Philosophy is Beautiful, and Richard Taylor, an Artist

This is the most beautiful philosophical illustration I have ever read - beautiful for its imagery, understandability, and the way it leads you gently towards its razor-sharp conclusion.

To my dismay, Wikipedia (the ultimately authoritative resource, of course) informs me that the author of this masterpiece - a true philosophical artist - Richard Taylor, died in 2003. So I can never inform him how great I think his work is!

It tells me that he was also a bee-keeper. Perhaps that is why his philosophy stings with such force?

Lame jokes aside, THIS is the argument I think is one of the most brilliant I have ever read:

Suppose that certain passengers traveling on a train notice some white stones on a hillside that spell out the letters: THE BRITISH RAILWAY WELCOMES YOU TO WALES.

While it is possible that the stones simply rolled down the hillside and ended up in an arrangement that strangely resembles an intelligible sentence, the natural reaction of a passenger upon seeing the stones on the hillside is the conclusion that the arrangement was intentionally designed by a human to communicate a message.

However, supposing one of the passengers decides, solely based on seeing the stones, that he is in fact entering Wales, it would be ridiculously inconsistent for him to assume that the grouping of the stones was an accident.

Richard Taylor argues that once you decide that the stones convey a message, you are forced to conclude that they were arranged by an intelligent being to convey a message that has nothing to do with the stones themselves.

It would be irrational to believe the message of the stones and conclude that you were entering Wales while at the same time maintaining that they were grouped accidentally.

The fact that the stones appear to be arranged in a pattern does not “prove” that there was an intelligent designer; neither does the apparent “design” of human sense organs.

However, someone who believes that their sense organs are the product of natural, non-purposive chance, yet relies on those sense organs to provide true information about the world, is just as illogical as the passenger who concludes that the stones on the hillside are a freak of nature, and yet still believes their message.

In conclusion, if naturalism is true, naturalists have no reason to believe that it is true.

Beautiful. Just absoballylutely beautiful.