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One of the more controversial arguments in the Book of Mormon is found within Alma\u2019s response to Korihor in Alma 30<\/a>. Korihor asks Alma to \u201cshow me a sign, that I may be convinced that there is a God, yea show unto me that he hath power\u2026.\u201d (43<\/a>) Alma responds that “all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.\u201d (44<\/a>)<\/p>\n Most people\u00a0cast this debate as between the humanist skeptic of religion and the believer. Alma\u2019s response is thus seen as a variation on Paley\u2019s argument from design for the existence of God<\/a>. Paley argued that if we found a watch on the ground we\u2019d assume an engineer had designed it. In the same way creation makes us assume a creator. Now the argument is pretty bad for a variety of reasons, not the least of which self-organization and complexity is pretty well scientifically established. We find it not just in evolution but in very easy to observe phenomena<\/a> ranging from protein formulation to the formation of various structures in thermodynamics. At this point complexity and self-organization is so well established any argument that depends upon it being false (as Paley’s does) seems quaint.<\/p>\n The question is whether Alma is actually making a variation on Paley\u2019s argument.\u00a0I don\u2019t think he is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In his argument Alma never makes any statement about complexity or man made things. Rather he is pretty clear that \u201call things denote there is a God.\u201d In other words it\u2019s directly within our experience of natural phenomena that we encounter the idea of God. To Alma the signs Korihor demands are all around him. While I think it\u2019s fair to read this as a kind of spiritual experience as we think about things, I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s what Alma means. Just as he never mentions complexity he never mentions the spirit or revelation in the argument. Now I’ll admit one\u00a0could easily argue that when he talks about the testimony of the prophets he\u2019s talking about witnesses of spiritual encounters. Without rejecting that reading though let me suggest a other\u00a0approach.<\/p>\n The great American philosopher, physicist and chemist Charles Sanders Peirce had a rather interesting argument for God. Unlike his better known contemporary, William James, Peirce tended to think through issues not in terms of psychology but the hard sciences like chemistry. To Peirce logical analysis and\u00a0careful inquiry were what was\u00a0important in ones considerations. He distinguished his form of pragmatism from that of James. James tended to view religion through a more subjective lens of how an individual responded to religious beliefs in their\u00a0practices. To Peirce while we learned truth through the consequences of a belief being true, he saw those consequences more in terms of scientific measuring such as found in chemistry or physics. Tied to this Peirce developed a type of logic he called abduction<\/a>. Abduction is a type of inference that is somewhat different from the more familiar induction. It\u2019s a type of reasonably accurate guessing roughly akin to how scientists form hypothesis. Now Peirce didn\u2019t think abduction entailed truth. It still needed to be tested the way scientific theories are tested.<\/p>\n