ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Arthur James Balfour, Theism and Humanism

(transcribed from Gifford Lectures of 1914)

(London: Hodder and Stoughton; 1915), pp. 43, 44.

‘To me, then, it seems that the common-sense “argument from design” is still of value.

But, if it carries us beyond mechanical materialism, it must be owned that it does not carry us very far towards a religious theology.

It is inconsistent with Naturalism: it is inconsistent with Agnosticism.

But its demands would be satisfied by the barest creed which acknowledged that the universe, or part of it, showed marks of intelligent purpose.

And, though most persons willing to accept this impoverished form of Theism will certainly ask for more, this is not because they are swept forward by the inevitable logic of the argument, but because the argument has done something to clear a path which they were already anxious to pursue.’

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