Edward Feser writes:
. . .
But the mechanistic conception of nature that leads to reductionism and eliminativism is in any event incoherent. For the mind that does the “projecting” in question cannot itself coherently be either reduced or eliminated (as Cartesian mechanists realize, which makes their position at least more sane than that of the materialist); and (as Cartesian mechanists do not realize any more than materialists do) the efficient causality the whole mechanistic model presupposes ultimately cannot be made sense of apart from something like the substantial forms and final causality the mechanist eschews. . . .
and concludes,
In short, while the “world as artifact” model the early modern philosophers put at the center of Western thought was regarded by many of them as a means of defending the religious and moral heritage of the West, it was in fact quite the opposite. In reality it was, and is – if I may wax Marxian – the “objective ally” of deism, atheism, and reductionism. Hence it is simply not to the point to debate with Darwinians whether or not the cosmic watchmaker is “blind” (as Richard Dawkins would put it). The fundamental error – made by Darwinian naturalists and ID theorists alike – is to think of the world as a “watch” in the first place.