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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

Your case was compelling. I enjoyed the debate!

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Peter Foreshaw Brookes's avatar

There is a version of a nomological argument for the existence of God that precedes the paper you link - it's from James Orr, a Cambridge academic. A quick check of the paper's reference list seems to miss Orr's contribution, which is odd. Perhaps an honest mistake, but Orr did publish a whole book on it several years ago.

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Peter Foreshaw Brookes's avatar

I partially revoke this comment. Reading through the paper you link, I think they are sufficiently distinct arguments. Still think odd not to cite Orr, but not agregious. Orr focuses on the mere regularity of the universe demanding explanation (not in a design/teleol sense of how the world fits together, but in a sense of why it has regularity at all), as opposed to this article's focus on perceived harmony between the regularity/laws of the universe and its states. I personally find Orr's compelling but not theirs. It figures that the observable harmony will be that which exists between laws and states - how would one observe a lack thereof?

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