family · Teleological (design)

The world has an architect (Balbus against Cotta)Cicero