The Design Argument - Quotes

Question 1

Paley’s analogy

Answer 1

‘it’s several parts are framed and put together for a purpose’
- Paley: Natural Theology

‘This mechanism being observed… the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker’
- Paley: Natural Theology

‘every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature’
- Paley: Natural Theology

‘the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art’
- Paley: Natural Theology

Question 2

Hume: the world could have been made through trial and error

Answer 2

‘many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity’
- Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

‘a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making’
- Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Question 3

The analogy between ‘manmade artefacts’ and ‘natural objects’ cannot be reliably drawn

Answer 3

‘[the universe is] single, individual, without parallel’
- Hume’s Dialogues

‘surely you will not affirm, that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house… the dissimilitude is so striking’
- Hume’s Dialogues

Question 4

Even if we do draw the analogy, if we follow it strictly, we risk anthropomorphism

Answer 4

‘faulty and imperfect’ (the world)
- Dialogues

‘only the first rude essay of some infant deity’
- Dialogues

‘dependent, inferior deity’
- Dialogues

‘why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?’
- Dialogues

Question 5

There are other explanations for the appearance of design, which do not require a designer

Answer 5

‘a finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions’

‘in an eternal duration… every possible order or position must be tried an infinite number of times’

(the world) ‘seems to bear a stronger resemblance to a vegetable than to an animal’

Question 6

A designer would be even more complex, and even more in need of explanation, than the world itself

Answer 6

‘a mental world… requires a cause as much, as does a material world’

Question 7

J.S. Mill (criticism)

Answer 7

‘Nature is full of events that would be utterly vile if human beings brought them about’

‘the duty of man is to co-operate with the beneficent powers’

• Three Essays on Religion

God designed a world full of evil. If humans did some of the things animals did, it would be really disgusting.

Question 8

Kant (support)

Answer 8

‘oldest, clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind’

• The Critique of Pure Reason

Question 9

Kant (criticism)

Answer 9

‘if… we disengage [God] from the chain… how shall reason bridge the abyss that separates the latter from the former?’

‘the attainment of absolute totality is completely impossible on the path of empiricism’

• The Critique of Pure Reason

Question 10

Darwin (criticism)

Answer 10

‘The old argument from design in nature… fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered’
- Autobiography

Question 11

Hawking (fine-tuning argument)

Answer 11

‘the values [of fundamental numbers] seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life’
- A Brief History of Time

Question 12

Plantinga (fine-tuning argument)

Answer 12

‘there are a large number of dials that have to be tuned to within extremely narrow limits for life to be possible’
- The Dawkins Confusion

Question 13

Tennant (aesthetic argument)

Answer 13

‘[nature is] saturated with beauty - on the telescopic and the microscopic scale’
- Philosophical Theology

Question 14

Scholars for design argument

Answer 14

• Paley
• Kant (somewhat)
• Hawking
• Plantinga
• Tennant

Question 15

Scholars against design argument

Answer 15

• Hume
• J.S. Mill
• Kant
• Darwin