For all we know, design can arise in nature through natural processes (for example, through the process of natural selection). — ModernPAS
Hume also criticised the argument (from design) in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). In this, he suggested that, even if the world is a more or less smoothly functioning system, this may only be a result of the "chance permutations of particles falling into a temporary or permanent self-sustaining order, which thus has the appearance of design."[152]
A century later, the idea of order without design was rendered more plausible by Charles Darwin's discovery that the adaptations of the forms of life are a result of the natural selection of inherited characteristics.[152] For philosopher James D. Madden, it is "Hume, rivaled only by Darwin, [who] has done the most to undermine in principle our confidence in arguments from design among all figures in the Western intellectual tradition."[155]
actually the Wiki entry on Hume has the following — Wayfarer
Part VIII: Investigations of a new hypothesis of cosmology, namely that the universe could be as it is through a process of natural selection operating within a large but finite physical universe: the natural selection being the persistence of forms (things) and processes (repeating chains of events) which once hit on by chance are well adapted to endure. [note: My take is that this part is tacked on because, if he'd have gotten around to publishing this while still living, he'd have been burnt at the stake for heresy without the incorporation of such statements as that which follows.] But nature is more generous, more orderly and more well adapted than this would lead us to expect. So: 'A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource.' — Abstract of Part VIII of Hume's Dialogues
Where I think both Hume and Dawkin's argument fails, is that science itself presumes an order which it doesn't explain. Science itself is based on observation and inference - but it is created on the basis of existing order, namely, 'the order of nature'. I don't think there's any sense in which science explains that order. — Wayfarer
Hume wasn't keen on there being a Sky Father deity that created everything. Which is what the design argument typically is about: as with inferences made after finding a watch in the middle of a desert, since there is apparent design to the universe there then must also be an onmi- this and that designer of the universe. — javra
I think there's a misunderstanding at the back of this, though, arising from the anthropomorphism of 'God as super-engineer'. In that vein, both the pro- and anti- sides of the argument have it wrong - if you believe that the order of nature 'proves' that God exists, then you're tending towards Biblical literalism, i.e. interpreting myth as fact; and if you believe it 'proves' that God doesn't exist, then you're tending towards scientific materialism, which is kind of a mirror image. (That's why, as many have noted, Dawkins himself comes across as a kind of secular fundamentalist.) — Wayfarer
In any case, interesting to note that many modern classical (e.g. Thomist) theologians and philosophers will have no truck with any design arguments whatever. For that, they are sometimes branded as atheists or closet atheists by the ID advocates - which says a lot, in my view. — Wayfarer
I think that the argument as formulated relies heavily on the definition of "design," which probably needs to be stipulated. If "design" is used in a relatively weak sense, then 2 is clearly false; but if "design" simply means "deliberate arrangement," then 2 is trivially true and 3 is the dubious premiss. Proponents of "intelligent design" arguments typically try to establish objective criteria for "specified complexity" that is considered to be evidence of design in this stronger sense — aletheist
Hume lived and worked a long time - about 100 years? - before Darwin. The objections you're attributing to David Hume are much more like those of Richard Dawkins who has devoted many books, such as Blind Watchmaker and Unweaving the Rainbow, to exactly this question — Wayfarer
Where I think both Hume and Dawkin's argument fails, is that science itself presumes an order which it doesn't explain. Science itself is based on observation and inference - but it is created on the basis of existing order, namely, 'the order of nature'. I don't think there's any sense in which science explains that order. — Wayfarer
I would think that science is nothing if not the attempt to explain order, if by "order" we mean something like "observable complexity of patterns." — ModernPAS
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