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Mellor's ‘Bridge–Hand’ Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

B. L. Hebblethwaite
B. L. Hebblethwaite
Affiliation:
Queens' College, Cambridge
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Extract

In his article ‘God and Probability’, 1 Hugh Mellor introduced the notion of the ‘bridge-hand fallacy’, allegedly committed by those who think they can appeal to probabilities in arguments for design. I should like to give this notion another airing, partly because of its recent criticism in two interesting books - R. G. Swinburne' The Existence of God and D. J. Bartholomew's God of Chance - and partly because it seems worth asking how it fares in relation to the most recent examples of design argument, namely those which appeal to the so-called ‘anthropic principle’ in cosmology.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3-4 , September 1986 , pp. 473 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

page 473 note 1 Religious Studies, V (1969), 223–34.

page 473 note 2 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, pp. 112f.

page 473 note 3 SCM Press, 1984, pp. 60–3.Google Scholar

page 475 note 1 Bartholomew also thinks that Mellor commits an elementary mistake in the way he converts statistical probability into inductive probability. However, since this does not actually affect the main argument, I shall not pursue the point.

page 476 note 1 See Peacocke's, A. R. discussion of the work of M. Eigen in Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 101ff.Google Scholar

page 476 note 2 See Bartholomew, chapter five.

page 476 note 3 Swinburne, , pp. 137f.Google Scholar, Bartholomew, , pp. 64f.Google ScholarMackie, Even J. L. concedes this. See The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 141.Google Scholar

page 477 note 1 Hume, D., Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Smith, N. Kemp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), P 235Google Scholar

page 477 note 2 American Philosophical Quarterly, XIX, 2 (04 1982).Google Scholar

page 477 note 3 E.g. The Accidental Universe (Cambridge University Press, 1882);God and the New Physics (London: Dent, 1983, Penguin Books, 1984).

page 477 note 4 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

page 477 note 5 Bartholomew, , p. 64.Google Scholar

page 477 note 6 Mellor, , p. 227.Google Scholar

page 478 note 1 Swinburne, R. G., The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).Google Scholar

page 478 note 2 p. 141.