A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT by WILLIAM KERRY PRETTY Diploma in Business Administration, University of Ottawa, 1994 Bachelor of Applied Science, University of Waterloo, 1987 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES in the FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY April 2023 © William Kerry Pretty, 2023 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT ABSTRACT David Hume’s criticisms of the design argument for the existence of an intelligent creator have long been accepted by many as devastating objections that render the argument irrelevant. However, recent developments in the areas of biology and cosmology as well as thoughtful assessments of Hume’s philosophical presuppositions now challenge the validity of Hume’s criticisms. By assessing the complexities of biological lifeforms and the mechanisms required to sustain them, considering the implications of several cosmological factors required for the formation of the universe, evaluating the realities confronting chance formation scenarios, and carefully examining how inference should be applied, this work attempts to demonstrate that Hume’s assertions prove inadequate and hopes to make a contribution to the restoration of the design argument’s persona in the public sphere. ii A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT iii CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 a. The Perspective of David Hume ............................................................................................ 2 b. Hume’s Dialogues and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding .................................... 9 c. Limits and Assumptions ...................................................................................................... 12 II. HUME’S CRITIQUE OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT ........................................................ 15 a. Inference Must be Bounded by Cause Sufficiency .............................................................. 18 b. Inference Must be Informed by Human Experience ............................................................ 19 c. Extending the Analogy between the Human Rational Agent and the Designer .................. 22 d. Explanation of the Designer is Required ............................................................................. 24 e. Perhaps It was Many Gods Working Together .................................................................... 26 f. Not Only Rational Agents Bestow Order ............................................................................ 27 g. The Universe Could be a Result of Chance Arrangements ................................................. 29 h. The Implications of Evil and Suffering ............................................................................... 32 III. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S OBJECTIONS ...................................................................... 35 a. Hume and Inference ............................................................................................................. 43 b. Applying Inference Judiciously ........................................................................................... 48 The Reality of Experience.................................................................................................... 49 The Characteristics of Uniqueness ....................................................................................... 53 Concluding Thoughts ........................................................................................................... 58 c. The Limits of Analogy ......................................................................................................... 59 d. Is There an Explanation for the Designer ............................................................................ 66 e. One Instead of Many ............................................................................................................ 71 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT f. iv Chance Is Not an Option ...................................................................................................... 76 The Universe Is Not Eternal ................................................................................................. 79 The Universe Appears to be Finely Tuned .......................................................................... 83 The Existence of the Natural Laws ...................................................................................... 88 The Reality of Mutations and Adaptation ............................................................................ 91 The Complexity of Biological Life ...................................................................................... 94 Concluding Thoughts ......................................................................................................... 109 g. Transmission versus Creation ............................................................................................ 110 h. The Compatibility of Evil, Suffering and Design .............................................................. 113 IV. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 123 The Implications of this Study ........................................................................................... 125 V. APPENDIX A: LIST OF DEFINITIONS ............................................................................. 128 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 135 a. Hume’s Perspectives .......................................................................................................... 135 b. Philosophy.......................................................................................................................... 136 c. Science ............................................................................................................................... 140 d. Other Sources ..................................................................................................................... 143 e. Definitions Sources ............................................................................................................ 144 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT I. 1 INTRODUCTION David Hume is perhaps best remembered for his “criticisms of various claims to religious knowledge and for his naturalistic explanations of the origins of religious belief.” 1 He applies his skeptical and empirical analyses, which assert that all knowledge claims must be derived from repeated experience, to claim that humanity “can gain no definite or even probable insight into the cause of the world from what we learn from our experience with causal relations in the world itself.” 2 In his work entitled Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume attempts to “show that all arguments proving God’s existence, and especially the so-called argument from design,” should not be accepted as absolute, final proofs. 3 Since one of the most basic assumptions that guides a person’s interpretation of all that they experience and believe concerns the question of whether God exists, 4 Hume’s assertions would seem to have serious implications for those who accept his critique. This study will show that each of David Hume’s formal objections to the Design Argument for the existence of God fails because the key components of his critique are based on faulty epistemic premises and implausible skeptical 1 Richard Popkin, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), vii. 2 Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, xi-xii. Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, viii-ix; and see Norman Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis of the Main Argument of the Dialogues, with Some Explanatory Notes,” in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis, IN and New York: The Bobs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1947), 99. 3 Cf. Lane P. Lester and Raymond G. Bohlin, The Natural Limits of Biological Change (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House and Dallas, TX: Probe Ministries International, 1984), 178-80. 4 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 2 assertions that result in unacceptable conclusions. This thesis will argue that, in his critique, Hume advocates a use of inference that is far too narrow, that does not apply appropriate limits to the use of analogy, that limits his epistemology to contingent beings and a deistic or naturalistic worldview, and that misrepresents the transmission of order as a basis for its creation. He also suggests that the order found in the universe could have been established by chance or a community of demi-god creators, positions that given the evidence are philosophically inferior to the design argument and that would seem to be incompatible with his empiricism. On the basis of these alleged deficiencies, this study will insist that Hume’s critique does not offer a valid basis for the rejection of the Design Argument. Before articulating Hume’s criticisms and offering a response, his perspectives on God, religion, and a few epistemological issues, along with his apparent purpose for writing the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding will be considered to provide a modicum of context for this investigation. a. The Perspective of David Hume Who was David Hume? His two autobiographies indicate that he was academically successful in school and had a passion for literature, especially Voet, Vinnius, Cicero, and Virgil. Hume had a studious disposition but rejected his family’s urging to go into law because he was only interested in philosophy and general learning. Hume further described himself as having a mild disposition, being in control of his temper, being open, social, and cheerful, and being able to control his A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 3 passions. He asserted that even his great love of literary fame did not sour his temper despite his frequent disappointments. 5 Hume’s writings span an exceptionally wide range of topics and numerous writers influenced him such that “no single writer or philosophical tradition provides a comprehensive key to his thought.” 6 His writings, however, are unified in their “commitment to the experimental method, or to a form of philosophy that recognizes both the advantages and necessity of relying on experience and observations to provide the answers to intellectual questions.” 7 Hume took empiricism to its extreme, claiming that all knowledge of “matters of fact,” this being any knowledge not grounded in the meanings of terms, must be based on sense experience. He argued that “our knowledge of cause and effect and reliance on inductive reasoning are not in themselves rationally justifiable but are based on custom.” 8 Hume is also known to have embraced skepticism, declaring it to be superior to religious faith, and asserting that the academic skeptic continually emphasizes the advantages of doubting, suspending judgment and “renouncing all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice.” 9 It seems that “Hume was satisfied that the battle to establish reliable Refer to David Hume, “My Own Life," in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 523, 529. 5 David Fate Norton, "An Introduction to Hume's Thought," in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2. “As early as 1710, the experimentalism of Bacon, Boyle, and Newton was well known in Edinburgh,” 2. 6 7 Norton, "Hume's Thought," 4. C. Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL and Leicester, England: Intervarsity Press, 2002), s.v. “Hume, David”; see also Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1999), s.v. “Empiricism”; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 15. 8 Compare with David Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot of Minto,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 22; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 35; David Hume, and P. F. Millican, An 9 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 4 links between thought and reality” and a priori knowledge of causation had been fought and lost, “and hence made his contributions to philosophy from a post-skeptical perspective that [incorporated and built] on the skeptical results of his predecessors.” 10 Hume was in fact a radical and unreserved skeptic, claiming that there are areas of study where knowledge is humanly impossible and declaring significant doubt in human intellectual faculties. Indeed, Hume was so skeptical, he was unwilling to either deny the existence of God or affirm atheism. Although Hume also claimed that the wholesale suspension of all belief was impossible, by the mid-1740s, Hume’s contemporaries had branded him a religious skeptic with atheistic tendencies. 11 Some, such as Antony Flew, assert that Hume was in fact an atheist, citing as evidence how Hume associates himself with Epicurean ideas and Hume’s well-known confession of disbelief in religion and a future state to James Boswell. And although Hume rejected the eighteenth century understanding of deism, which claimed that reliable knowledge of God is based on reason alone, Gaskin suggests that Hume’s skepticism led him to an “attenuated deism,” the possibility that a nonprovidential god exists, a god that does not require any duty, forbearance or devotion from humanity Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2007, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost [accessed June 1, 2018]), 40 (5.1). 10 Norton, “Hume's Thought," 12; See also Antony Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 59-60, referring to Sections X and XI of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Cf. Norton, “Hume's Thought," 28, 37; Robert J. Fogelin, "Hume's Skepticism," in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 234; J. C. A. Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 488-9; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 8 (1.12); and Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 61, referring to Hume’s Enquiry Section VIII, “Of Liberty and Necessity.” 11 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 5 and of which virtually nothing is known. 12 What can be asserted with certainty is that Hume held a decidedly negative view of religion in general and the Christian church in particular. Hume believed that religious belief is based on ignorance and fear of the unknown, that all religions’ ceremonies, observances and practices promote and perpetuate a superstition that allows religious authorities to control and manipulate their followers, denying them many of the pleasures and freedoms available in this life. 13 In “A Note on the Profession of Priest,” Hume demonstrated his abject contempt for priests and clergy, declaring them to be arrogant, conceited, vindictive, hypocritical, and manipulative; pious frauds promoting ignorance and superstition and guilty of various spiritual abuses. Although he did offer some respect to those who confined themselves to sacred matters and public devotions, Hume advocated that the office of clergyman should be restricted to those over fifty years of age to give them the opportunity to resolve their character flaws. 14 Viewing polytheism as tolerant of diversity and encouraging genuine virtue and monotheism as intolerant, Hume deemed Christian religious enthusiasm to be emotional fanaticism that rejects human reason and arrogantly views Christians as God’s distinguished favourites. 15 Hume further asserted that religious doctrines are arbitrary, unwarranted and offensive, claimed that there is no evidence of God’s providence in Compare with Antony Flew, “Introduction,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), vii, viii, and x; Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 22; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 488-90. 12 13 Cf. David Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 4-5; David Hume, “Of Suicide,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 40; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 29-30; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 486-7. See David Hume, “A Note on the Profession of Priest,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 11-14; and Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 4-5. 14 Refer to Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 3-4, 7; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 30; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 483-4. 15 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 6 the world, appeared to deny the validity of special revelation, and rejected fideism because it relies on faith alone and gives no place for reason in religion. 16 In essence, Hume declared that religious belief cannot be rationally or philosophically justified and that its ills can only be cured by philosophy, which would seem to be his “true religion.” 17 Although Hume asserted that experience must be the basis for all knowledge claims, he also stressed that experience had limitations. According to Hume, “All sensory experience is indirect,” such that “we do not experience objects themselves,” but only ideas or “mental representations of objects.” He concluded that “our deep and virtually ineradicable belief in the existence of external objects is not due to sense experience alone” and that human perceptions are not necessarily representative of reality since they could be “produced by the creative power of the mind.” 18 He further asserted that “abstract reasoning cannot decide any question of fact or existence” and that metaphysics is an attempt “to penetrate subjects utterly inaccessible” to human understanding, resulting in the propagation of religious fears and prejudices. 19 For Hume, “The existence … of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect; and these arguments are founded Cf. Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 55; David Hume, “Of the Immortality of the Soul,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 31; Hume, “Of Suicide,” 42; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 482, 484, 509. 16 Compare with Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 5; Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 23; Hume, “Of Suicide,” 39; Antony Flew, Introduction to “Two Revealing Letters,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 15; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 122. 17 See Norton, "Hume's Thought," 5, 7-8, 10, 12, 17; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 15 (2.9); and David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects (The Floating Press, 2009, eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost [accessed July 13, 2018]), 116 (1.2.6.7), 141-2 (1.3.5.2), 364 (1.4.4.13), and 636 (2.3.3.5). As far as I can tell, Hume did not establish or declare his belief about the cause of humanity’s deep held belief in the existence of external objects. 18 Refer to Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 7-8 (1.11); Hume, “Of the Immortality of the Soul,” 30; and Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 59; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 6. 19 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 7 entirely on experience.” 20 It appears that Hume was convinced by Cartesian skepticism that cause and effect relationships, where a particular cause necessarily brings about a specific effect, could not be established by the senses or by human reason. Instead, he claimed that while regularities within the realm of human experience give rise to feelings and expectations of necessary causal connections, such connections cannot be proven and all that can be said is that such objects are typically associated with each other. 21 His distrust of human reasoning and commitment to experience and observation make it appropriate to view Hume as an early empiricist. 22 In his deathbed confession to his friend Adam Smith, David Hume stated that he had endeavoured “to open the eyes of the public” and desired to see “the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition.” 23 Scholar David Fate Norton asserts that Hume sought to bring about real change in society and believed that this could only be accomplished by cultivating new beliefs within individuals. 24 Norton and J.C.A Gaskin also claim that “Hume’s critique of religion … is implicit in all his works” and quite “subtle, profound, and damaging.” 25 Hume’s goals are exemplified in his views of miracles, life after death, and suicide. He cited common experience, the 20 Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 119 (12.29); see also Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 60. 21 Compare with Norton, "Hume's Thought," 14-15. 22 See Norton, "Hume's Thought," 6-7. Adam Smith, Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, to William Strachan, Esq. 9 November, 1776, “The Death of David Hume,” https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smitha/humedead.htm [accessed June 6, 2018]; Flew, Intro to Writings on Religion, viii; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 34, 35. 23 24 Refer to Norton, "Hume's Thought," 35. 25 Norton, "Hume's Thought," 38; and cf. Gaskin, "Hume on Religion,” 480. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 8 human desire for the miraculous, and skepticism about the reliability of testimony to assert that while unusual events do occur, a miracle can never be proved such that it can function as the foundation of a system of religion. 26 Similarly, Hume appealed to nature, sleep, physical degradation, the impermanence of animals’ souls, the unjustness of eternal punishment, and a person’s lack of existence before their formation to claim that upon death, people are annihilated. 27 Regarding suicide, Hume claimed only the brave could overcome their natural fear of death, that human beings are no more important than an oyster, and that since suicide happens, God’s providence must allow it, so it should not be considered criminal. 28 As a final note when considering Hume’s perspective, scholars Antony Flew and J.C.A. Gaskin assert that Hume functioned in a social context where people were not free to express antireligious views without nasty repercussions. They also emphasize that Hume was socially prudent and tactful, seeking to maintain “good relations with his many friends among ... the Scottish clergy.” Given this situation and Hume’s pervasive skepticism, Gaskin suggests that Hume’s protestations of orthodoxy should be considered prudential irony wherever they plainly vary from a straightforward Cf. David Hume, “Of Miracles,” in David Hume: Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 68-71, 73, 75, 88; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 92 (10.36); Norton, "Hume's Thought," 28-9; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 498, 500, 502. 26 Compare with Hume, “Immortality of the Soul,” 33-38; Flew, Intro to Writings on Religion, vii-viii; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 33. 27 28 See Hume, “Of Suicide,” 43-47. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 9 understanding of his assertions, while also remembering that Hume was “unwilling to deny the existence of God.” 29 b. Hume’s Dialogues and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was Hume’s second major work, completed in 1748, and is considered by some to be “one of the finest works of philosophy and the authoritative statement of David Hume’s mature epistemology.” 30 In this work, Hume begins to challenge the rationality of religious belief, attacking the cosmological and design arguments for God’s existence, the credentials of Christian revelation and prophecy, arguments presupposing a priori knowledge of causation, and asking “Why does anyone believe in God or gods, or cleave to the teachings of such theistic religions as Christianity or Islam?” 31 Hume contends that the apologetic “arguments of natural religion do not establish the existence of any deity that could be an object of religious belief” 32 and that Christianity has its “beginnings in sources or causes about which we must be deeply suspicious.” 33 Cf. Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 488-9; Flew, Intro to Writings on Religion, vii; and Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 5. 29 30 Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, xi. See also x. See Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 484-6; Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 54, 59; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 28. 31 32 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 486; see also 512. 33 Norton, "Hume's Thought," 28. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 10 Hume continues his unique and hostile examination of the design argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the first version of which was completed between 1751 and 1755, with revisions being made around 1761, then again in 1776, with it intentionally being published posthumously. Norman Kemp Smith asserts that the 1776 additions are among Hume’s “most definitely negative utterances” and that the Dialogues are exceedingly negative, with Hume being quite provocative; “consciously and deliberately attacking the ‘religious hypothesis,’ and through it religion” in general. 34 Kemp Smith believes that Hume’s arguments in the Dialogues have been very effective in both “reinforcing skeptical and naturalistic ways of thinking” and influencing “the methods of argument favored in theology.” 35 In his arguments, Hume models Cicero, developing his Dialogues using characters of differing opinions so as to avoid straw-man arguments. 36 His character Demea is thought to be modelled after the high rationalism of Dr. Samuel Clark, representing the orthodox view and speaking very little for Hume. 37 In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, Hume states that he would be most naturally suited for the role of the skeptic Philo with Elliot as Cleanthes. Since Philo does seem to be the best debater and holds many of Hume’s general philosophical views, asserting that “our ideas reach not further than our experience” and that “true religion is both philosophical and rational and does not claim to Compare with Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 484, 486; Norman Kemp Smith, “Preface” in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis, IN and New York: The Bobs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1947), vvi; and Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, viii. 34 35 Refer to Kemp Smith, “Preface” to Dialogues, vi. 36 Cf. Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 21; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 490n10. Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, x; Flew, Intro to Writings on Religion, x; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 490n10. 37 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 11 influence conduct,” it seems safe to conclude that in most cases, Philo speaks for Hume in the Dialogues. 38 The character Cleanthes is believed to be modelled after Joseph Butler, a contemporary philosopher that Hume respected, and represents scientific believers, moderate rationalists and those who use posteriori arguments. 39 Cleanthes rejects skepticism as a basis for religion and while agreeing that “experience and reasoning in light of experience” are the basis of knowledge, gives an advantage to theology and natural religion over other sciences, which places him in disagreement with Philo.40 The argument in the Dialogues “opens with the question of how far reason is a possible and reliable guide in matters of theology” and Cleanthes proceeds to make a case for the argument from design which he claims is securely anchored in experience and extremely convincing. 41 Philo and Demea disagree, claiming the argument is faulty and inconclusive, and asserting that other possibilities are conceivable. 42 And thus Hume’s Dialogues begin. The details of Hume’s objections will be presented in the next section. 38 Cf. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), 15, 82-5; also see to Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 98, 122; Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 22; Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, x, xvi; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 490n10. Refer to Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, x, xvi; Flew, Intro Writings on Religion, ix and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 490n10. 39 40 Compare with Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 98; and Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, x. 41 Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 98. 42 Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, xi. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 12 c. Limits and Assumptions There is an enormous quantity of material commenting on David Hume’s life and writings but this study will be limited to an investigation of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and those portions of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that are relevant to the Design Argument. While a few of Hume’s modern-day advocates are cited in this work, this study does not attempt to offer a response to his contemporary supporters. 43 And although written from the perspective of one who has a deep appreciation for the legitimacy of the Design Argument, each of Hume’s objections will be examined carefully and with due seriousness. This response will focus on philosophical and apologetic arguments that draw support from scientific evidence and will consider the consequences of Hume’s claims to further substantiate that his objections are unwarranted. 44 This study also does not address Emergentism, an accidental formation theory suggested by John Stuart Mill and further developed by Charlie Dunbar Broad, whereby “a new [novel] property or entity [appears as a matter of necessity] when a system reaches a certain threshold of complexity.” 45 According to emergentism, consciousness and rational thought in human beings Advocates of Hume cited in this work include Antony Flew, Robert Fogelin, J. C. A. Gaskin, Norman Kemp Smith, and David Fate Norton. Additional contemporary supporters suggested for further exploration include Donald Baxter, Martin Bell, Janet Broughton, Lorne Falkenstein, Peter Millican, David O’Connor, David Owen, Terence Penelhum, Jaqueline Taylor, and Keith Yandell. For some references to these authors’ works, see The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 36-9, 236-7, 512-3. 43 It is acknowledged that the Design Argument has fallen into disrepute in some circles, with some people believing that there are other explanations for what appears to be design. However, the ramifications of recent discoveries in the areas of cosmology and biology have breathed new life into the Design Argument that requires a careful reassessment of its legitimacy. 44 Andrea Parravicini, “Pragmatism and Emergentism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 24 December 2019, https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.1623 [accessed May 12, 2023], 1,1, c.f. 1,2; also refer to Timothy O’Connor, "Emergent Properties,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), ed. Edward 45 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 13 developed via natural chance events and random processes in an entirely materialistic environment through the function of the natural laws, physics and quantum mechanics. 46 Although viewed by some as a possible defeater of the design argument, since human consciousness requires a living physical platform upon which to reside, the biological challenges related to Hume’s accidental formation hypothesis would also seem to be issues for emergentism. 47 Nonetheless, an explicit refutation of Emergentism could be a valuable extension to this study. It is a basic belief that the physical world is real and that human beings actually exist. 48 In his skepticism, Hume suggests that it is possible that external objects do not actually exist but common human sensory experience asserts that they do. 49 These phenomena are experienced by all but cannot be proven or disproven conclusively by rational argument. Therefore, this study will assume the reality of this world and human beings. N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/properties-emergent [accessed May 12, 2023], 1; and James Franklin, "Emergentism as an Option in the Philosophy of Religion: Between Materialist Atheism and Pantheism" (PDF), Suri: Journal of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines 8 (2) [retrieved 16 Feb 2023], 5. 46 See Franklin, "Emergentism,” 2, 3, 6. 47 Refer to Franklin, "Emergentism,” 3. 48 See William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), 54-5. This basic belief is derived from the third premise in Leibniz’s Argument for the Reality of Existence. There are those in the world of philosophy who doubt the actual existence of both the physical world and other real persons. Since this belief would have serious implications for any study like this one and it is not within the scope of this study to argue for the existence of the physical world or the reality of other persons, it will simply be assumed in the argumentation. Compare with Norton, "Hume's Thought," 5, 7-8, 10, 12; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 15 (2.9); and Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, 116 (1.2.6.7), 141-2 (1.3.5.2), 364 (1.4.4.13), and 636 (2.3.3.5). Human sensory experience includes touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste as well as sensations of pleasure and pain. 49 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 14 The free choice of a rational agent has never been shown to be an illusion and has not been reduced to a function of the laws of nature. Therefore, this study will assume that the rational choice of a free agent is a different kind of cause than the operation of the laws of nature and that these are the only two means of accounting for the natural phenomena observed in the universe. 50 Finally, given Hume’s definitively negative view of Christian clergymen, his apparent denial of divine revelation and his conspicuous lack of referral to the authority of Scripture, he will be considered a hostile critic of religion in general and Christianity in particular. 51 Cf. Richard Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach, 2nd ed., edited by Baruch Brody, 189-200 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 194. Richard Swinburne claims that these assumptions are reasonable given human experience and “the absence of any good philosophical or scientific argument to show” that human free agency and rationality is an illusion, 194. 50 Refer to Hume, “The Profession of Priest,” 11-14; Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 4-5; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 28; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 485-6. 51 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT II. 15 HUME’S CRITIQUE OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT J. C. A. Gaskin states that even though Hume’s worldview is hard to identify, “it is [his] actual arguments that contribute to the philosophy of religion” and that they “for the most part stand or fall on their own philosophical merits.” 52 Gaskin also asserts that in his Dialogues, “Hume subjects the [arguments for design] to an intricate and cumulatively devastating series of objections, the majority of which apply to both the nomological and the teleological arguments.” 53 Richard Swinburne notes that “as well as claiming that the argument from design is deficient in some formal respect, Hume makes the point that the analogy of the order produced by men to the order of the universe is too remote for us to postulate similar causes.” 54 Since all the voices in the Dialogues belong to Hume and represent either his position or his view of a position, several declarations in the Dialogues offer insight into presuppositions that influence his critique. One of Hume’s key assertions is that “a matter of fact can never be proved by argument a priori,” 55 that is, independent of experience. He also insists that “we do not experience objects themselves but only ideas … or mental representations of those objects,” 56 that human “ideas are copied from real objects” and that thought only influences matter when thought and 52 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 490. 53 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201; cf. Hume, Dialogues, 16, 20-1, 35; and David Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach, 2d ed. ed. Baruch Brody, 169-180 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 173. 54 55 Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 115: and cf. Hume, Dialogues, 55. Norton, "Hume's Thought," 7-8; cf. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 15 (2.9); and Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, 116 (1.2.6.7), 141-2 (1.3.5.2), 364 (1.4.4.13), and 636 (2.3.3.5). 56 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 16 matter are conjoined. 57 These beliefs lead Hume to conclude that in giving thought precedence, the design argument violates the dictates of human experience. 58 In his skepticism, Hume proclaims that knowledge of God cannot be ascertained from nature and asserts that Metaphysics is “not properly a science” but merely a fruitless, vain, human attempt to “penetrate ultimate questions that are utterly inaccessible to [human] understanding.” 59 He further asserts that empirical analogies cannot justify any religious system because the imperfections in the analogies prevent human reason from discovering the true system. Without denying the authenticity of people’s sense of design in this world, Hume declares his belief that a suspension of judgment regarding the nature and attributes of the God proclaimed by religions is the only reasonable position. 60 Hume further proclaims that “there is no being whose non-existence implies a contradiction; and consequently, no being whose existence is demonstrable.” 61 From this, Hume asserts that the concept of “necessary existence” is a meaningless statement because it could be applied to any 57 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 52-3; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 114. 58 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 52; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 114. Cf. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 7 (1.11); and David Hume, cited in Writings on Religion, ed. Antony Flew (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 59. 59 60 See Hume, Dialogues, 26-7, 49, 53, 74, 77; and cf. Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 104. 113, 114, 119, 120. 61 Hume, Dialogues, 55; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 115. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 17 object of which there is limited knowledge, even the material universe. In conclusion, Hume declares that the Christian claim that God is a necessary being is falsely professed. 62 Hume also affirms his belief that a cause can only be known by its known effects, that the whole is sufficiently explained when there is an explanation for the cause of each individual component of a collection, and claims that it is by custom, feeling, nurture and education, not reason, that people believe in a designer. 63 He proports to reject arbitrary supposition and conjecture and to reason only from known phenomena. 64 He further states that the immeasurable difference between the divine and human mind and the remote degree of analogy apparent in the operations of nature have led to a quarrel regarding degrees of knowledge, with the result being that no determination can be made about the formation of the universe. 65 With these underlying presuppositions in mind, Hume’s specific criticisms of the design argument will now be examined. 62 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 55-6; and cf. Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 115. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 56, 64; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 116-7, 120; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 176-7. 63 64 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 64, 68; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 119. See Hume, Dialogues, 81; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 121; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 171, 173, 180. 65 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 18 a. Inference Must be Bounded by Cause Sufficiency While commenting on Hume’s writings, Antony Flew states that Hume faithfully follows “the Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy given in Newton’s Principia.” 66 Newton asserts that “we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” 67 Therefore, Hume insists that “when we infer any particular cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other, and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities, but what are exactly sufficient to produce the effect.” 68 From this general principle, Hume declares that “if we suppose God (or gods) to be the cause of order in the world, then since all that we can infer about God (or gods) is inferred from the world, we can [only] attribute to God (or the gods) whatever degree of power, intelligence, foresight, and so forth is sufficient to produce what we actually find in the world.” 69 Hume further contends that Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 55. For Newton’s Rules, refer to Quayshawn Spencer, “Do Newton’s Rules of Reasoning Guarantee Truth … Must They,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35, no. 4 (2004): 7605. In his 1687 work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, also known as the Principia, Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical science. While a great scientist, Isaac Newton was also an ardent Christian and theologian whose faith was an integral part of his perspectives on science. He considered his scientific findings to be proof God’s majesty. Newton therefore would have understood that God could be the cause of any effect. See n.a., “Facts about Isaac Newton,” Biography Online, https://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/facts-newton.html [accessed January 30, 2018]; and video on Isaac Newton – Facts and Summary, http://www.history.com/topics/isaac-newton [accessed January 30, 2018]. 66 Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 55; and F. Cajori, ed. Newton’s Principia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946), 398. 67 Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99 (11.12); cf. Hume, citied in Writings on Religion, 55; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 68 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492; see also Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99-101 (11.14, 11.16), cf. 99-104 (11.12-23). 69 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 19 “when applied to divine providence, it is impossible to infer from the world an infinite or even very great benevolence in its designer.” 70 Richard Swinburne notes that “Hume uses this principle mainly to show that we are not justified in inferring that the god responsible for the design of the universe is totally good, omnipotent, and omniscient” 71 but also comments that “Hume’s use of the principle tends to cast doubt on the validity of [a design] argument” 72 that is based on regularities of co-presence. Swinburne also believes that Hume is implying that one must not postulate “an agent who acts by choice, etc., for this would be to suppose more than we need in order to account for the effect.” 73 Hume’s first objection thus asserts that the design argument does not permit one to conclude that the God claimed by Christianity is responsible for the formation of the universe. 74 b. Inference Must be Informed by Human Experience Hume firmly declares his argument from experience: that “when two species of objects have always been observed to be conjoined together, [we] can infer, by custom, the existence of one Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492; also refer to Hume, Dialogues, 35, 63-6, 69-74; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 174. and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117, 119. 70 71 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 72 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197; cf. 190-2. 73 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 74 Cf. Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 56. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 20 whenever [we] see the existence of the other.” 75 Through Cleanthes, Hume states the analogy between a house known to be designed and the universe, then asserts that “the dissimilitude is so striking that the utmost [we] can pretend is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause.” 76 For Hume, “all conclusions concerning fact” are experience based, including the relationship between order and design: “Order, arrangement, or the adjustment of final causes” is not a priori proof of design, but only indicative of design “as far as it has been experienced to proceed from that principle.” It is only through repeated experience that human beings can discover the actual cause of a phenomenon and without it, a valid assertion cannot be made, and all possibilities are on an equal footing. 77 Within the framework of experience, Hume limits the use of inference to those situations that are “exactly similar” and to those objects with which humanity is “quite familiar.” 78 When considering the design argument, Hume offers two criticisms through Philo: that the design argument assumes “that the universe may be taken as the same species with houses, ships, furniture, and machines” and “that the thought, design, reason, or intelligence” that humans experience with people and animals as an active cause of alterations to this world … “can be used to 75 Hume, Dialogues, 20-1; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 174. 76 Hume, Dialogues, 16; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 170; and see Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 98. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 17, 23-4; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 171; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99. Kemp Smith notes that “order, arrangement, and adjustment of final causes here are treated as if they were equivalent expressions.” 77 78 See Hume, Dialogues, 18; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 172; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 21 account for the origin and very existence of nature as a whole.” 79 Hume then asserts that the design argument attempts to explain by inference a particular effect, the creation of the universe, by a particular cause, the Christian God. He states that inference can only explain a particular effect by more general causes, with those general causes being inexplicable. Hume goes on to proclaim that the ideal system, God, who is not designed and quite mysterious, conforming “to no previously experienced type,” can only be declared the cause “by sheer hypothesis,” and that professing such an ideal planner only acknowledges human ignorance of the universe’s origin. 80 Hume also draws his readers’ attention to the implications of the universe being a unique, oneof-a-kind object, without parallel or specific resemblance to any other known object. 81 He asserts that “the universe is not of the same species with buildings and machines” 82 and that humanity has no experience with or understanding of other universes, the formation of universes, or the initial state of this universe. Therefore, it cannot be legitimately concluded by inference that the particular features of this universe exhibit characteristics consistent with the works of a creator God. 83 79 172-3. 80 Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99-100; cf. Hume, Dialogues, 18-19; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 15, 33; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 20-1; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 107-8 (11.30); Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 100, 108; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 29; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493. 81 82 Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; cf. Hume, Dialogues, 22, 33-6. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 17, 20, 30-3, 69; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, xi; Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 57; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198. 83 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 22 Without denying the existence of consistency in the world, Hume asserts that the analogy between the universe and objects designed by humanity is quite weak and imperfect and concludes that the design argument’s use of analogy is not inference, but mere conjecture. 84 c. Extending the Analogy between the Human Rational Agent and the Designer Through Philo, Hume claims that the analogy proclaimed by the design argument points to a God who is a corporeal anthropomorphite, a perspective that Hume notes Cicero deservedly ridiculed Epicurus for affirming. 85 Hume states that this analogical comparison suggests a degraded concept of the theistic view of God that Christians should reject as disrespectful. 86 He further declares that the Deity is completely incomprehensible to mere human beings, and by representing His thought as “similar to the human mind, we are guilty of [grotesque] partiality, and make ourselves the model of the whole universe.” 87 Returning to the principle of experience, Hume notes that body and mind are always found conjoined in nature, and proceeds to explain his support for a favorite notion of ancient philosophers that he claims better aligns with the evidence than the more modern (Christian) theory. 88 Hume suggests that the universe resembles an animal or organized body and that the Deity functions as the See Hume, Dialogues, 16, 19, 22, 33, 88; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 170, 173; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99, 119, 122; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493. 84 85 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 37; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 176. 86 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 18; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 172. 87 Hume, Dialogues, 27; and cf. 26-8. 88 See Hume, Dialogues, 40. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 23 Soul of the World, “actuating it and being actuated by it,” in a similar fashion to life and motion, where the constant circulation of matter does not produce disorder and where the continual production of waste is relentlessly repaired. 89 Hume believes that this ancient analogy of the physical universe being the body of God is better than viewing the universe as the workmanship of God that is similar to art or other human contrivance, especially given how repugnant the idea of a mind without a body is to common experience and ancient theologians. 90 He asserts through Philo that this anthropomorphic conclusion is based on the same principles of reasoning as the Design Argument, so it cannot be discarded without discarding the Design Argument’s inference and admitting that God’s nature is absolutely incomprehensible. 91 Hume also states that this organic anthropomorphism allows for the divine mind and body (the universe) to have the same age or date of origin. 92 He further asserts that the likeness between the mind of God and human beings, when guided by the limits he places on inference, requires us to affirm that God is finite. 93 There is also no basis for ascribing perfection to God because the apparent defects that can be observed in this world may be real, not illusionary, and this universe may not be the Author’s first attempt but the result of successive trials and errors. 94 89 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 39-40. 90 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 40; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 110, 116. 91 Refer to David Hume, Dialogues, 40; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 110. 92 See Hume, Dialogues, 40; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 110. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 35; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; and Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99 (11.12). 93 94 Check Hume, Dialogues, 35-6; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 24 In conclusion, Hume asserts that the idea of the universe being like a body, as opposed to a machine, art, or other human contrivance, cannot be discarded, and that the design argument’s analogy allows one to “postulate that the God who gives order to the universe is like men in many other respects.” 95 From this, he claims that because Christians assert that God is infinite and noncorporeal, the anthropomorphism suggested by the design argument analogy indicates that the design argument is flawed. 96 d. Explanation of the Designer is Required To criticize the design argument’s assumption that the existence of the material world requires an explanation, Hume borrows from Bayle’s account of Strato’s atheistic teaching, and claims that there is no basis for believing that a plan for the world consisting of distinct ideas was formed in the Divine Mind in the same manner that a human architect forms plans for a house. 97 This criticism challenges a fundamental assumption of theistic religions, namely that God is a reasonable stopping point for origin inquiries while the material world is not. 98 According to Hume, an explanation is also required for the postulated existence of a rational agent who produces the order found in this 95 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199; and cf. David Hume, Dialogues, 40. 96 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 37-8; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 176; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108- 9. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 30; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 105. Strata of Lampsacus was a naturalist and atheistic Greek philosopher, circa. 340 to 269 BCE, who claimed that the universe is all that exists. See Noel Curran, The Logical Universe: The Real Universe (Aldershot, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1994), 123. 97 98 Compare with Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493-4, cf. 495; and Hume, Dialogues, 30-1. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 25 world. 99 “Picturing such an agent as a mind, and a mind as an arrangement of ideas,” 100 Hume asserts that “a mental world or universe of ideas requires a cause as much as does a material world or universe of objects, and if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause.” 101 Hume bases this criticism on the assertion that in an abstract view, the mental and material worlds are entirely alike. 102 He thus believes that going beyond the material world and postulating a rational agent places the design argument inquiry in an infinite regression with no legitimate basis upon which to stop. 103 He then states that if one accepts that the ideas of the Supreme Being are ordered by their own nature and acknowledge that human ideas fall into order without a known cause then it makes just as much sense to accept “that that parts of the material world fall into order of themselves or by their own nature.” 104 Referring to madness and corruption as systems of thought that have no order, Hume asserts that order is not an essential attribute of thought and concludes that if order requires a cause in both thought and matter, it is wiser to limit one’s inquiry to the present world that humanity experiences and thus avoid speculative postulations. 105 Hume also insists that if theists can only assert that it is 99 495. See Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Hume, Dialogues, 30; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 100 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198. 101 Hume, Dialogues, 30; and cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198. 102 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 30; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 105. 103 See also Hume, Dialogues, 31; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 106. 104 Hume, Dialogues, 31; and cf. Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 107. 105 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 31-2; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 107. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 26 the rational faculty of the postulated creator that produces order in His ideas, then it is equally satisfactory to claim that the material world possesses the faculty of order and proportion. 106 In conclusion, Hume claims that it is merely custom and religious bias that leads theists to a creator God and that by denying the design argument assumption that the mind is the only principle of order, his skeptical proclamation that humanity is wholly ignorant of the universe’s cause remains firmly intact. 107 e. Perhaps It was Many Gods Working Together Drawing on his assertion that God is finite and the consequential possibility that this world may be the result of a trial and error process, 108 Hume points to the cooperative efforts of human beings when constructing houses and ships and suggests that the universe may be the result of the cooperative effort of numerous finite deities. 109 He also asserts that a cooperative effort means that the power of each deity can be limited and that the assumption of extensive power and knowledge being resident in one deity can be discarded. 110 Hume contends that this scenario is much more like 106 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 32, 33; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 107. 107 See Hume, Dialogues, 32; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 106-7, 120; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 494-5. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 35-6; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108-9. 108 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 36; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 109; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199-200; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492-3. 109 110 See Hume, Dialogues, 36; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,”), 175. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 27 human affairs and can only serve to weaken any argument for the existence of one extremely powerful and knowledgeable God. 111 Swinburne notes that Hume “is aware of the obvious counter-objection to his suggestion” 112 because he states that “to multiply causes without necessity is contrary to true philosophy.” 113 However, Hume claims that this counter objection does not apply in the present case because the design argument does not prove that there is one deity with sufficient power to produce this universe and there is no natural phenomena in this world that would permit a decision on this question, so numerous deities are as explicable as one. 114 Hume concludes by postulating that “an intelligent being of such vast power and capacity as is necessary to produce the universe … exceeds all analogy and even comprehension.” 115 f. Not Only Rational Agents Bestow Order To further develop his idea of matter somehow possessing the faculty of order within itself and to further disparage what he calls the design argument assumption that thought is the only source of order, Hume declares that when arguing from analogy, reason, instinct, generation and vegetation, each of which cause similar effects, are equally valid and intelligible explanations for the order 111 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 36; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175. 112 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 113 Hume, Dialogues, 36. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 37, 43; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175-6; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 114 115 Hume, Dialogues, 37. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 28 found in the world. 116 Claiming that humanity’s imperfect and limited experience requires the acceptance of any possible theory, Hume asserts that the choice between vegetation or animal generation and reason as a basis for order is entirely arbitrary. 117 Hume declares that “a tree bestows order and organization on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order; an animal in the same manner on its offspring; a bird on its nest.” 118 He suggests that a comet could provide the mechanism to seed new worlds 119 and notes that vegetation and animal generation bear a more striking resemblance to the world than the design argument’s machine analogy. 120 To further support his vegetation/animal generation theory, Hume observes that instances of vegetation and animal generation are much more frequent than instances of order originating from reason and contrivance. 121 He also proclaims that reason is known to arise from generation but generation is not known to arise from reason, and that since the internal structure and fabric of reason are not understood and ultimate causes are unknown, it is only by egregious partiality and by question begging that people confine their view to the principle of order by which the human mind functions. 122 In support of Hume’s assertions, Norman Kemp Smith notes that organic animal and 116 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 46-7; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 171; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 100, 103, 107, 112; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 117 See Hume, Dialogues, 45, 47; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 107, 112. 118 Hume, Dialogues, 46-7; and Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 119 See Hume, Dialogues, 45; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 112. 120 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 44, 45, 47-8; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 111-12. 121 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 47; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 111-2. 122 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 46-7; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 112. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 29 vegetable life is self-organizing, self-developing, self-maintaining, self-regulating, and selfpropagating and have a form that is as native to them as the matter of which they are composed, 123 whereas artificial products depend on the existence of an external artificer. 124 Interestingly, Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne, who argues against Hume’s reasoning in the Dialogues, states that Hume’s vegetation/animal generation proposal is perfectly reasonable when one considers the regularities of copresence. 125 Thus, claiming the support of experience and observation and the previously argued prudence of stopping within the observed material world, Hume concludes that it is more plausible that this world was caused by something like vegetation or animal generation. 126 g. The Universe Could be a Result of Chance Arrangements By assuming that a very large but finite amount of matter has eternally existed, continuing with his claim that matter and form are inseparable, and applying his assertion that matter could be self-organizing, Hume hypothesizes that “the continual motion of matter … in less than infinite transpositions must produce [the] economy or order [that human beings observe], and by its very nature, that order, when once established, supports itself for many ages if not to eternity.” 127 Hume 123 See Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 102. 124 Refer to Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 102-3. 125 See also Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 126 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 45, 47; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 112. Hume, Dialogues, 50 cf. 32-3, 52-3; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178; see also Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200-1; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 495, 497. 127 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 30 suggests that an unknown actuating force first set matter in motion and continues to influence it such that over the course of eternity, random, unguided interactions accidently resulted in the ordered arrangement of matter that humanity experiences in this particular time period. 128 Hume further suggests that after a long period of chaos and disorder, the universe has settled into a stable, ordered, and well-adjusted state where matter maintains its uniform appearance while retaining its continual and somewhat erratic motion. 129 Hume admits that his hypothesis is incomplete, but asserts that it is as plausible as any analogy of this type and that it accounts for the appearance of art and contrivance that are currently observed. 130 To support his hypothesis, Hume claims that the eternal existence and motion of matter allows every possible arrangement of matter to be tried, including its current ordered state, and that humanity has simply mistakenly concluded that matter has always been ordered. 131 Hume contends “that matter can acquire motion without any voluntary agent or first mover” and states that gravity, elasticity and electricity provide concrete examples of this phenomenon. 132 He further alleges that since design argument proponents are arguing independent of experience, claiming that motion begins within matter itself is as credible as the assertion that it originates from an unknown 128 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 497. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 497. 129 130 See Hume, Dialogues, 50-2; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 179; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113. 131 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 49; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 132 Hume, Dialogues, 49, cf. 50; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177. 200. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 31 intelligence. 133 For Hume, it is a certain fact, as far as human experience reaches, “that matter is and always has been in continual agitation” and he concludes that all parts of the universe must relate to each other and to the whole, and the whole itself to the parts, such that waste and decay are recycled via both hostile and friendly processes. 134 Any defect that destroys a particular form results in corrupted matter behaving irregularly until a stable form claims that corrupted matter for some purpose, this being the case when an animal perishes, since their continual adjustment ceases and, being corrupted, it transitions to a new form. 135 Such transitions are possible because the world is well adjusted and without these transitions, the world would cease to exist in its current form. 136 In support of Hume, Gaskin notes that since an ordered universe is all that exists and there is nothing else, this situation represents the special case where the probability between an ordered and chaotic universe cannot be assessed, and there is therefore “reason to think that the order manifested in the universe is not in need of a special explanation.” 137 Thus, in suggesting an alternative analogical cosmology based on the inherent self-organizing nature of matter, Hume proclaims that postulating an intelligent agent is not required and can be discarded. 138 133 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 50; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177. 134 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178. 135 See Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 136 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 51-2; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 179; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 114. 137 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 496. 114. See Hume, Dialogues, 30-3, 55-6; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 495; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 105, 107. 138 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 32 h. The Implications of Evil and Suffering With an expression of triumph, Hume declares that previously, because intention and design in the universe are quite apparent, he “needed all [his] skeptical and metaphysical subtlety” to demonstrate the flaws in the design argument. 139 However, when one considers the realities of the human condition, “plain reason and experience” strongly argue against the benevolence, wisdom, and moral characteristics that Christians attribute to their designer. 140 While recognizing that the conveniences in this world go beyond what is required for the mere preservation of its residents, Hume declares that the prevalence of evil and suffering indicates a general lack of concern on the part of the supposed designer for the well-being of the inhabitants and implies that this fact calls into question any inference to an intelligent creator. 141 Hume notes that this world is cursed and polluted, a place of hunger, want, fear, anxiety, and even imaginary terrors, such that even those who enjoy an opulent lifestyle are never content. It is a place of violence and misery where enemies seek to destroy at every level and where life can be quite bitter. 142 Acknowledging that there is also much beauty and cause for joy, and agreeing that “health is more common than sickness, pleasure than pain, happiness than misery,” that for each vexation, there are a hundred enjoyments, and allowing that pain and misery may be compatible 139 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 66, 77; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 118. 140 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 66; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 118. 141 See Hume, Dialogues, 63, 68, 75; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117, 119. 142 See also Hume, Dialogues, 59-63; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 33 with infinite power and goodness, Hume declares that even these concessions are insufficient. 143 For Hume, just as it is the architect that is blamed when a building exhibits inconveniences or deformities, the disparate phenomena present in this world do not allow one to infer the existence of a benevolent, intelligent designer. 144 Four circumstances that result in misery and suffering are then considered, these being: the use of pain and pleasure to “excite all creatures to action,” especially for their self-preservation; “the conducting of the world by general laws”; the frugality with which faculties are distributed to each creature, such that any considerable attenuation of their faculties results in death; and the inadequate and irregular function of nature, for example, how heat and rain are distributed. 145 Hume believes that these causes of evil are both avoidable and unnecessary and states that without these circumstances, there would be “very little ill” in the world when compared with what is presently experienced. 146 From these observations, Hume asserts that this world presents the “idea of a blind nature” that pours forth creatures “without any discernment or parental care” and concludes that ”the original source of all things is entirely indifferent,” harboring neither goodness nor malice toward the inhabitants of this world. 147 143 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 63-66; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117-8. Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 64, 66, 68-9, 74; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 118-9; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 29. 144 145 See Hume, Dialogues, 69-71, 73. 146 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 69, 70, 73; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 119. 147 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 74, 75; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 119. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT With Hume’s objections to the design argument now being clearly articulated, it is time to respond. 34 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT III. 35 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S OBJECTIONS In his writings, Hume proclaims his aspiration to bring about the downfall of all organized religions, claiming they perpetuate fear, ignorance, and superstition. 148 He believes that this goal can only be accomplished by inculcating a new set of non-religious beliefs in individuals. 149 Christians should therefore understand Hume’s criticisms of the design argument as one component in a comprehensive effort to disparage their belief in a monotheistic God. 150 Hume utilizes skepticism as his primary vehicle to declare that the design argument is deficient in some formal respect. 151 He asserts that skepticism is superior to religious faith and emphasizes the advantages of doubting and suspending judgment, claiming that mere human beings cannot claim to know that God created the universe and must admit ignorance. 152 Should Hume’s assertions about skepticism and the associated derivative conclusions be accepted? While a healthy form of skepticism 153 is inherent in good investigative practices and it is agreed that finite human Cf. Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 4-5; Hume, “Of Suicide,” 40; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 29-30, 34; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 486-7; Flew, Intro to Writings on Religion, viii; and Smith, “Death of Hume,” n.p. 148 149 Refer to Norton, "Hume's Thought," 35. Compare with Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 3-5, 7; Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 23; Hume, “Immortality of the Soul,” 31; Hume, “Of Suicide,” 39, 42; Flew, “Two Revealing Letters,” 15; Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 55; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 122; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 30; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 482-4, 509. 150 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201; cf. Hume, Dialogues, 16, 20-1, 35; and Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 173. 151 See Hume, “To Gilbert Elliot,” 22; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 35; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 40 (5.1); Hume, Dialogues, 26-7, 49, 53, 74, 77; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 104. 113, 114, 119, 120. 152 153 A healthy form of skepticism is not a predisposition to doubt, or a worldview based on doubting the existence or verification of truth, but it is a perspective that is open to various theories and assertions while allowing all of the evidence to appropriately inform one’s conclusions and one’s degree of certainty in a proposition. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 36 beings cannot hope to fully comprehend all the activities and motives of an infinite God, if that being wanted humanity to know something about Him, as Alvin Plantinga notes, it seems quite reasonable to declare that this being could construct the universe such that His existence and some aspects of His being are apparent and comprehensible to the human mind that He formed. 154 Epistemologically, skepticism is a position of doubt that historically has argued from both fallibility and the possibility of error. The fallibility position is based on the reality that humans sometimes err, and asserts that valid reasons must be provided that offer assurance that one is not being deceived in their current circumstances. This form of skepticism relies upon the existence of actual knowledge because it assumes that one has enough knowledge of a particular discipline to recognize past errors. 155 Skepticism centered on the possibility of error is much more pernicious because it asserts that if someone is possibly mistaken, then they cannot validly assert their knowledge claim. 156 What problems do these approaches to knowledge have? If knowledge is understood as justified true belief, then knowers have the task of maximizing their holdings of true beliefs and minimizing their holdings of false beliefs. 157 The justification of belief is based on the evidence and rationale for belief while truth is grounded on its correspondence 154 Cf. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 33-4; Rom. 1:19-20; and Ps. 19:1-4 HCSB. Compare with J. P. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Christian Apologetics DTF Lecture Series, Biola University, CD-ROM (La Mirada, CA: Biola University, n.d.), Tracks 5-7; and J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 102. 155 156 See J. P. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 5-7. Refer to Garrett J. DeWeese, “What Do I Know: Epistemology,” in Doing Philosophy as a Christian, Christian Worldview Integration Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 153; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 100; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. 157 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 37 to reality. 158 When assessing knowledge claims, the primary approaches are methodism, particularism and skepticism. Methodists like David Hume, John Locke, Rene Descartes and George Berkeley claim that knowledge claims must be based on a criterion. 159 Unfortunately, one must know what constitutes a good criterion before a knowledge claim can be assessed. This leads to an infinite regress and the rejection of all knowledge claims because methodists do not accept that any truth claims are self-evident. 160 Particularists such as Thomas Reid, Roderick Chisholm and Garrett DeWeese, on the other hand, start their knowledge acquisition quest by citing specific examples of known realities such as empirical data, memories, logical constructs, mathematical truths, ethical proclamations, personal introspective awareness certainties, skills, historical facts, and acquaintance information. From this foundation, particularists utilize what they already know to acquire additional knowledge. 161 Particularists claim that it is acceptable to make a knowledge claim if one has good reasons for doing so and contend that skepticism is unnecessary because the logical possibility of error does not constitute a valid reason for believing one is mistaken in a specific instance. 162 Particularists also correctly declare that the skeptic must offer reasons for 158 Refer to Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. Cf. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 989. Logical Positivists and empiricists embrace methodism. Empiricists give primacy to sense experience in the acquisition of knowledge. Logical positivism combines a commitment to empiricism with a verifiability theory of meaning to claim that nonanalytic propositions only have cognitive meaning if they are empirically verifiable. They assert that metaphysical and theological propositions are meaningless. See Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Empiricism” and “Logical Positivism.” 159 160 See J. P. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16; DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 156; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 98-9. See further DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 151-2, 156-7, 161, 163; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 99-100; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. 161 Compare with Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 100; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. 162 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 38 rejecting a knowledge claim and therefore embrace the reasonable position that the burden of proof must be borne by whoever is making a claim, be it an affirmation or criticism. 163 A significant problem for skeptics, who pessimistically and rather unrealistically insist on certainty, is that knowledge is compatible with a measure of doubt and there are very few things of which people are completely certain. 164 Although a person’s degree of confidence varies in proportion to the supporting evidence one has for a belief, people live their lives according to properly basic beliefs that are truth conducive and non-basic beliefs that are epistemically formed either directly or indirectly from properly basic beliefs. 165 “Doubt then is neither the opposite of belief nor the absence of belief, but rather an accompaniment of all but certain beliefs,” 166 and varies inversely with one’s degree of confidence. Particularism would seem to be the way that human beings typically approach their pursuit of knowledge, with any criterion being established from one’s initial known realities and later established knowledge claims. 167 Since the Christian scriptures declare an intention to impart truth, 168 “Christianity is a knowledge tradition, not merely a belief, opinion, or preference 163 Refer to Darrell L Bock, Can I Trust the Bible: Defending the Bible’s Reliability (Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2001), 29-30; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 100-1; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. Compare with Ronald H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 64-5, 70-2; DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 158-59; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 101; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. 164 165 Cf. DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 158-65. 166 Garrett J. DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 159; cf. 158. 167 See Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16. 168 Cf. DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 157. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 39 tradition.” 169 As such, neither skepticism about the reality of knowledge nor its justification are acceptable epistemic positions for Christians to hold. 170 Since all human beings actually know some things to be true even if they don’t understand how they know, skepticism fails the worldview validation test of human experience. 171 Forms of skepticism that assert that truth cannot be known make a self-referentially absurd assertion and thus fail the test of reason. 172 Skepticism also fails the test of practice because nobody can consistently live out a skeptical worldview. 173 For example, people typically do not verify the edibility of all the food they eat, that traffic lights at an intersection function properly or that bridges are safe each time they cross them. Many aspects of life are accepted as reliable and true without the need for constant iterative verification. Thus, instead of doubt, many aspects of life regularly function in accordance with a reasoned faith or trust that pragmatically denies Hume’s claim that skepticism is superior. When responding to skepticism, J.P. Moreland claims that in most cases, it is only necessary to rebut the skeptic as opposed to refuting them. To refute skepticism, one must offer reasons that demonstrate why that position is false but to rebut a skeptic’s claims, it is only necessary to demonstrate that they have not provided acceptable rationale to establish that their claims are true, so one is not obligated to accept their assertions. Even though it is possible that a rebutted position 169 DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 156. 170 Compare with DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 157. Cf. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 57-62; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 99-100; and Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 4-5. 171 172 See Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 55-57. 173 Refer to Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 62-3. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 40 is true, a successful rebuttal reveals that the skeptic’s arguments should be viewed as weak or unconvincing and primarily function as a faith commitment.174 With respect to the design argument, the skeptic’s basic position is to avoid the question of the origin of the universe. Not only is this position unappealing because it asks people to accept that there is no answer, it is also at odds with scientific methodology. Upon observing an effect, scientists regularly apply abduction to postulate a cause for the effect and suggesting an unobserved, theoretical entity is a completely acceptable practice with the proviso that the postulated entity accounts simply and coherently for the characteristics of the effect. Electrons, magnetic fields, molecules and gas pressure are examples of unobserved causes that were suggested long before technology allowed their existence to be observed or otherwise confirmed with certainty. 175 It also seems that the methodists’ tactic of applying a criterion is based on deductive reasoning while the particularists’ approach appears to be undergirded by inductive reasoning. 176 Given that Hume’s empiricism is an example of methodism and that skeptics use methodism and the possibility of error to attack both knowledge claims and justification for knowledge claims, Hume’s epistemological 174 101. Refer to Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 4-5; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, See Hume, Dialogues, 20-1; Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, viii, xii; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198-9; J.P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987), 63; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 314-5. 175 176 Compare with DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 156. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 41 skepticism would seem to be inherently predisposed to rejecting inference as a possible source of knowledge. 177 Before offering a rebuttal and in some cases a refutation to each of Hume’s specific criticisms of the design argument, what the design argument affirms will be outlined. William Paley argued that mechanism implies “contrivance,” meaning design and construction for a specific purpose, 178 and that “nature displays precisely the same evidences of design and interlocking of its constituent parts as a mechanism, forcing any unbiased observer” to conclude that it was intelligently designed. 179 The design argument is founded on the consistency of reasoning and rests upon two fundamental premises. First, design presupposes the existence of a designer whose intelligence and power are sufficient to realize the creation of the objects that exhibit design, and secondly, nature, the world, and the universe show evidence of design. 180 If these premises are true, then this argument holds that living organisms, the world, and the universe all require a designer. The basis for claiming that the first premise is true is the consistency of human experience. In every instance of human experience, encounters with objects that are known with certainty to have been designed are also known with certainty to have a designer. When any complex entity or 177 Cf. DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 155; Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 7-16; and Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 64-5. Cf. Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (New York and London: Doubleday, 2004), 100-1. 178 McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism, 101. See also William Paley, Natural Theology: Selections, ed. Fredrick Ferre (Indianapolis, MI and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1963), 8-9, 13, 37, and 39. 179 Cf. William H. Halverson, A Concise Introduction to Philosophy, 4th ed. (New York: Random House 1981), 162-4; Paley, Natural Theology, 8-9, 37, 39. 180 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 42 mechanism radically originates from components that are not like it, the conclusion is always that the presence of cooperation amongst the components is evidence of intelligent intervention. This argument asks people to apply the same reasoning when dealing with the question of design in the universe that they employ when dealing with the events of everyday experience. There are countless examples of this principle in people’s daily lives, but no counterexample has ever been provided. 181 This principle then “would seem to be as secure as it is possible for any inductive generalization to be.” 182 There are those who make the leap from the claim that the universe has a designer directly to the God of Christianity, but the design argument can only assert that there exists a rational being intelligent and powerful enough to have created the universe. Evidence of the extent of this being’s abilities are simply not provided within the confines of the design argument and therefore cannot be asserted. While it could be logically concluded from the attributes of the universe that this being’s nature includes such qualities as order, purpose, and an appreciation of beauty, the design argument does not provide any knowledge of this being’s goodness, compassion, integrity, sense of justice or qualities of general makeup such as corporeality. While no argument from inference can provide definitive proof, the design argument has a basic intuitive force and offers a plausible and even probable account for the origin and continued functioning of the universe and its resident life-forms. Refer to Halverson, Concise Intro to Philosophy, 164; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 47, 66; and Paley, Natural Theology, 37. 181 182 Halverson, Concise Intro to Philosophy, 164. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 43 Human beings therefore have good rational grounds for believing in the existence of a creator, making Christians’ belief in God entirely reasonable. 183 a. Hume and Inference Inferences are formed when specific observations combined with the recognition of a typical pattern lead one to form a general conclusion. 184 These logical inductive arguments are such that “the truth of the premises together with the absence of fallacies does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion.” 185 As such, an inductive argument cannot be proven, only confirmed, because the conclusions are probable, being plausible or likely and conferring a degree of confidence, but not certainty. 186 When inferring, one is required to visualize and conceptualize patterns that are appropriate to associate with what has been observed. This requires the ability to perceive abstractly. 187 At the other end of the spectrum, information can be perceived concretely, whereby the observer registers Compare with Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64-6; Halverson, Concise Intro to Philosophy, 165-6; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199; Hume, Dialogues, 35-8; Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2004), PDF e-book, 631; and Paul Chamberlain, “Christian Theism” (course lectures taught at ACTS Theological Seminaries in Langley, BC, Canada from 7-11 May 2007). 183 Cf. Pritha Bhandari, “Inductive Reasoning: Types, Examples, Explanation,” Scribbr, rev. July 15, 2022, https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/inductive-reasoning/#:~:text=about%20inductive%20reasoning,What%20is%20inductive%20reasoning%3F,logic%20or%20bottom%2Dup%20reasoning [accessed August 13, 2022]. 184 Garret J. DeWeese and J.P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2005), 21; and cf. Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 59. 185 Cf. DeWeese and Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult, 21-2; C. Stephen Evans, Philosophy of Religion: Thinking about Faith, Contours of Christian Philosophy (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1982), 62; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 59-60. 186 See Cynthia Ulrich Tobias, The Way They Learn (Colorado Springs, CO: Focus on The Family Publishing, 1994), 15. 187 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 44 information directly through their five senses and focuses on what is tangible and obvious, without seeking to establish relationships between various observations. 188 Given Hume’s extreme empiricism, concrete thinking would seem to have dominated his perception so it can be asserted that he may exhibit a strong natural bias against inference. 189 This bias is exemplified by Hume’s claim that the use of inference should be limited to those situations that are “exactly similar.” 190 John Earman notes that “all induction involves a leap from an observed range to an unobserved range” 191 so all inference requires some degree of abstraction and includes some degree of dissimilarity, otherwise there would be no need to infer. 192 Earman also asserts that, when arguing against miracles, Hume employs a straight rule of induction whereby “if n As have been examined, all of which were found to be Bs, then if n is sufficiently large, the probability that all As are Bs is 1.” 193 Earman states that while the probability of a miracle may be very, very small, Bayes theorem dictates that uniform experience does not allow one to declare that it is flatly zero. 194 He concludes 188 Refer to Tobias, The Way They Learn, 14-5. 189 See Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Hume, David”; Grenz, Dictionary of Theological Terms, s.v. “Empiricism”; Norton, "Hume's Thought," 15; and Tobias, The Way They Learn, 18. 190 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 18; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 172; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99. John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 36. 191 192 Compare with Richard Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199; and Evans, Philosophy of Religion, 64. 193 Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 23. 194 Cf. Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 30, 32, 37. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 45 his analysis by stating that Hume has “an impoverished conception of inductive inference” that is “stultifying to scientific inquiry.” 195 Hume insists that when a particular cause is inferred from an effect, one can only ascribe to the cause those qualities that are exactly sufficient to produce the effect. 196 While Hume mainly uses this principle to claim that the being responsible for the design of the universe cannot be attributed the qualities of absolute goodness, omnipotence, and omniscience, 197 an assertion that design proponents agree with, Richard Swinburne also believes that Hume’s use of this principle suggests that whatever produced the regularity of the world was merely a regularity producing entity, and that for Hume, proposing an agent who acts by choice goes beyond what is required to account for the effect. 198 Swinburne states that Hume’s principle of inference is clearly false based on the typical understanding of inference criteria for empirical matters and that its adoption would lead to the abandonment of science because it would obstruct the advancement of human knowledge. 199 Antony Flew claims that Hume’s inference principle faithfully follows “the Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy given in Newton’s Principia,” 200 but Isaac Newton considered his 195 Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 31, 49. See also Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99 (11.12); cf. Hume, cited in Writings on Religion, 55; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 196 197 Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 198 See Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 199 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 200 Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 55. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 46 scientific findings to be proof of God’s majesty and hoped that his scientific writings would lead people to believe in God. 201 Since Newton would have understood that God could be the cause of any effect, and that God had created the world, it would seem that Hume’s use of Newton’s Principia does not honor Newton’s overarching perspective. However, in as much as Hume contends against characteristics unnecessary to the formation of the universe and unobservable in nature such as God being good or infinite, he has applied Newton’s principle correctly. 202 Yet, for those characteristics required for the formation of the universe and that are observable in nature such as great power, foresight, and a sense of order, 203 the existence of life and this universe only establish that the creator has the minimum required abilities. The full extent of these abilities simply cannot be determined from the observation of the universe. It seems that Hume does not make this distinction in his arguments, and thus makes the error of broad brushing everything as a ceiling limit when some characteristics can only be confirmed as a minimum or floor quantity. Consequently, Hume’s claim that the creator is finite must be understood as an assumption. 204 Compare with n.a., “Facts about Newton,” n.p.; n.a., video on Newton, n.p.; Steven E. Jones, “A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion,” BYU Religious Studies Center, https://rsc.byu.edu/converging-paths-truth/briefsurvey-sir-isaac-newtons-views-religion#_edn7 [accessed August 16, 2022]; and Marcelo Gleiser, “Isaac Newton’s Life was One Long Search for God,” February 2, 2022, Big Think, https://bigthink.com/13-8/isaac-newton-search-god/ [accessed August 16, 2022]. 201 Cf. Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492; Hume, Dialogues, 35, 63-6, 69-74; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 174. and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117, 119. 202 Refer to Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 492; and Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99-101 (11.14, 11.16), cf. 99-104 (11.12-23). 203 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 35; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; and Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99 (11.12). 204 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 47 Since it can be affirmed that the universe had a beginning, 205 some sort of event had to occur to bring the universe into existence from non-existence. Given this, postulating an entity who chose to create and has the abilities required to intentionally cause the existence of life and the universe is entirely reasonable. 206 Since this postulated entity produced a temporal effect with an absolute beginning, and formed something spontaneous and new, this entity must have existed before the beginning of the universe and must have exercised free will to accomplish this feat. 207 As such, this creative entity must be a transcendent and personal being. 208 Since the mere examination of the natural phenomena and artifacts in this world does not allow one to positively identify its creator, Hume’s claim that the design argument cannot identify the specific cause of the universe’s formation is valid. 209 However, he must also concede that it is quite plausible that the God described by Christianity is responsible. See the subsection “The Universe is Not Eternal” in the section of this work titled “Chance in not an Option” (79-83) for the evidence and argument that the universe had a beginning. 205 206 Refer to Craig, On Guard, 99-100; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 196, 197. 207 Compare with Craig, On Guard, 99-100; Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 224, 234, 250-2, 266; John C. Lennox citing Keith Ward, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 2d ed. (Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 2009), 64; R. C. Sproul, Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 11-13, 157-9; Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, Study Guide ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 175, 192-4, 197-8; and Eric Hedin, Cancelled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2021), 43-4. 208 Compare with Craig, On Guard, 99-100. 209 Cf. Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 56; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 44-5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 48 b. Applying Inference Judiciously It can be agreed with Hume that repeated experience enables human beings to discover the actual cause of a phenomenon, 210 and it is true that all forms of inference rely on experience as the basis for any assertions, but what kind of experience, and where is this experience focused? Science functions according to numerous philosophical presuppositions: “the senses are reliable and give accurate information about a mind independent physical world,” there is uniformity in nature, language has meaning, universal constants exist, etc. 211 From these basic presuppositions, scientists formulate theories that often cannot be proved with certainty but offer the most likely explanation based on what is known. 212 When their theories are based on repeated observation and experimentation, such theories will carry more weight than those that are not, 213 but scientists also study unrepeatable events. For historical and origin type events, historians and scientists frequently employ abduction, which attempts to infer the best explanation of the observed data. 214 This approach aligns well with the prime principle of confirmation 215 and utilizes criteria such as explanatory scope, explanatory power, plausibility, simplicity, consistency with the 210 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 17, 23-4; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 171; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 99. 211 See also Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 198-9. 212 Cf. McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism, 95, 97. 213 See John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 32. 214 Compare with Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 61. 320; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 32, 85. Refer to Robin Collins, “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael J. Murray (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 51-2. 215 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 49 evidence, and comparative superiority. 216 For this approach, because explanatory power and scope are more important than simplicity for the validation of a scientific theory, those theories that have greater explanatory power are deemed better that those with less. 217 The Reality of Experience Curiously, Hume does not address abduction. 218 Instead, he asserts that humanity’s lack of diverse experience with both designed and undesigned universes means that one cannot conclude by inference that this universe exhibits the marks of a designer. 219 However, Swinburne, Moreland, Craig, and Lennox all assert the Hume’s claim is simply false, and that scientists often infer never observed theoretical causal entities, including complex intelligent sources and personal agents, to explain observed effects. 220 Also, the distinctive scratch marks on archaeological findings, the specific characteristics of radio signals in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and certain features of a crime scene are all understood to exhibit traits and patterns that allow investigators to distinguish between intelligent activity and random or natural incidents. 221 These examples Cf. Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 62; DeWeese and Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult, 22; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 180. 216 See Steven C. Meyer, “The Cambrian Information Explosion,” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 386; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 180; and DeWeese and Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult, 22. 217 218 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 17, 20, 30-3, 69; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, xi; Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 57; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85. 219 See Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 63; Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 320; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 180. 220 221 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 175, 180; Pearcey, Total Truth, 181-2; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 320. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 50 demonstrate that detecting intentional, intelligent activity is an empirical and scientific process. 222 John Lennox notes that some oppose aligning the design argument with these examples because humanity is familiar with the creative activities of human beings, but Lennox responds that when the effect expresses a structure consistent with intelligent activity, one should prefer an inference that explains the effect to a non-intelligent or unknown, chance source that does not. 223 A willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, unencumbered by a knowledge limiting worldview, is the essence of true science and any inference to the best explanation. 224 When considering the likelihood of life and the universe’s existence, it is not ignorance, but the gap revealed by humanity’s knowledge of science, that leads to postulating, as the best explanation, an innovative intelligence that is more complex than the objects created. 225 The argument from design commits no formal fallacies, keeps “the canons of argument about matters of fact,” and offers an argument by analogy that draws on a large quantity of data, these being human artifacts known to be designed as well a variety of natural objects and aspects of the universe that exhibit intention in their function and existence, including such examples as the fine tuning of the cosmological constants, the specified complexity of DNA found in biological Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 181-2; Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 631; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 84. 222 223 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 175, 181-2; and Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 62. 224 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 38, 182. Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 174, 179-80, 185, 188-9; Elliott Sober, “The Design Argument,” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, eds. William Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 107; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 196. 225 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 51 lifeforms, and the regularities of succession that function in plant and animal procreation. 226 This being said, both proponents and opponents agree that it is the strength of the analogy between the human artifacts and natural objects that determines the strength of the argument from design. 227 Hume claims that this analogy is quite weak, that “the dissimilitude is so striking that” any professed analogy inferring similar causes is mere conjecture. 228 However, while unknown to Hume, modern scientists have discovered that William Paley’s assertions alleging a robust similarity between human machines and living organisms were entirely justified. 229 Indeed, the discovery of biological clocks that are considerably more sophisticated than Paley’s illustrative watch and information theorist Hubert Yockey’s assessment that the genetic code found in living organisms is mathematically identical to human language has led to the acceptance of the term ‘molecular machine’ in the field of molecular biology. 230 In response to the evidence of fine tuning in the universe, cosmologist Edward Harrison declares it to be “prima facie Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190, 192-5; Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 631; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 70-3, 79; 84, 152, 156; Wesley C. Salmon, Logic, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973), 97, 100; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 44-5; 52-3, 58; Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 37; and M.A. Corey, God and The New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1993), 262-6. 226 227 City, 58. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 195-6, 201; Salmon, Logic, 98; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 16, 19, 22, 33, 88; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 170, 173; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 98-9, 119, 122; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 84. 228 Refer to Paley, Natural Theology, 8-9, 13, 37, 39; McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism, 100-1; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 74-5, 81, 84-5; Michael Denton, Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler Publishing Inc., 1986), 340-1; and Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 271-3. 229 230 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 174-5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 52 evidence of deistic design” 231 and physicist Freeman Dyson proclaims that “the universe must in some sense have known that [humanity was] coming.” 232 Furthermore, molecular biologist Michael Denton, in his book, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence, concludes that the environmental factors found in nature indicate that this world is uniquely biologically suited for cellular life and creatures with humanity’s physiological and anatomical characteristics. 233 These developments in cosmology and molecular biology have solidified the analogical inference for an intelligent origin and rendered hollow Hume’s protestations of illegitimacy. 234 In assessing Hume’s criticisms, Richard Swinburne states that Hume has only considered regularities of copresence while ignoring regularities of succession. 235 By this, Swinburne means that while Hume has considered spatial arrangements that account for the existences of objects such as eyes, ears, and body symmetry, he has not accounted for natural functional sequences such as seeing, hearing, and the natural laws. 236 As such, Swinburne claims that Hume’s criticisms are 231 Edward Harrison, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 75. Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 250; cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 189-91; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 58-9. For a similar comment on fine tuning, consult Leonard Susskind, “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind,” Closer to Truth Web site, YouTube video file [Jan 8, 2013], 0:20-0:48; 1:2546; 4:33-5:15; 5:53-6:01, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s [accessed on February 8, 2022]; and Leonard Susskind, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, https://sitp.stanford.edu/people/leonard-susskind [accessed on February 24, 2022]. 232 Refer to Michael Denton, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2022), 24-5, 202. 233 234 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 70-5, 175; and Denton, Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, 340-1. 235 Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 197. 236 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190-1; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 44-5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 53 inadequate because they do not satisfactorily account for the scope of the apparent order in nature. 237 Another scholar, M.A. Corey also voices concerns about Hume’s criticism of analogical inference. Corey finds Hume’s focus on differences to be largely irrelevant because the natural theologian is aware that contrived human artifacts differ in their scope and complexity from the contrivances attributed to the creative intelligence postulated by design argument proponents. 238 He notes that when drawing an appropriate analogy, it is the similarities that are relevant, and that it is a mistake to assume that even a tremendous number of the dissimilarities somehow negates the existence of any similarities between human beings and the postulated creator. 239 The fact “that one of the similarities, namely the capacity for intelligent design, is so striking, [means] that a legitimate analogy can in fact be drawn between them.” 240 The Characteristics of Uniqueness Hume also asserts that because the universe is a unique, one-of-a-kind object with which humanity lacks diverse experience, hypotheses and conclusions about it cannot be formed by analogy, particularly about its cause, origin, or development. 241 Swinburne, Moreland and C. 237 Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 192, 197. 238 See also Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 270. 239 Compare with Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 270-1; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 82-3. 240 Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 271. Cf. David Hume, Dialogues, 20, 69; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 63; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 134; and Evans, Philosophy of Religion, 64. 241 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 54 Stephen Evans all assert that Hume's claim is simply false. 242 Swinburne and Moreland note that cosmologists and astronomers have reached "well-tested, scientific conclusions about the universe," including its age, rate of expansion, and density, facts that could not be ascertained if Hume's assertion was true. 243 Referring to the fact that the human race is unique, Swinburne further claims this has not stopped physical anthropologists from reaching valid conclusions about the origin and development of the human race. 244 Similarly, Evans notes that biologists have developed hypotheses about the origin of life on this planet even though life is currently understood to be a singular phenomenon. 245 In the Dialogues, Hume even suggests a pantheistic analogy between the universe and an animal or organized body, an idea that would seem to undermine his claim regarding the limitations imposed by the uniqueness of the universe. 246 Swinburne and Moreland then assert that uniqueness is a relative descriptive property and point out that "nothing describable is unique" in all its aspects and everything describable is unique in some of its aspects. 247 For example, a car has many characteristics in common with other cars but its VIN number, license plate, scratches, dents, and degree of rust perforation will be unique 242 Refer to Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 63; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Swinburne, The Existence of God, 134; and Evans, Philosophy of Religion, 64. See Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Swinburne, The Existence of God, 134; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 63. 243 244 Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; and Swinburne, The Existence of God, 134. 245 Cf. Evans, Philosophy of Religion, 64. 246 See Hume, Dialogues, 39-40. Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; Swinburne, The Existence of God, 134; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 63. 247 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 55 identity markers for a particular vehicle. Similarly, the universe is a physical object that is composed of many physical objects and "is no more unique that the objects it contains." 248 It is therefore characterized by properties which are common to more than one physical object, such as density, mass, and particle composition. 249 Crucial for a valid analogical inference is that the objects being compared be similar in aspects that are relevant for the characteristics being inferred. 250 For the Design Argument, the point of comparison is the appearance of contrivance in the universe, which is readily admitted, with the certainty of contrivance in similar, but admittedly less complex, mechanisms produced by human beings. Thus, the unique aspects of the universe are not a factor. 251 Hume's assertion against ascertaining knowledge by inference about unique objects and events aligns with his straight rule of induction, and thus uniform experience, which he claims as a basis for denying the existence of miracles. 252 John Earman points out that Hume's straight rule of induction does not allow for the possibility of miracles, and is therefore a serious flaw in Hume's epistemology because it makes a universal generalization from a finite amount of data. 253 According to Earman, Hume invalidly and artificially segregates "direct, non-testimonial 248 Swinburne, The Existence of God, 135. 249 Refer to Swinburne, The Existence of God, 135. 250 See Salmon, Logic, 98, 100; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 58. 251 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 50; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 178; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 59, 74-5, 79-80. 252 Cf. Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 23; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 202. 253 Refer to Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 37. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 56 experience" from derived experience based on testimony, whereas most inductive inferences are based on a mixture of both these types of experience. 254 Also, by refusing to accept any testimony about miracles, Hume can be accused of being unscientific in his premises because testimony is a key component of all human knowledge claims. 255 Richard Price, a respected mathematician specializing in probability, and a contemporary of Thomas Bayes and David Hume, in direct opposition to Hume, stated that “the greatest uniformity and frequency of experience" does not provide proof of uniformity for future trials. 256 Earman concludes that Bayes rule for assigning prior probabilities holds that a reasonable epistemology acknowledges the possibility that rare and unexpected events such as miracles can occur, and in doing so, clarifies that Hume’s straight rule of induction is a very poor basis for asserting that miracles cannot occur. 257 In response to Hume's claim that miracles are a violation of the laws of nature, Richard Swinburne states that if there is a God who sustains the universe, then "there exists a being with the power to set aside the laws of nature," so any evidence of this being's existence is evidence that the miraculous is possible. Therefore, testimony of a miracle occurring could outweigh any expectations derived from the typical function of those laws. 258 John Lennox offers a different 254 Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 35, cf. 23. 255 See Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 35, cf. 23. Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 29-30, cf. 24-26, 37; Richard Price, Four Dissertations (2d ed. 1768), Dissertation IV “On the Importance of Christianity and the Nature of Historical Evidence and Miracles,” in Hume’s Abject Failure, 160 (392-393); and Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. "Richard Price, British philosopher," https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Price [accessed September 25, 2022]. 256 194. 257 Refer to Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 30. 258 Swinburne, The Existence of God, 284; cf. Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 23; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 57 perspective, asserting that laws predict what will happen if an agent does not intervene. While an agent can choose to intervene, their intervention does not destroy the laws because once the agent creates a new situation by intervening, all of nature accommodates the change and adapts all subsequent events to the new situation. 259 Lennox also asserts that knowledge of the laws of nature allows people to identify miracles because they are exceptions to the typical regular function of those laws. 260 As a further criticism of Hume, Lennox claims that Hume's appeal to uniform experience as validating evidence against miracles is assuming that which he wants to prove because Hume makes an absolute claim without having knowledge of all historical events. Lennox's last comment notes that the occurrence of a miracle is not a philosophical question, but a historical one that "depends on witness and evidence." 261 A perspective that proclaims miracles as violations of the laws of nature is claiming the sovereignty of those laws, but if an agent acting in a particular situation has sovereign authority, it is reasonable to expect that the imposition of that agent's will can bring about an unexpected, miraculous outcome. This line of argument can be taken one step further. If one considers how a cake undergoes a chemical reaction to transform it from batter to the finished product by applying heat as a catalyst or how the solid form of ice results from the catalyst of cold, forming an odd solid that is less dense than its liquid form due to a change in its molecular bonding properties, it can be asserted that these phenomena do not violate the mechanics of the natural laws. Similarly, a miracle Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 200-1; and C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York, NY: Harper One, 1947), 63. 259 260 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 201. 261 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 202. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 58 does not violate the mechanisms of science because God functions as the catalyst who has sufficient power to bring about new circumstances and an atypical outcome. In fact, God's sovereign ability is the key actuating factor in a miracle and is such that denying a miracle's occurrence is denying God's existence. 262 Given these realities, "it is inaccurate and misleading to say with Hume that miracles 'violate' the laws of nature." 263 Concluding Thoughts Michael Denton states that the "analogy between organisms and machines" is an "inference to design that is a purely a posteriori induction based on a ruthlessly consistent application of the logic of analogy." 264 Hume's assertions of uniqueness and lacking experience with universes would seem to be rebuffed by the realities of modern biology, cosmology, and the processes endorsed by science. Indeed, the universe and its mechanisms can be favorably compared with a robotic factory such as an advanced car manufacturing facility. Direct human activity may not be detectable, but the existence of the factory and its machines provide satisfactory evidence of intelligent human activity. 265 262 Refer to Swinburne, The Existence of God, 284. 263 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 201. 264 Denton, Evolution, A Theory in Crisis, 340-1. 265 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 91. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 59 c. The Limits of Analogy To attack the design argument’s use of analogy, Hume asserts that if the proposed creator “god” is analogous to a human agent, then a fully corporeal and finite anthropomorphite that is like human beings in many other respects should be postulated. 266 He consequently contends that design argument proponents are guilty of grotesque partiality because they assert that the thought of mere human beings is comparable to that of their creator. 267 Hume also claims that his proposal offers a degraded and disrespectful perspective of the theistic Christian God. 268 Going one step further, Hume states that the ancient pantheistic concept of the universe being like an animal or organized body is a better analogy that is based on the same principles of reasoning used in the design argument. 269 Finally, Hume states that God’s nature is completely incomprehensible. 270 To respond to this criticism, one simply needs to note that all analogies have limits and break down at some point. 271 While design argument proponents assert that there are some interconnecting similarities between the proposed creative agent’s activities and known human contrivance, they accept that there are also immense qualitative and quantitative differences between this agent and 266 See Hume, Dialogues, 35, 37; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 176; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; and Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 99 (11.12). 267 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 27, cf. 26-8. 268 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 18; and Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 172. 269 See Hume, Dialogues, 40; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 110, 116. 270 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 27, 40; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 110. 271 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 60 human beings and thus completely reject Hume’s suggestion of extensive concurrence and similar limitations. 272 Richard Swinburne states that the attributes of the universe suggest a creative agent that is free, rational and powerful, with the ability to intelligently contrive, but who need not be like human beings in other respects. 273 M.A. Corey asserts that it is “a mistake to assume that the dissimilarities between [the proposed creator] and [human beings] must somehow negate any similarities that might also exist” and accuses Hume of indiscriminately going beyond the bounds of a legitimate analogy and fallaciously asserting that no anthropomorphic qualities can exist between them. 274 As an example, Corey notes that “a man and a woman may not possess a completely congruent set of descriptive properties, but this fact can never be used to argue against the routine observation that [they have] some common” attributes. 275 Hume’s own comments here are quite interesting, because after suggesting an entirely corporeal and finite anthropomorphite that is not intended by those he criticizes, he seems to confirm that he has transgressed any reasonable limits of this analogy by declaring that his own example is an absurd, disrespectful and degraded concept of God. 276 Going one step further, it can also be asserted, based on the specified complexity and machine-like qualities of living organisms revealed by modern biology, that Hume’s organized body 272 Compare with Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 271; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 273 Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 274 See Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 271. 275 Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 271. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 18, 37; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 172, 176; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 276 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 61 concept of the universe must now be associated with intelligent intention and not random unintended outcomes. 277 In the Christian Bible, which claims to be truthful testimony, it is asserted that human beings are made in the image of God. 278 If true, then it would be reasonable to expect that there would be some similarities between the creator and human beings, and since human beings exhibit the ability to think logically, rationalize, and form contrivances, it is not unreasonable to believe that the postulated creator of the universe would also have these attributes, only on a much more spectacular scale. Christian theology also asserts that “Jesus is fully human and fully divine,” 279 and Thomas Morris, in his book, The Logic of God Incarnate, offers rationale to claim that Jesus simultaneously having all the attributes of divinity and all the essential attributes of humanity, while an asymmetrical situation, is not a logical contradiction. 280 Therefore, it would seem logically possible for there to be similarities between human beings and the postulated creator. Hume, however, entirely ignores the Bible’s claims. This fact is clearly demonstrated when he declares the creator to be a flawed architect who operates by trial and error. 281 Hume focuses solely on the world’s current corrupt and degraded condition, completely disregarding the biblical explanation whereby after God 277 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 174-5. Gen. 1:26-27; 9:6. See the sections of this work titled “One Instead of Many” (74) and “Is There an Explanation for the Designer” (67-68) for more information regarding the Bible’s claims to be truthful testimony. 278 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3d ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 660, cf. 623-31, 641-50, 658, 669-73. 279 See Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 62-3, 66-9, 72-3, 88-9, 103-4; and Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 101-6. 280 281 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 35-6, 68-9, 74; and Norton, “Hume's Thought," 29. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 62 made the world good, humanity’s rebellion resulted in consequences that adversely affected the world’s continued function. 282 Hume’s assertion that God is finite must be understood as an assumption because only the minimum capabilities of the postulated creator can be established from empirical observation of the physical universe. 283 The universe, being a physical object that began to exist, 284 however incredibly massive, is finite. Scientists have even estimated the number of elementary particles in the observable universe to be 3.28 x 1080. 285 For those functioning from within the framework of the physical universe, their experience is always connected to finite objects and delineated observations, so Hume’s limited empirical perspective is understandable. However, if the creator exists beyond the bounds of the universe, in a realm that is not accessible to physically delimited human beings, then the maximum limits of such a being cannot be determined by one’s human experience. Richard Swinburne also takes issue with Hume’s assertion that the creator is a corporeal, embodied being. 286 Such a being would only have direct control over a confined portion of the 282 Gen. 1:31, 3:8-19; Rom. 8:20-22. 283 See the section of this work titled “Hume and Inference” (46) for additional rationale regarding why it is not known from observing the universe that God is finite. See the subsection “The Universe is Not Eternal” in the section of this work titled “Chance is Not an Option” (79-83) for a detailed explanation of why the universe is understood to have had a beginning. 284 See Jay Bennett, “How Many Particles are in the Observable Universe,” Popular Mechanics, July 11, 2017, https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a27259/how-many-particles-are-in-the-entire-universe/ [accessed October 24, 2022]; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 141. 285 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 35, 37; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 176; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 286 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 63 universe and could not simultaneously exert influence over all scientific laws throughout the entire universe. 287 Since the purpose of postulating a creator was to explain all regularities of succession, positing a disembodied creator with simultaneous direct control over the entire universe “explains more and explains it more coherently” than Hume’s corporeal entity. 288 Since artifacts of design in human societies are typically, if not exclusively, the result of the intentional thoughts of human beings, then the key human attribute for contrivance is a rational mind, not a body. Therefore, if it is possible for a being that possesses a mind to exist unencumbered by a physical body, then Hume’s claim of grotesque partiality fails. 289 Also, since the Bible offers testimony of a non-corporeal creator being who “is not composed of matter and does not possess a physical nature,” but who exists beyond the physical universe while being ever present and active within it, 290 Hume needs to offer a good counter argument that refutes this testimony, but he does not. When considering the concept of infinity, the twelfth-century Muslim theologian al-Ghazali has successfully shown that it is not possible for an actual infinite number of objects to exist or an actual infinite number of sequential events to occur in a physical universe. 291 He “argued that if an actual infinite number of things could exist, it would lead to various absurdities.” 292 Since an actual 287 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 288 See Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 199. 289 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 27. 290 Erickson, Christian Theology, 238, cf. 243-4, 273-5; John 4:24, 8:23; Acts 17:24-5; Jer. 23:23-4; and Isa. 66:1. Compare with Craig, On Guard, 78, 83; William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 96-7; and Leonardo Salvatore, “In Search of a Creator: Infinity and Existence in the Kalam Cosmological Argument,” Aporia 32, no. 1 (2022): 33-4. 291 292 Craig, On Guard, 79; cf. Craig, Reasonable Faith, 96-7, 123-4. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 64 infinite would be a collection of items “that is not growing towards infinity but already complete” and that “is greater than any finite number,” 293 a real quantitative collection of items or sequential formation of events can only increase towards infinity but never reach it, and must therefore be characterized as indefinite or unfinished, not infinite. 294 The German mathematician David Hilbert illustrates al-Ghazali’s point by proposing a hotel with an infinite number of rooms where all the rooms are full, but an infinite number of additional guests can still check in, so even though there is no vacancy, guests are welcome. Likewise, all the guests in odd numbered rooms could check out, so an infinite number of guests, but there would still be an infinite number of guests in the hotel. Also, if all the guests except three checked out, then an infinite number of guests would check out but now there would be a finite number of guests in the hotel. 295 This situation indicates that one could “subtract equal quantities from equal quantities and get any quantity between zero and infinity as a remainder,” 296 thus demonstrating the absurdity of believing that such a hotel could exist in reality and showing why an actual infinite quantity of objects or events cannot exist in the physical universe. From this, it can be concluded that in the physical universe, infinity should only be understood as a numerical concept that identifies a potential but unreachable ideal limit. 297 From 293 Craig, On Guard, 79. 294 Refer to Salvatore, “In Search of a Creator,” 33-4; and Craig, Reasonable Faith, 116-7. See David Hilbert, “Lectures on the Infinite,” in David Hilbert's Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic 1917-1933, ed. William Ewald and Wilfried Sieg (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69444-1, 661, 730; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 118-9; Salvatore, “In Search of a Creator,” 34; and Craig, On Guard, 80-3. 295 296 Craig, Reasonable Faith, 119. 297 Refer to Craig, On Guard, 78-9; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 116-7; and Salvatore, “In Search of a Creator,” 33. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 65 Hume’s empirically focused criticisms, it seems possible that he may have used this type of rationale to disregard the Christian claim that God is infinite. However, when Christians affirm that God is an infinite being, they claim that He is separate from the physical universe and that He is qualitatively infinite with respect to His attributes, which is not the same as the mathematical sense of the word that refers to an aggregate infinite number of finite items. 298 Hume asserts that humanity cannot discover God and it seems possible he may have misunderstood the Christian claim regarding God’s infiniteness, which could have led him to assert that God is incomprehensible to human beings. 299 While it is true that an infinite being cannot be fully comprehended by a finite being, Hume’s claim goes too far because he denies the possibility that God could choose to communicate with human beings. 300 Christianity in fact, firmly declares that it is God who reveals Himself to humanity using “human language and human categories of thought and action,” 301 with His quintessential revelation being through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. 302 While God is knowable in a limited way from His work in creation, the Bible witness is the basis for asserting God’s infiniteness. 303 Since Hume completely ignores the Scriptures, his claim that God is finite and incomprehensible can be deemed invalid because he does not appropriately account for the categories of information with which he is dealing. Compare with Erickson, Christian Theology, 243-9; and Craig, Reasonable Faith, 119n46. 298 See Hume, Dialogues, 26-27. 299 300 Cf. Erickson, Christian Theology, 146-9, 154-6, 169, 187, 237, 243-9, 642. 301 Erickson, Christian Theology, 147. Cf. Erickson, Christian Theology, 146-9, 156-7, 698-701; Matt. 21:11; John 1:18, 10:30, 14:9; Acts 3:18-26; Deut. 18:15; Phil 2:6; and Heb. 1:1-3. 302 303 Refer to Gen. 1:1-31; John 1:3; Rom. 1:19-20; and Erickson, Christian Theology, 235-6, 243-9; 342-3. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 66 In this selection of criticisms, Hume goes beyond the valid limits of analogy, ignores the actual claims of design argument proponents, disregards what the Bible professes, and fails to recognize the categories of information accessible from the perspective of nature. His protestations therefore demonstrate a serious disregard for his opponents’ stance and the boundaries of epistemological discourse. d. Is There an Explanation for the Designer For this criticism, Hume challenges the theistic assertion that God is a reasonable stopping point for origin inquiries while the material world is not, proclaiming that since the mental world of ideas requires a cause as much as the material world, an explanation is also required for the postulated existence of a rational designer. He further contends that going beyond the material world results in an infinite regression that offers no legitimate basis upon which to stop; asserts that order is not an essential attribute of thought; and states that the Christian concept of necessary existence is meaningless and falsely professed because it could be applied to any object for which there is limited knowledge, including the material world. Hume concludes that advocacy for a designer is merely the result of theistic custom and religious bias. 304 Contrary to Hume, both Richard Swinburne and John Lennox assert that scientists routinely postulate the existence of entities more complex than the phenomenon being explicated to explain observed effects and that these postulations are justified if they simply and coherently account for See Hume, Dialogues, 30-2, 55-6; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 105-7, 115, 120; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 493-5, cf. 495; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198. 304 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 67 the characteristics of the phenomenon. 305 J.P. Moreland notes that the existence of water is described as being composed of hydrogen and oxygen without an explanation being required for the existence of the hydrogen and oxygen, 306 and Hume himself acknowledges that it is acceptable to explain a phenomenon by another unexplained phenomenon. 307 Moreland goes on to proclaim that Hume’s complaint about an infinite regress is invalid because a rational agent is normally accepted as a proper stopping point in any explanation of causes due to the fact that “rational agents cause their ideas to come together freely” … “in a variety of ways that are spontaneous.” 308 He also observes that when referring to ideas, order relates to the logical relationships between ideas and not to a structured arrangement so “the free agency of a rational mind” is all that is required to account for any order between ideas. 309 In contrast with Christians, who accept special revelation as a source of knowledge, David Hume appears to deny it. In the Old Testament, Israel appeals to the testimony of God in the Scriptures as a means of authentically knowing Him, as a reliable portrayal of the character of God, and as what has actually happened in human history. 310 The Old Testament testimony is quietly 305 Compare Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,”198-9; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 180. 306 Cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 33; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64. 307 308 Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64; and cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 60. Cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64; Hume, Dialogues, 30, 33; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 198. 309 Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 119-21, 126, 205-6. 310 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 68 confident and even adamant in its assertions about God, and defiantly counters any alternative declarations about Him as false allegations. 311 In the New Testament, Christians proclaim that Jesus reveals God, that all of Jesus’s words and actions are the actions and words of God, and that those who know Jesus, know God. 312 The Christian Scriptures are declared as being received from God, as being reliable, flawless, and unbreakable, and as issuing a summons and invitation to all human beings from one who cares for humanity and who is intransigently sovereign over all. 313 Now, the Christian claims about the Scriptures are not provable by human test methods but Christians do accept their Scriptures as being reliable testimony. Hume, on the other hand, asserts that God’s attributes are incomprehensible; declares that religions are based on superstition; that religious doctrines are arbitrary, unwarranted and offensive; proclaims there is no evidence of God’s providence in the world; denies the existence of miracles; rejects the morality and justice of God; ignores the Bible’s explanation for the existence of madness and corruption (i.e. disordered thought); and conspicuously does not refer to the Scriptures as a source of knowledge. 314 These claims indicate that Hume denies that divine revelation is a reality and reveal an attitude that is not compatible with what the Christian Scriptures proclaim. 311 Compare with Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 206-7. 312 Luke 10:21-22; John 5:30; 8:40, 47, 55; 10:25, 30, 37-38; 14:7-11, 23-24; 17:4, 6, 22-23, 26. 2 Sam. 22:31; Ps. 12:6; 18:20; 119:86, 140; Prov. 30-5-6; John 10:35; 2 Tim. 3:16; 1 Pet. 5:7; 2 Pet.1:20-21; and cf. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, 144, 724-5. 313 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 26-7, 31-2; Hume, “Criticisms of the Analogy,” 174; Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, viii; Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 54, 55, 58, 59; Hume, “Immortality of the Soul,” 31-2; Hume, “The Profession of Priest,” 13; Hume, “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” 4-5; Hume, “Of Suicide,” 39-40, 42; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 482, 484-6, 509; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 28. 314 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 69 Hume’s apparent view of the Christian scriptures is consistent with the limits he places on sources of knowledge, these being connected to empirical processes such as the senses and experience, which can be employed via such mediums as natural science and natural theology. There is however an irreconcilable conflict between these limitations and Hume’s demand for an explanation of the designer, a conflict that renders his query unanswerable. 315 An explanation follows. To understand the problem with Hume’s query, one needs to have some appreciation of the physics concept of frames of reference, whereby observations from different perspectives provide different information and where some authentic information is not available from some perspectives. The velocity of a person sitting on an airplane offers an example of this phenomenon. From the perspective or frame of reference of another passenger, a person may be sitting stationary in a chair whereas from the perspective of a person on the ground, both passengers are moving very quickly across the sky, even though the ground is also moving. Then, from the perspective of a person at a stationary point in space, the person on the ground is moving but the passengers in the plane are moving faster. When this concept is applied to Hume’s query and the existence of the universe is viewed as a giant science experiment, from a frame of reference inside this universe, human beings can only observe and conduct investigations of those things that exist within the universe because they have no independent access to anything outside of this universe. While it is logically possible that other beings can exist in a realm outside of this physical universe with the Christian designer God, such 315 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 45. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 70 information can only be known by beings inside this universe through reports that are sent from the realm beyond. This means that investigations that are conducted using empirical processes simply cannot discern any details about that which exists outside of the realm of the physical universe. Therefore, by placing limitations on what are deemed acceptable sources of knowledge, Hume has made it impossible to offer a response to his query about the origins of the designer. Since Christians claim their Scriptures to be reports from a being who exists outside of the realm of the physical universe and it is logically possible that this being and another realm exists, humanity can only receive these reports and accept or deny their veracity. If these reports have originated from a being beyond this universe, then if this being is being truthful, as He claims to be, then He is the only existing being of His kind and the other beings that inhabit His realm are also His creations. Any other possibilities put forth by human beings are purely speculation. However, even if there are other beings of the same kind as this creator God in a realm outside of this universe, if this universe functions as a science experiment where He has absolute control over all access to this universe, then it would be accurate to say that He is the only controller or God from the perspective of this universe. In both the case where He is the only being of His kind and where there are others, but He has absolute control of access to this universe, from the frame of reference of this universe, it would be scientifically appropriate to speak of this creator as a necessary being in the same manner that a scientist is a necessary being from the perspective of a controlled experiment requiring observation and periodic intervention. 316 Rather than being a meaningless 316 Cf. Job 34:14-15, NIV; and Erickson, Christian Theology, 362-5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 71 statement, the concept of a necessary being has objective validity when humanity’s frame of reference and limited access to other realms are considered. e. One Instead of Many Hume’s next attempt to undermine the design argument is to suggest a polytheistic explanation, namely that order in the universe could be the result of numerous finite deities combining their efforts in the same manner that a group of human beings collaborate to construct various complex mechanisms. 317 He recognizes that his suggestion violates the principle of Occam's razor, which states that one should “attribute to an explanatory entity only what is necessary to explain the data and not other accidental features,” 318 but asserts that this principle does not apply in this case because it is not known whether a single designer has sufficient power to compose and order all facets of the universe. 319 To rebut this particular criticism, one only needs to recognize that Hume is actually acknowledging that design is evident in the universe. In other words, rather than refuting the design argument, he is effectively proposing an alternative explanation for the design that he acknowledges exists, one that is merely different in form from the traditional Christian model. 320 317 9. Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 35-6; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108- Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 65; and cf. Brian Duignan, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Occam’s Razor,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Occams-razor [accessed January 23, 2021]. 318 319 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, xi, 36-7. 320 Refer to Nathan Harrison, in discussion with author, Pacific Life Bible College, Surrey BC, Feb 22, 2017. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 72 Beyond this, one should ask whether Hume can so easily set aside the principle of Occam’s razor. While he claims it does not apply in this case, both Richard Swinburne and J. P. Moreland assert that it does, 321 with Swinburne offering a reason for preferring a single-designer explanation. He declares that if more than one designer was responsible for the formation and continued operation of the universe, one would expect to see the characteristic marks of numerous designers in different aspects of the universe. Swinburne then concludes that because these characteristic marks are not discernible by humanity, it is more reasonable to postulate only one designer. 322 Swinburne’s use of Occam’s razor, while being an argument from silence, does appear to legitimately justify belief in the single-designer explanation. However, anyone who acknowledges the attributes of design in the universe must agree that without further information, merely observing the characteristics of the universe indicates both substantial harmony and coordination of function as well as an immense amount of diversity. So, while Occam’s razor must be accepted as a valid principle of simplification for philosophical reasoning and can be used as a basis for belief, it does not offer any certainty regarding the responsible agency. There is then a rational basis to doubt its effectiveness in countering Hume’s plainly skeptical viewpoint that there are no natural phenomena in this world that would permit a decision. 323 It must be accepted that it is quite plausible that the universe could have been formed by a talented consortium of creative designers who complied with a basic set of foundational rules 321 See Swinburne, “Argument from Design,” 200; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 65. 322 Cf. Swinburne, “Argument from Design,” 200. Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 37, 43; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175-6; and Swinburne, “Argument from Design,” 200. 323 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 73 and constraints that resulted in the required congruence to allow life on this world to coexist with the grand diversity and creativity exhibited by its life forms. However, it is no less plausible based on only these observations that the universe was created by a single being of vast power and creativity. In this critique, Hume contends that postulating numerous finite deities better aligns with human affairs, 324 but according to John Lennox, the observance of natural phenomena is an inadequate basis for identifying the form or structure of the responsible agency. 325 Lennox acknowledges that when examining the world, “science has been spectacularly successful in probing the nature of the physical universe and elucidating the mechanisms by which the universe works,” 326 but he also maintains that while science answers “how” questions about mechanism and “what” questions about the constitutional makeup of matter, it is incapable of answering purpose or agency questions. 327 To better understand Lennox’s point, consider how a combustion engine works. Science can explain how this mechanism functions, the properties of its various components, and the nature and proportions of the fuel and lubricants required to make it function at maximum efficiency. While this sophisticated human mechanism is known to have a designer, the identity of the designer or designers cannot be ascertained based on the function and properties of the engine. 328 Similarly, the design argument, 324 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 36; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175. See also Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 42-5; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64-5; Swinburne, “Argument from Design,” 190-3, 197; and Hume, Dialogues, 35-8. 325 326 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 44. 327 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 42-45. 328 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 41, 45. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 74 with its analogical appeal to the appearance of contrivance in natural phenomena, is completely incapable of determining the identity of the designer or whether these observances are the craftsmanship of an individual or a team working in concert. Thus, Hume finds himself appealing to that which cannot be identified from natural phenomena to object to a design argument that has no intention of autonomously demonstrating that the Christian God is responsible for the formation of the universe. While Hume’s suggestion of numerous finite deities of considerable power and creativity may be as explicable as a single exceedingly powerful designer, 329 the Christian design model is bolstered by the added dimension of special revelation, which proclaims that humanity has received veracious communication from the being responsible for all that exists. Scholar Richard Bauckham states that “testimony asks to be trusted” 330 and Christian philosophers Darrell Bock and Richard Swinburne assert that testimony should be given the benefit of the doubt and believed in the absence of counterevidence because this is how human information beyond one’s personal experience is gathered and acknowledged. 331 Christians then have a reasonable testimonial rationale to assert that there is one designer rather than many. Hume’s final point with respect to this criticism, that “an intelligent being of such vast power and capacity as is necessary to produce the universe … exceeds all analogy and even Consult Hume, Dialogues, 37, 43; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 175-6; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 329 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 506. 330 Refer to Richard Swinburne, The Resurrection of God Incarnate, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 12-13; and Bock, Can I Trust the Bible, 14. 331 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 75 comprehension,” 332 is one that Christians can readily accept because this is exactly what they claim about their God. From biblical revelation, Christians assert that God is knowable in a limited way based on what He has revealed about Himself to humanity while also declaring that God is infinite in His being, which makes His full comprehension by finite beings utterly impossible. 333 The design argument proposes a being with the minimal power and resources required to produce the universe and it is generally accepted that the finite physical universe does not require an infinite amount of power to form. 334 And since the actual quantity of power and ability required to establish the universe is not known, Hume’s opinion is irrelevant and can be dismissed. In conclusion, it can be asserted that Hume’s polytheistic design theory simply affirms a distributed model of contrivance to explain the formation of the universe. The Christian centralized design model is no less credible when considering only natural phenomena and with the addition of supporting testimonial evidence and its adherence to Occam’s razor, the Christian claim of one designer rather than many is an entirely reasonable belief. Since the design argument contends for contrivance and intention as opposed to randomness and unintentional outcomes, this attempt to criticize the design argument fails completely. 332 Hume, Dialogues, 37. Cf. Erickson, Christian Theology, 146-9, 237, 243-9, 642. Infinity is a concept that cannot be fully comprehended but only described using other similar concepts that cannot be quantified, bounded, or fully understood. 333 Compare with Craig, On Guard, 78-83. Since an actual infinite number of items cannot exist in physical space, it follows that the universe is finite and thus only requires a finite force, however immense, to form. 334 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 76 f. Chance Is Not an Option In this circumstance, Hume argues for the possibility that the stability and order exhibited within the universe are the result of accidental, unguided interactions between matter and an unknown actuating force. 335 Based on his contention “that matter can acquire motion without any voluntary agent or first mover,” he suggests that the eternal existence and motion of matter has allowed every possible arrangement of matter to be tried, and that after a period of chaos and disorder, the universe settled into its current well-adjusted state where matter is able to maintain its order and overcome minor erratic disturbances. 336 Hume states that human experience dictates “that matter is and has always been in continual agitation” and that his proposal suggesting motion begins within matter itself is as plausible an explanation to account for the observed appearance of art and contrivance as the assertion that it originates from an intelligent agent. 337 In support of Hume, Gaskin proclaims that this situation represents the special case where the probability between an ordered and chaotic universe cannot be assessed, and therefore asserts “that the order manifested in the universe is not in need of a special explanation.” 338 This objection then is based on an alternative analogical cosmology that relies on the inherent self-organizing nature of matter, leading Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 497. 335 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 49-51; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 497. 336 337 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177-8. 338 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 496. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 77 Hume to declare that postulating an intelligent agent is not required and therefore should be discarded. 339 Dean Kenyon and Gary Steinman, who authored the book Biochemical Predestination on the origin of life in 1969, initially aligned with Hume, suggesting that since “chemical compounds react more easily with certain substances than others,” … “some force within matter itself ‘predestined’ the chemical compounds to line up in just the right sequences to create the building blocks of life.” 340 However, after attempting to confirm his theory for many years, difficulties with numerous realities such as the fossil record and the origin of genetic information led Kenyon to renounce his theory and embrace intelligent design, having become “convinced that materialistic explanations for the cell were insufficient.” 341 Richard Swinburne observes that Hume’s proposal focuses on regularities of co-presence and relies on both chance and the regularities of succession. Swinburne finds the use of regularities of succession to explain regularities of co-presence to be plausible but insists that any reliance on chance is dubious. He states that “in the absence of any evidence that matter behaved irregularly at other temporal periods,” there is no justification for “attributing its present regular behaviour to Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 30-3, 55-6; Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 495; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 105, 107. 339 Pearcey, Total Truth, 194; and cf. Dean H. Kenyon and Gary Steinman, Biochemical Predestination (New York: McGraw-Hill; 1969). 340 Compare with n.a. “A Professor of Biology: Dean Kenyon,” Free Science, https://freescience.today/story/deankenyon/ [accessed August 25, 2021]; see also Pearcey, Total Truth, 194; and Stephen C. Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe (New York, NY: Harper One, 2021), 169. 341 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 78 chance.” 342 Using the example that monkeys typing has never produced anything intelligible, Swinburne also asserts that “an appeal to chance to account for order becomes less” plausible as the degree of order increases. 343 As a final comment, Swinburne notes that attributing the operation of regularities of succession to chance would actually be claiming that “there are no laws of nature that always apply to matter” and that it is only by chance “that the states of the universe are succeeding each other in a regular” manner in this time period. 344 To this, Swinburne suggests that since matter currently behaves in a regular manner, as one goes further and further back in time, Hume’s claim becomes less and less plausible because matter has continued to behave in the same regular manner. 345 Although Hume’s accidental formation suggestion suffers from several significant obstacles, in fairness, he could not have been aware of some of the possible refutations when he wrote the Dialogues. However, regarding the role of chance, it must be asserted that chance has no power, no ability to accomplish anything. Chance is merely a descriptor of causes and forces unknown, so when chance is cited as an explanation, it is simply a claim of ignorance. 346 Furthermore, like science, chance describes mechanism, not agency, so to ascribe causality to chance is to say 342 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201. 343 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201; and refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 193. 344 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201. 345 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 201. 346 Cf. Sproul, Not a Chance, 12-3, 23-4; Pearcey, Total Truth, 193-4; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 120, 188-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 79 absolutely nothing about the source of the cause. 347 Therefore, the fact that Hume defers to chance in this objection means that an intelligent designer cannot be dismissed as a possible explanation. The Universe Is Not Eternal In asserting that the universe is eternal, Hume makes an assumption that is now known to be untrue. Based on Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity that was introduced in 1917, which assumed a homogeneous and isotropic universe, Alexander Friedman and Georges Lemaitre predicted an expanding universe in the 1920s, suggesting that the universe was not timeless but had a finite history. 348 The discovery of “a red-shift in the optical spectra of light from different galaxies” by Edwin Hubble in 1929, the abundance of light elements such as helium, and the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation offer confirmation that the universe was formed by a hot, dense big bang and continues to expand. 349 From this discovery, the question why the universe came into being could no longer be suppressed and the Friedman-Lemaitre standard “big bang” model, which “posits an absolute origin ex nihilo,” became prominent. 350 This model asserts that galaxies are at rest with respect to space but recede progressively from one another as space itself expands, in similar fashion to how buttons on a balloon recede from one another as the balloon expands in size. 351 By projecting backwards in time, this model suggests a conical 347 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 42-45. 348 Refer to Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 221-2. 349 Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 221-2, 226; c.f. Craig, On Guard, 91; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 67-8; and Martin White, “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis,” UC Berkley, https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html [accessed September 13, 2021]. 350 Compare with Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 223. 351 Cf. Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 222; and Craig, On Guard, 88-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 80 representation of space time whereby the physical universe, all matter and energy, began to exist at an initial cosmic singularity, with no properties existing prior to this boundary point. 352 These findings make the existence of a beyond natural cause plausible, “otherwise, one must say that the universe simply sprang into existence out of absolutely nothing,” which is generally accepted as impossible because the absolute absence of any properties does not have the power to create. 353 Hume himself argues that for “something to arise without a cause” is an ‘absurd proposition’. 354 To avoid the absolute beginning predicted by the Friedman-Lemaitre model, cosmologists have suggested numerous other models, but they have all been shown to be unfeasible. 355 In fact, numerous cosmological experiments all show not only that the universe will expand forever, but that the rate of expansion is accelerating and is independent of the density of the universe, so a See P.C.W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (New York, NY: Springer Verlag, 1978), 78-79; Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 222-4; Craig, On Guard, 89-90; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 68-9. The idea that the universe originated from a cosmological singularity at some point in space is a concept solely based on science but one that Christians do not need to embrace in its entirety. Some Christians have suggested the Omphalos hypothesis, that God created a mature universe that started at some point beyond a singularity and that God avoided initial oscillatory and time dependent issues such as the light traveling from distant stars by starting the universe in a functioning steady state condition. See Dr Jason Lisle, “Does Distant Starlight Prove the Universe Is Old,” December 13, 2007, Answers in Genesis, https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/starlight/doesdistant-starlight-prove-the-universe-is-old/ [accessed October 5, 2021]; Scott Pfahler, “Creationism and the Appearance of Age,” 2005, http://apps.usd.edu/esci/creation/age/content/creationism_and_young_earth/appearance_of_age.html [accessed October 5, 2021]; and n.a., “Appearance of Age: Theological Questions about Mature Creation in a Young Universe,” https://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/aa.htm [accessed October 5, 2021]. 352 Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 224, cf. 234, 250-2, 266; c.f. Lennox citing Keith Ward, God’s Undertaker, 64; Sproul, Not a Chance, 11-13, 157-9; Craig, On Guard, 99, 104; Pearcey, Total Truth, 175, 192-4, 197-8; and Hedin, Cancelled Science, 43-4. 353 David Hume, “David Hume to John Stewart,” Feb 1754, in The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J.Y.T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), 1:187; and Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 266. 354 Consult Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 226, 228, 240; and Craig, On Guard, 91. Alternative models include those that oscillate between expansion and contraction, vacuum fluctuation models, the chaotic inflationary model, quantum gravity models, and ekpyrotic models, all of which have problems that result in corroboration of the standard model’s prediction that the universe had an absolute beginning. Cf. Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 226-40. 355 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 81 future contraction is improbable. 356 Moreover, “scientists Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin were able to prove that any universe that has, on average, been expanding throughout history, cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary,” and their theory is independent of the physical form of the universe, so it holds for the theoretical multiverse as well. 357 From a naturalistic perspective, the universe is a gigantic closed system, so the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics indicates that it will eventually wind down to a point of equilibrium and experience heat death. 358 Heat death is projected to be a lifeless state where the stars have burned out and all matter has been reduced to elementary particles and radiation. 359 Paul Davies, an expert in the physics of temporarily asymmetrical processes, states that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics indicates that the universe is stuck in a one-way degenerative slide to maximum entropy, and since this final state has not yet transpired, it follows that that the universe has only existed for a finite period. 360 356 See Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 228-9; and Craig, On Guard, 91. Craig, On Guard, 92; cf. Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 240; Arvind Borde, Alan, Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflation is Not Past-Eternal,” General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, Cornell University, https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012v1 (Oct 1, 2001), [accessed November 9, 2021]; and Arvind Borde, Alan, Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflationary Spacetimes are Not Past-Complete,” General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, Cornell University, https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012 (Jan 14, 2003), [accessed November 9, 2021]. 357 358 Cf. Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 241. 359 See Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 243. Refer to Paul Davies, “The Big Bang—and Before” (paper presented at the Thomas Aquinas College Lecture Series, Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA, Mar. 2002); and cited in Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 243-4. 360 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 82 Regardless of whether an oscillatory, recontracting, or ever expanding model of the universe is adopted, thermodynamics implies that the universe had a beginning. 361 It is interesting that the big bang model possesses a vanishing space-time Weyl curvature such that the constraints on the universe’s initial geometry support producing a state of very low entropy that then gradually increases. 362 This means that “the Weyl curvature hypothesis has the time asymmetrical character necessary to explain” the existence of the scientifically wellestablished 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. 363 Physicist Roger Penrose asserts that the special initial geometry of the Big Bang occurring by chance in the absence of a cosmic singularity is very unlikely, and concludes that an initial cosmological singularity was necessary for the formation of the observed thermodynamics properties of the universe. 364 Paul Davies further asserts that, like it or not, it must be concluded “that the universe’s energy was somehow simply ‘put in’ at creation as an initial condition” and that prior to creation, the universe, matter, energy, and spacetime itself simply did not exist.365 William Lane Craig claims that the evidence from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is even stronger than that of the continual expanding universe and that these two independent and mutually 361 Compare with Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 244-5, 247. 362 See Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 246. 363 Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 246; cf. 247. 364 Cf. Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 246-7; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 71. Refer to P.C.W. Davies, The Physics of Time Asymmetry (London: Surrey University Press, 1974); 104; Davies, “Spacetime Singularities,” 78-79; and cited in Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 222, 248. 365 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 83 reinforcing phenomena conclusively demonstrate that the universe had a beginning. 366 This scientific evidence serves to refute Hume’s premise that the eternal existence and motion of matter has allowed every possible arrangement of matter to be tried, and therefore undermines his accidental origin hypothesis. 367 Furthermore, a beginning of the universe from non-existence raises the question as to “why there is something rather than nothing” 368 and the formation of the universe ex nihilo means that there were initially no properties whatsoever, so random events would not be possible. The Universe Appears to be Finely Tuned By examining the characteristics of the universe, numerous constants have been discovered that cannot be accounted for by science but exist as specified preset boundary conditions for the cosmos. Most of these constants are “not constrained by any natural law,” are realized independently in that “one constant is not a function of another,” and there seems to be no scientific reason why their values could not have been different. 369 As Leonard Susskind, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, states, nobody knows why these values are what they are. 370 However, the most significant aspect of these constants is not their existence, which is 366 Compare with Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 247-8; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 69. Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 49-51; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113; and Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 497. 367 368 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 63. 369 See Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 52, 55, 199; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 189. Refer to Susskind, “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned,” 0:20-0:48; 1:25-46; 4:33-5:15; 5:53-6:01; and Leonard Susskind, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, https://sitp.stanford.edu/people/leonardsusskind [accessed on February 24, 2022]. 370 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 84 remarkable in itself, but that the existence of life seems to be extremely sensitive to minute alterations in their values. 371 This fact suggests that the universe has been finely tuned for the existence of life in our world, an observation that some have labeled the Anthropic Principle. 372 Examples of these cosmological constants include the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom. If this constant had been weaker by as little as five percent, multi-proton nuclei would not hold together, and hydrogen would be the only element in the universe. If this constant had been slightly stronger, hydrogen would be rare. Either way, life would not be possible. If gravity had been stronger or weaker by one part in 1040, then either life sustaining stars like the sun could not exist or heavy elements essential to life would not exist. If the electromagnetic coupling constant, electron to proton mass ratio, or neutron to proton mass ratio were slightly different, molecules could not form. Another fascinating fact is that the energy levels for Helium, Beryllium, Carbon, and Oxygen cannot vary with respect to one another by more than four percent because it would result in a universe with insufficient oxygen or carbon to support life. Additional phenomena include the Earth being the right distance from the sun such that the heat energy provided supports a stable water cycle, that a change in the colour of the sun would adversely impact photosynthesis, that the density of the ozone layer is such that it protects life from ultra-violet radiation but permits the required temperature range to support life, and that the Earth’s Cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 52, 55, 199; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 70, 73; Pearcey, Total Truth, 188; and Susskind, “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned,” 2:14-3:07, 3:18-35, 5:17-24, 5:34-51. 371 372 See further Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 73; Craig, On Guard, 108; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 189. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 85 speed of rotation is fast enough to acceptably moderate daily temperature shifts but slow enough to deter frequent and disastrous high speed winds. 373 Another substance, water, which is essential for all life, is “one of the strangest substances known to science.” 374 Oxygen is strongly electronegative and attracts two hydrogen atoms to form a water molecule. This results in the electron density of a water molecule being concentrated around the oxygen molecule leaving “the hydrogen atom (proton) to attract the oxygen molecules of other water molecules.” It is because of the hydrogen bonds that form between water molecules that ice is less dense than water, thus allowing ice to float. The lower density of ice is essential for life because as ice forms on the surface of water, it “protects the water below and marine life from further cooling.” Other strange qualities of water such as its ability to dissolve other substances, its thermal conductivity, and its surface tension are also essential for life to exist. 375 The independence of these cosmological properties and the necessity of their specific values with respect to the existence of life in this world corresponds to the numerous independent radio dials on an old-fashioned radio, where each dial has “hundreds of possible settings” and “nothing that presets any of them to any particular value,” but each dial must be set to just the right value to Compare with Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God (Pasadena, CA: Whitaker House, 1989), 121-31; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 52-3; Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 49; John D. Barrow, and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 309; Stephen M. Barr, “Anthropic Coincidences,” First Things, no. 114 (June-July 2001): 17-23; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 70-3; and Craig, On Guard, 109. 373 374 Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 524. 375 Cf. Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 143, 526-8, 530, 534. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 86 permit the radio to function. 376 The accidental occurrence of this fine-tuning phenomenon is extremely improbable and cannot be plausibly accounted for by physical necessity or chance. 377 While the Anthropic Principle describes the conditions required for life, and thus offers a strong rebuttal to Hume’s suggestion of an accidental formation, this principle does not explain why or how life arose, but instead calls to one’s attention the need for an explanation. 378 Pointing to Hume’s assertion that the formation of the universe is so completely unknown that any conjecture is possible, Antony Flew suggests there may be more than one universe. 379 In like fashion, atheists have suggested that instead of a creator, the observed fine-tuning of the universe could be explained if a multitude of parallel universes exist, claiming that it would then not be surprising that a small number of universes just happen to support life. 380 However, this hypothesis is faulty. First, there is no scientific evidence, the many universes hypothesis is entirely theoretical and completely unknowable by humanity. 381 Based on the prime principle of confirmation, the finetuning of the universe is clearly preferred to and much more probable than the many universes Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 189; and Paul Chamberlain, Comment on paper for Christian Theism Course at ACTS Seminaries, Aug 18, 2007. 376 377 48, 50. 378 Compare with Craig, Reasonable Faith, 161-5, 170, 172; Pearcey, Total Truth, 188; and Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 73-4; and Craig, Reasonable Faith, 166. See Flew, “Intro to Two Scandalous Sections,” 57; Hume, Dialogues, 17, 20, 30-3, 69; Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 108; and Popkin, “Editor’s Intro” to Dialogues, xi. 379 380 Refer to Craig, Reasonable Faith, 166, 168; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 74; and Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 50-1. See Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 60; John Polkinghorne, One World (London, SPCK Publishing, 1984), 80; John Leslie, Richard Swinburne, Edward Harrison, and Christian de Duve, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 74-5; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 169; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 190. 381 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 87 hypothesis. 382 Another issue with many universes is the need for a universe generator, which itself would have to be “governed by a complex set of physical laws that allow it to produce universes,” thus essentially suggesting a different type of design. 383 This universe generator would also have to “randomly create or select the very laws of physics themselves” and it is difficult conceive of a physical mechanism that could accomplish this feat. 384 Other phenomena that plague the atheistic many-universes hypothesis are the unlikelihood of the basic laws of physics exhibiting their observed degree of beauty, elegance, and harmony, attributes that guide physicists in their formulations; the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which requires a specific initial, highly ordered arrangement of matter; and the fact that the universe seems to be highly ordered throughout, whereas it is much more likely that only a few local patches of order would form at random. 385 Finally, given a finite past, it is only possible for a finite number of universes to exist, making the random formation of a life permitting universe extremely unlikely. 386 Given these formidable issues, from a scientific perspective, a single finely tuned universe is preferred. 387 382 Cf. Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 52. 383 Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 61; and cf. Craig, Reasonable Faith, 166-8. 384 Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 62. 385 Compare with Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 62-4. 386 Refer to Craig, Reasonable Faith, 168. See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 74-6; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 190-1. 387 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 88 The Existence of the Natural Laws Hume asserts his belief that the universe initially existed in a state of chaos and disorder but after a long period of time, settled into its current stable, ordered, and well-adjusted state. 388 Swinburne believes Hume claims that because humanity “lives in a period that is characterized by order, [humankind] has mistakenly concluded that matter has always been ordered.” 389 However, the finite existence of the universe and the aforementioned requirements for the existence of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics indicate that Hume is mistaken and that the initial state of the universe was highly ordered. 390 In his accidental formation hypothesis, Hume seems to assume the eternal existence of steady, inviolable laws that govern everything, but since the universe is not eternal, these natural laws cannot be eternal and therefore require an explanation. 391 Since science answers questions about mechanism and composition, and thus recognizes that the natural laws do exist, but cannot answer questions of purpose or agency, including why the universe exists, how then can science Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113. 388 389 Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. Cf. Davies, “The Big Bang,” n.p.; Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 243-4, 246-7; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 71; and Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 63-4. 390 391 See Hume, Dialogues, 43. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 89 explain from where the natural laws originated? 392 This explanation would seem to be outside of the scope of scientific inquiry. 393 While some scientists have suggested a self-generating universe might be the product of a theory or set of mathematical laws, John Lennox firmly declares that the natural laws are only descriptors that explain how the universe functions. 394 They have no power to create or cause anything to occur. 395 He notes that while “Newton’s laws can describe the motion of a billiard ball, it is the cue wielded by the billiard player that sets the ball moving, not the laws.” 396 As such Lennox declares the notion of clever mathematical laws bringing the universe and life into existence to be pure and quite poor fiction. 397 When one considers how the world functions in regular conformance to simple natural laws; that these natural laws are frequently instantiated and such that simple extrapolations from their past instantiations often yield correct predictions, making these laws discoverable by limited rational beings; that the characteristics and behaviour of substances and living organisms are in accordance with these laws in a way that lends itself to categorization; and that the limited examination of the universe that humanity has been able to undertake supports the extrapolation that the whole 392 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 45-6, 60, 63-5. 393 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 45, 65. 394 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 64-5. 395 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 65. 396 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 65. 397 See further Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 65. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 90 universe is governed by the same laws, the question of an overarching intention must be considered. 398 There is no scientific “explanation for the conformity of nature to the most fundamental laws,” 399 and given only random chance, it is very unlikely that humanity would find itself “embodied in a physical universe governed by simple laws.” 400 It is entirely possible that a randomly formed world could be so chaotic that humanity could never acquire understanding of how to produce effects such as food production. The laws of nature could be extremely complex or there could be billions of unconnected laws such that each law only occurs a few times throughout history. Either of these situations would prevent humanity from discovering such laws. However, if a creator intended its rational creatures to both develop an understanding of and have limited influence over their environment, then simple, discoverable natural laws to which the world regularly conforms would be expected. 401 If one further considers that regularities of succession, the simple patterns in the behaviour of objects, are exhibited in natural laws, it can be asserted that the operation of the natural laws is analogous to those regularities of succession that are produced by human beings. For example, the singing of music or execution of choreographed dance movements by human rational agents is analogous to the growth of a living organism in the sense that these activities all unfold by adhering Compare with Richard Swinburne, “The Argument from the Laws of Nature Reassessed,” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2969, 306. 398 399 Swinburne, “Argument from the Laws of Nature Reassessed,” 297. 400 Swinburne, “Argument from the Laws of Nature Reassessed,” 306. 401 Cf. Swinburne, “Argument from the Laws of Nature Reassessed,” 295-7, 301. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 91 to a set of regular, consecutive events. Since the operation of these natural laws governs almost all successions of events that are not orchestrated by humans and the only other known regularities of succession are caused by humans, it can be postulated that the natural laws were caused by an incredibly powerful rational agent. This explanation has the benefit of simplifying the explanation of empirical matters because the natural laws become an expression of the agent’s activity. 402 Therefore, in assuming the existence of the natural laws and not considering an explanation for their origin, it appears that Hume has overlooked an important regularity of succession that pointedly undermines his accidental formation hypothesis. The Reality of Mutations and Adaptation If, as Hume suggests, there is no designer, it seems fair to ask by what mechanism the complex set of life-forms found on this planet originated. Supporters of another type of accidental, unguided formation, evolution, claim that life developed through an aggregate sequence of steps from less to more complex life via mutation and natural selection. 403 However, the fact that natural selection can only favour new proteins and genes after they provide some function means that only random mutations can account for the biological hierarchy of lifeforms found in this world, and it appears that this mechanism is unable to bear the burden of this responsibility. 404 Because it seems much more likely that any accidental formation of complex lifeforms would have occurred through 402 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190-5; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 45. Lester and Bohlin note that natural selection is a passive process that can only select from existing functions, so the generation of new functional sequences via evolution must be accomplished by chance alone. See Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 72. 403 404 See Meyer, “Cambrian Information Explosion,” 387-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 92 an aggregate sequence of steps from less complex life than via direct formation from non-living chemicals, the progression issues related to evolution’s random mutation mechanism should also apply to Hume’s accidental formation hypothesis. Since “functionally more complex animals require more cell types to perform their more diverse functions,” new proteins, cell types, tissues, and body parts, all of which require a vast amount of new genetic information, are required, and these must be organized into new body plans such that hierarchically organized systems from lower-level components fit together and work as a functional whole in a newly formed animal. 405 However, analysis of mutations in the laboratory indicates that the basic body plan of a species does not change, and while mutations do generate variation, the results suggest that there are constraints that limit the degree of mutation that can be accomplished. 406 An alternate evolutionary theory called punctuated equilibrium, where new species emerge rapidly because of large-scale random mutations or self-organization models where selection acts on emergent patterns to produce a large-scale mutation, is also not viable because a process has not been identified to produce this type of mutation, and even with this model, variation remains intragroup limited. 407 In mutation experiments where thousands of generations of fruit flies were exposed to chemicals and radiation, strange variations of fruit flies have been observed but no new species 405 Meyer, “Cambrian Information Explosion,” 375, cf. 379. 406 Cf. Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 151. Compare with Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 213, 222; Meyer, “Cambrian Information Explosion,” 385; Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 134-5; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 167-8. 407 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 93 have emerged. 408 Furthermore, even though every mutation that occurs in nature has not been examined, those analyzed indicate that mutations generally result in a loss of genetic information, that the trickle of advantageous mutations often get wiped out by random side-effects or the much more frequent deleterious or degradative mutations, and that advantageous mutations rarely get preserved in the population. 409 Since mutations are errors in the DNA replication process and testing has determined that proteins are very sensitive to functional loss as a result of alterations in sequencing, it seems that numerous phenomena make the transition from simple to complex lifeforms via a series of mutations an implausible endeavor. 410 Another indicator, breeding experiments, show that animals in a specific taxonomy cannot go beyond certain limits, and after a certain point, they weaken, become sterile, or die, leading to conclusion that species exist within certain fixed limits.411 While the adaptation of specific traits within a species is accepted based on strong scientific evidence across various species, these adaptations have been found to be oscillatory and reversible, not directional. 412 Although Darwin’s finch beaks did increase in size during dry periods when seeds (food) where scarce, it was 408 Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 160-1; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 110. 409 Cf. Jonathan Sarfati, The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution (Atlanta, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2010), 67; Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (New York, NY: Free Press, 2007), 16; Michael Behe and Sir Ronald Fisher, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 110, 170-1; Pearcey, Total Truth, 167; Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 138; and Michael J. Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2020), 154. 410 See Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 67; and Meyer, “Cambrian Information Explosion,” 376-9. Compare with Pearcey, Total Truth, 161; Lester an Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 151; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 109-10. 411 412 Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 158-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 94 determined that the beak sizes reverted to their previous normal size when the environment changed, and food became more abundant. 413 In addition to these issues, the claim that extrapolation of observed species adaptations confirms the progressive evolution of lifeforms into entirely different species is completely devoid of any actual evidence. 414 In fact, even at the cellular level, there is not even “the slightest empirical hint of evolutionary” change. 415 Based on these observed and lack of observed evidences, experience dictates that the accidental formation of the incredible variety of lifeforms on this planet via aggregate transformative steps is not plausible. 416 The Complexity of Biological Life Since the universe came into existence and the most basic simple life form has 580,000 information rich base pairs in its DNA genome, and thus is not simple, it is also reasonable to ask how such life came to exist on this planet. 417 It can also be asked how the right type, variety, and amount of chemicals that support the existence of life on Earth came to exist, how both plant and animal life with their symbiotic life supporting relationship came to exist, how the incredible 413 See Pearcey, Total Truth, 158-60. Cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 167; Richard Goldschmidt, John Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary, Siegfried Scherer, Sir Fred Hoyle, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Meyer, Paul Davies, and Robert Laughlin, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 109, 112-3, 115, 120, 157-8; Stephen C. Meyer, “The Methodological Equivalence of Design and Descent,” in The Creation Hypothesis Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, ed. J.P. Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994), 67-112; and Hedin, Cancelled Science, 148, 151. 414 415 Compare with Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 250; and Werner Loewenstein, The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 129; and cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 122-3, 146. 416 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 120-1; and Michael Behe, cited in God’s Undertaker, 120. Cf. Gilho Lee, “Genetic Variation in Mycoplasma Genitalium,” Urogenit Tract Infect. 2017 Aug 12(2), Kamje Synapse, https://synapse.koreamed.org/articles/1084228 [accessed November 9, 2021]; Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 250; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 37, 42, 63-4, 109, 122-3, 143-4; Pearcey, Total Truth, 161, 188; and Hedin, Cancelled Science, 142. 417 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 95 diversity and wide-ranging complexity of life came to exist, and how the intricate, inter-connected environment that supports and sustains life on this planet came to exist. 418 Hume suggests that these mechanisms have formed accidentally but the probability of such an event or series of events must be deemed exceedingly low. 419 An important question though would be, “Are there specific aspects of biological life for which it is not reasonable to believe in an accidental formation?” Both proponents of design and accidental, unguided formation theories such as evolution “agree that taken at face value, living things look for all the world as though they are designed.” 420 Proponents of accidental formation theories must show that the “marks of design in nature are in fact a deceptive illusion” while design theorists are tasked with identifying “reliable empirical markers of intelligent agency.” 421 Biology offers such reliable empirical markers in the irreducible complexity and specified complexity of lifeforms. Irreducibly complex systems do not have any function until a minimum number of parts are in place. 422 This means that these systems cannot develop via an aggregate process over time but instead must have all the essential parts assembled before their function manifests. 423 The bacteria See Pearcey, Total Truth, 188-91; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 73-4, 108-9, 112-3, 118-9, 121, 124; Michael Behe, Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, Robert T. Pennock, ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 186; and Eric Hedin, Cancelled Science, 144. The symbiotic life supporting relationship between plant and animal life refers to such things as plants using carbon dioxide and producing oxygen while animals use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, plants functioning as food for animals, and animals producing waste that supports the growth of plants. 418 419 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 50-1. 420 Pearcey, Total Truth, 184. 421 Pearcey, Total Truth, 184. 422 Cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 186. 423 Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 186, 188; and Michael Behe; cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 124. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 96 flagellum is a bi-directional acid powered rotary propulsion device that functions like an outboard motor, and is capable of 100,000 revolutions per minute. 424 It has a long filamentous tail that acts as a propeller, a region that acts as a drive shaft, and proteins that hold the propeller like tail in place and aid in the function of the drive shaft like component. Also associated with the flagellum is an intricate control system that directs its operation, a fact that makes accidental formation or formation by natural selection very improbable. About thirty to forty proteins are required to produce a functioning flagellum with half of these proteins making up the finished product. The assembly process is exceedingly intricate and if the assembly information or almost any of the proteins are missing, a functioning flagellum is not produced. In critiquing the claim that a bacteria flagellum is irreducibly complex, Kenneth Miller states that since the components of a mousetrap could be used for another function entirely and since a flagellum could be missing some proteins and still transport proteins, there is no such thing as irreducible complexity. Michael Behe responds by noting that Miller shifts the sense of the term function from the specific operation of one intact system to an entirely different purpose involving some of the parts. Behe notes that the function of transporting proteins is not directly related to the flagellum’s function of rotary propulsion and that since taking away parts of the bacteria flagellum destroys its ability to act as a rotary propulsion mechanism, the flagellum is in fact irreducibly complex. 425 Miller also suggests that a biological secretion system might have evolved into a flagellum, but Jonathan Sarfati’s research indicates that Cf. Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, NY: Simon and Shuster Publishing Company, 1996), 39; Pearcey, Total Truth, 186; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 124. 424 Cf. Refer to Michael J. Behe, “Irreducible Complexity,” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 354-5, 359-60; and William A. Dembski, “The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design,” in Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 324. 425 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 97 the suggested secretion system devolved from the flagellum, which aligns with the typical effect of mutations, and leaves the flagellum’s origin unexplained by evolution. 426 Another example of irreducible complexity is the blood clotting cascade that is initiated when a human being receives a small cut that bleeds. A “concerted action of [separate protein parts] results in the formation of a web-like structure at the site of the cut, which traps red blood cells and stops the bleeding.” It is significant that “most of the components of the clotting cascade control the timing and placement of the clot,” not the construction of the clot. “The insoluble web-like fibers of the clot material are formed by a protein called fibrin” which exists in a soluble, inactive form in the bloodstream called fibrinogen until the circulatory system is breached. Upon initiation of the clotting cascade, an enzyme called thrombin activates the fibrin protein in a carefully regulated process that prevents massive clotting, which would lead to death. “Thrombin exists in an inactive form called prothrombin and has to be activated by another component called Stuart factor” which is also regulated. A component called tissue factor usually begins the cascade. Behe argues “that the cascade is irreducibly complex because, if a component were removed, the [clotting would] either [be] immediately turned on or permanently turned off.” 427 Critics of Behe’s claim speculate that “the components of the blood clotting pathway arose by gene duplication and gradual divergence.” In denying irreducible complexity, these critics point to experiments involving fibrinogen, the inactive clotting protein, and plasminogen, the inactive form of the clot removing plasmin substance. They state that if both fibrinogen and plasminogen are removed, that mutant mice do not 426 Compare with Sarfati, The Greatest Hoax, 292-3. 427 Refer to Behe, “Irreducible Complexity,” 361. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 98 display the problem of plasminogen deficiency. The problem with this assertion is that once fibrinogen is removed, the clotting system no longer functions, this being evidence of its irreducible complexity. 428 Philosopher Paul Draper suggests that an irreducibly complex system that performs a particular function could develop via a direct evolutionary path from a non-irreducibly complex system that performs a different function but shares many of the irreducibly complex system’s parts, asserting that parts that were previously not essential could later become essential for the new function of the irreducibly complex mechanism. 429 Fellow philosopher Alvin Plantinga believes that while Michael Behe has provided Darwinians with a significant challenge and even though Draper’s proposal is merely an abstract possibility, Draper has shown that “Behe’s conclusion does not deductively follow from his premises” 430 and therefore agrees with Draper, asserting that Behe has not demonstrated that it is impossible or even monumentally improbable for irreducibly complex systems to have evolved in a Darwinian fashion. 431 Behe’s response to Draper and Plantinga is See Behe, “Irreducible Complexity,” 361-3. Larry Arnhat in “Evolution and the New Creationism: A Proposal for Compromise.” Skeptic 8, no. 4 (2001): 46-52, notes that Professor Doolittle’s articles suggest that “the fibrinogen gene in vertebrates evolved from the duplication and modification of some ancestral gene that did not function for blood clotting. Doolittle surmised that there must be a fibrinogen-like gene in an invertebrate that does not possess the vertebrate clotting mechanism” and claims to have found such a gene in a sea cucumber in 1990. Arnhat admits that “comparing the gene sequences of modern organisms does not prove an evolutionary path for blood-clotting.” Furthermore, the presence of fibrinogen-like gene does not explain the existence of the timing and control mechanism of the blood-clotting cascade. 428 429 Cf. Paul Draper, “Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism: A Reply to Michael J. Behe,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, 1, no. 1 (Jan 1, 2002): 14, https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol19/iss1/1/ [accessed March 19, 2022]; and Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 150-1. Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 231. 430 431 Refer to Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 231. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 99 rather terse, claiming that imagining that through a long series of unexplained steps, mechanism A could morph into mechanism B, without offering enumerated and tested intermediate steps along a plausible physical pathway, illustrates a crucial difference between philosophical and scientistic arguments. 432 Behe further states that “no scientific argument simply follows deductively from its premises,” 433 or “has ever ruled out all possible rival explanations by dint of deductive logic alone” 434 and claims that “Draper used a wholly inappropriate standard to evaluate [his] argument, one that is not applied to any other scientific theory.” 435 Pointing to the fact that “all scientific arguments … rest most heavily on empirical data, ” 436 Behe draws support from evolutionary biologist Douglas Orr who asserts that the idea of one system recruiting parts from another system for a new function in the real world is very, very unlikely, and certainly does not offer a general solution to irreducible complexity. 437 Behe goes on to declare that irreducible complexity can only be validly assessed at the molecular level of life and that the degradative nature of mutations make it prohibitively improbable that they produced the elegant biochemical machinery found in the cell. 438 As a final remark, Behe notes that twenty-five years after proposing irreducible complexity, biochemical research has greatly advanced the understanding of molecular lifeforms, but despite 432 Compare with Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 152. 433 Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 155. 434 Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 155. 435 Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 155. 436 Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 155. Cf. H. Allen Orr, “Darwin v. Intelligent Design (Again),” Boston Review (December 1996/January1997): 28-31, https://web.archive.org/web/20141006072402/https://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.6/orr.html [accessed March 16, 2022]; and Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 147. 437 438 Refer to Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 149, 154. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 100 evolutionary biologists’ immense dislike for intelligent design, they have not offered an explanation for how Darwinian processes could produce irreducibly complex systems. 439 In his book Natural Theology, William Paley claimed the intricacies of the human eye as an example of design in the universe and since then it has become a focal point for the design versus evolution controversy. Design proponents point to the complexity and coordinated, inter-workings of the eye’s component parts, note that the brain sees the entire world and understands size and distances based on the information provided by the three centimeter retina, and assert that the many varieties of eyes found in nature, each of which have their own complexities and unique properties, does not make evolution viable but only provides further evidence of design. 440 Supporters of evolution claim that the presence of light sensitive structures in single celled organisms and the various complexities of eyes found in nature suggest an evolutionary tract for the eye and further declare that the human eye has imperfections because some blood vessels and nerves are located in front of the retina and block incoming light, resulting in a blind spot and thus invalidating the claim of design. 441 In responding to evolutionists, Lester and Bohlin note that “no true historical series has 439 See Behe, A Mousetrap for Darwin, 153. For a more detailed discussion of creationist’s claims of design based on the intricacies of the eye, please see Paley, Natural Theology, 32-3, 43; Gerald L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York and London: The Free Press, 2001), 82-6; Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 97-8; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 46-7. 440 441 For a more detailed discussion of the evolutionist’s position, please see Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, rev. ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996), 111-32; and Arnhat, “Evolution and the New Creationism,” 46-52. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 101 ever been produced for the evolution of the human eye” 442 and Gerald Schroeder asserts that even Divine design does not necessarily mean perfect design. 443 Richard Dawkins claims that the eye is not irreducible complex because the lens of the eye can be removed and although somewhat impaired, a person can still see enough to avoid bumping into other objects. 444 This conclusion, however, is irrelevant. The eye does not provide the function of seeing in isolation but is one component of a complex system. The ability to see requires several different component systems to coordinate their efforts in a synchronous manner. The eye acquires light image data that is translated into electrical impulses, the neural system transports this data to the brain, and the brain interprets the data. These component systems that provide data acquisition, translation, transport, and interpretation form an irreducibly complex system in that if one of these component systems (parts) is removed, the system’s function of seeing is no longer possible. Hearing functions similarly with the ear acquiring sound wave data. These examples demonstrate that irreducible complexity is a biological reality in this world and this reality makes any accidental formation hypotheses extremely implausible. Another aspect of biological life that Hume’s hypothesis cannot accommodate is the specified complexity of DNA. DNA is a long, non-repetitive sequence of four specific types of 442 Lester and Bohlin, Limits of Biological Change, 98. 443 See Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, 10. 444 Refer to Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 113. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 102 sugar macromolecules called nucleotides that reside in the nucleus of a cell. 445 These nucleotides function like letters in a language and since their sequences are not repetitive, they represent a vast amount of information. 446 It is this precisely sequenced arrangement of nonliving chemical letters that provides the complex information required for the formation of living, biological organisms, with the human genome being over 3.5 billion letters in length. 447 Furthermore, the specific message encoded in DNA is independent of its chemical composition in the same manner that the medium of paper and ink are independent of the thoughts they convey. 448 Scientists have determined that “human written language is the most analogous human artifact to the DNA code,” and now apply information theory to the study of DNA, recasting life’s origin “as the origin of biological information,” 449 information that is beyond the ability of chemistry and physics to generate or create. 450 The complexity of protein macromolecules and the genetic code offer another significant problem for Hume’s accidental formation hypothesis. “Proteins are immensely specialized and intricate constructions of long chains of amino acid molecules,” 451 where twenty different types of See Lawrence C. Brody, “Nucleotide,” National Human Genome Research Institute, https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Nucleotide [accessed December 27, 2021]; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 55, 136, 138; and Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, 191. 445 Cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 51; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 135; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 191. 446 447 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 135, 137; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 192. 448 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 55; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 52. 449 Pearcey, Total Truth, 191; cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 68; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 137; and Corey, God and The New Cosmology, 262. 450 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 55-7. 451 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 128. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 103 amino acid molecules function like the letters of an alphabet and must be in exactly the right place in the chain for the word-like protein to function. 452 Hundreds of thousands of proteins are required for life and when they are made, some require other “chaperone” proteins to fold the protein into a precise three-dimensional geometric configuration that is required for its biochemical activity. 453 Physicist Paul Davies compares building proteins to building a house and recognizes that “it cannot be produced simply by injecting energy into the raw materials needed for their construction.” 454 When considering the genetic code, realizing that a gene is a long string of letter-like nucleotides that contain the instructions for making proteins, that the genome consists of a complete set of genes, this being some 30,000 to 40,000 genes in the human genome, and that this genome makes up only 3 percent of the DNA, with the remaining 97 percent being responsible for non-coding regulatory and maintenance processes, the question of how this information laden genetic code and its translation mechanisms originated is clearly pertinent. 455 The genetic code also exhibits a hierarchy of complexity because a large collection of genes can be involved in the formation of a particular trait or function, their correspondence being many to one, and because genes can be switched on or off by promoter sequences such that small differences in the number of genes result in significant observable differences in the characteristics of an organism. 456 The degree of Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 128-9, 156; and D.D. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology 301, 585-96. 452 453 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 144. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 128; and cf. Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (New York and London: Simon and Shuster, 1999), 88. 454 455 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 136-7; 141, 145. 456 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 141-2. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 104 complexity and organization evident at these molecular levels makes their accidental formation quite unlikely. 457 Hume and others argue for self-organization, that order and organization can arise out of chaos and disorder, pointing to the exquisite regularity of copresence type order found in crystals and honeycomb, or a Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction, where the reaction produces continuous colour changes at regular clock-like intervals. 458 However, when considering the origin of life, twenty-five years of laboratory experiments have confirmed that a random distribution of organic compounds will be formed in pre-biotic soup experiments, thus demonstrating that there are no “inherent, selfordering tendencies … or selective reaction preferences.” 459 The core problem according to scientists “is that of producing the qualitatively different, language-type structures formed by the complex ordering of the amino acids that form a protein.” 460 Paul Davies notes that with a crystal, honeycomb or Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction, a relatively simple order is imposed externally by the system’s environment whereas a living cell derives a much more complex order from internally imposed controls that are based on information. 461 Davies along with numerous other scientists assert that nobody knows how a transition was made from external to internally imposed organization, or how self-replicating organisms arose in the first place, and that “thirty years of Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 128; and Alexander Graham Carnes-Smith, The Life Puzzle: On Crystals and Organisms and on the Possibility of a Crystal as an Ancestor (Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver and Boyd, 1971), 95. 457 458 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 130, 132; Hume, Dialogues, 50-1; and Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 178-9. 459 Cf. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 60-1, 67-9, 71-2. 460 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 132. 461 Refer to Davies, The Fifth Miracle, 141; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 133. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 105 experimentation in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have only led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem,” but not to a solution. 462 Stephen C. Meyer adds that self-organization theorists offer explanations for what does not need to be explained, asserting that the heart of the problem is the origin of information. 463 The interdependent relationship between DNA, RNA, and protein macromolecules and the complexities of their interworking in the formation of life have convinced numerous atheists, evolutionists, and agnostics that intention was required to bring about the formation of biological life. 464 The key issue is that DNA carries the information required for protein construction, but the construction process cannot proceed without the support of RNA and numerous proteins, these proteins being “large molecules that chemically are very different from DNA.” 465 This means that there is a which came first “the chicken or the egg” type of issue that scientists cannot resolve. 466 The DNA, RNA, and assisting protein molecules must function concurrently in an interdependent, Cf. Davies, The Fifth Miracle, 141; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 133-4; Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York, NY: Simon and Shuster Free Press, 2006), 90; Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (London: Viking, 1995), 31; Klaus Dose, “The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 13 (1988), 348; Leslie Orgel, “The Origin of Life: A Review of the Facts and Speculations,” Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 23 (1998), 491500; and Francis Crick, Life Itself (New York, NY: Simon and Shuster, 1981), 88. 462 463 See Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis, 178. 464 See Antony Flew, with Roy Abraham Varghese, There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007); Kenyon and Steinman, Biochemical Predestination (1969); Dean H. Kenyon and Percival Davis, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd ed., ed. Charles Thaxton (n.p.: Haughton Pub Co., 1993); Neil Thomas, Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2021); and Physicist Heinz Pagels, cited in Pearcey, Total Truth, 190. 465 See Robert Shapiro, an expert in DNA chemistry, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 139. 466 Cf. Robert Shapiro, cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 139. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 106 irreducible, symbiotic relationship within a complex system to produce new living cells and it is not known how these essential components for life came into existence or how they began to functionally cooperate without some sort of outside influence. 467 This issue is complicated by the fact that modern biology has found no evidence of replicator evolution and “no trace of a hypothetical primal replicator or catalyst.” 468 Scientists have also determined that “the incredibly precise duplication of DNA” with a very small error rate is accomplished “by repair enzymes that detect and correct errors,” so “living cells are not the passive victims of the random forces of chemistry and physics,” but instead devote substantial resources to suppressing the kind of random genetic variation that theorists suggest as sources of evolutionary variability. 469 To further investigate what better accounts for the origin of the complex language-like sequences in DNA, Nancy Pearcey suggests considering chance events, regular predictable law-like processes, and an intentional influence. 470 A mark of the complexity and informational vastness of DNA is the fact that it is algorithmically incompressible, and this is a characteristic whose existence requires explanation. 471 Scientists know that the bonding chemistry between molecules does not Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 143-4; and Kenneth R. Miller and Joseph Levine, Biology: The Living Science (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 1998), 406-7. 467 468 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 139. 469 James Shapiro, A Third Way (n.p., n.d.), 33; and cited in Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 143. 470 Cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 192. 471 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 154-5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 107 account for the information in DNA. 472 A sugar-phosphate chemical bonding chain secures the nucleotides (chemical letters) to the DNA “backbone”, functioning like magnets that hold letters on a refrigerator, but having no influence on the arrangement of those chemical letters. 473 Since it is “the sequence of those letters that makes biological function possible, just as their sequence on a page makes a message intelligible,” 474 DNA must be understood as having both syntactic and semantic information. 475 Semantic information is context dependent and exhibits specified complexity because only a small percentage of the possible letter arrangements have meaning, and the information conveyed is independent of its physical medium. 476 Even though the carriers of the information can be visible and material, for example, ink on paper, chalk, smoke signals, sound waves, television screens, or DNA, the information itself is invisible and immaterial but remains the same regardless of the medium used. 477 When explaining DNA, while chance events may periodically produce simple organic compounds, researchers have determined that the random formation of larger macromolecules like protein and DNA is not probable because subsequent chance events are much more likely to destroy 472 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 146; Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis, 177-8; and Hubert Yockey, “A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 67 (3) (7 Aug 1977), 377-98. 473 Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 196; and Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis, 178. 474 Pearcey, Total Truth, 192; and cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 152. 475 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 154. Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 151, 154-5, 156; Derek Bickerton, Language and Species (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 57-58; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 197, 199. 476 477 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 178; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 197. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 108 any previously formed simple compounds. 478 In terms of human words, chance might form short words like “it” or “can” but “in principle, chance events cannot create the type of complex information resident in DNA.” 479 If the laws of nature are considered, their consistent, repeatable, predictable behaviour, where the same initial conditions constantly produce the same results, means that law-like processes can only generate a very limited quantity of biological information. 480 In terms of human words, the laws of nature could only produce a repeating sequence like “Simple, Simple, Simple.” 481 As such, it must be concluded that no known laws of nature could produce DNA. 482 To explain DNA, its vast quantities of irregular sequences that convey meaningful information must be accounted for and an outside influence intentionally imposing meaning upon certain combinations of chemical sequences in a way that mimics human linguistic conventions is a scientifically viable explanation that seems both germane and appropriate. 483 Since the sequences of chemical “letters” in DNA are arbitrary and no natural force determines their meaning, when considered in terms of human words, a word like G-I-F-T, which in English means a “present,” in 478 Cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 193-4; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 170-1. 479 Pearcey, Total Truth, 198, cf. 194; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 156-7. 480 Refer to Pearcey, Total Truth, 194-6; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 146, 157. 481 See Pearcey, Total Truth, 196, 198. 482 Compare with Davies, The Fifth Miracle, 120; Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 157; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 195, 483 See Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 157, 159; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 197, 199, 201. 197. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 109 German means “poison,” and in Norwegian means “married,” demonstrates how it is reasonable to think that any specific meaning must be imposed by an outside influence. 484 Concluding Thoughts J.C.A. Gaskin asserts “that the order manifested in the universe is not in need of a special explanation” 485 but this is exactly that type of explanation that Hume attempts to provide by suggesting his accidental formation hypothesis. 486 Unfortunately for Hume, he relies on chance, embraces assumptions about matter that are untrue, and does not give consideration to order that stems from regularities of succession. 487 His proposal is centered around observations about the current, known condition of matter, but since science has demonstrated that matter has not always existed, his assertions amount to a bait and switch declaration that is not valid because the originating conditions of the universe cannot be concluded from its current stable conditions. An example of this common situation can be found in many electronic devices whereby the voltage is initially oscillatory but then settles into a steady state condition. Any reasonable formation hypothesis must adequately account for the universe having a beginning, the formation of simple, discoverable, consistently instantiated natural laws, the presence of cosmological constants whose specific, independent values appear to be finely tuned for the 484 Cf. Pearcey, Total Truth, 198-9. 485 Gaskin, "Hume on Religion," 496. Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 49-51; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177-9; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 113. 486 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 50; Hume, “Criticisms of Analogy,” 177-8; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200-1. 487 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 110 existence of life, the observed realities of mutation sequences, the irreducible complexity of various life forms, and the specified language-like complexity of DNA as well as all the supporting mechanisms required for the continued existence and propagation of life. This evaluation has provided a concrete rebuttal of Hume’s proposal, firmly establishing that it is not a plausible explanation for the observed characteristics of this universe. In fairness to Hume, some elements of this rebuttal were not available to him during his lifetime, but time and additional scientific evidence have demonstrated that his hypothesis is without merit and should be discarded. g. Transmission versus Creation For this contention, Hume asserts that when arguing from analogy, the choice between vegetation or animal generation and reason as a basis for order is entirely arbitrary, 488 declaring that “a tree bestows order and organization on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order; an animal in the same manner on its offspring; a bird on its nest.” 489 Supporting Hume, Norman Kemp Smith remarks that organic animal and vegetable life are self-organizing, selfdeveloping, self-maintaining, self-regulating, and self-propagating and have a form that is as native to them as the matter of which they are composed, and therefore have a stronger resemblance to the world than any artificial products. 490 Hume concludes that only egregious partiality confines 488 See Hume, Dialogues, 45, 47; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 107, 112. 489 Hume, Dialogues, 46-7; and Cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 490 See Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 102; and Hume, Dialogues, 45. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 111 people’s view of order to a function of the human mind and proclaims that it is more plausible that this world was caused by something like vegetation or animal generation. 491 By way of a response, both Richard Swinburne and J. P. Moreland state that Hume’s alternative hypothesis is flawed because “there is no radical generation of order but merely the transmission of order from one [like] entity to another.” 492 Since the purpose of this rival theory is to explain the origination of life, Hume’s proposal utterly fails. J.P. Moreland describes Hume’s proposal as “an attempt to break down the analogy between the world and human machines,” 493 but modern biochemistry affirms that “the term ‘molecular machine’ is entirely appropriate” based on the systems found in living organisms at the cellular level, for example: power plants, automated factories, recycling centers, waste deposal mechanisms, and transportation systems. 494 Not only does Hume’s suggestion not account for the origination of life in general, it simply assumes the existence of the elaborate and remarkably varied propagation mechanisms that require explanation. Also, since plants and animals conform to the natural laws of biochemistry, and the universe is not eternal, these natural laws are likewise not eternal and therefore require an explanation. 495 Richard Swinburne further states that Hume’s vegetation and animal generation scheme only produces regularities of co-presence, i.e. additional vegetation and animals, while being dependent on 491 Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 45-7; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 112. 492 Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 66; and cf. Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 196, 200. 493 Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 66. 494 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, cf. 160; and Pearcey, Total Truth, 185. Compare with Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 66-7; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 196, 200-1; Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” 78-79; Copan and Craig, Creation Out of Nothing, 222-4; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 68-9. 495 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 112 reproductive and biochemical regularities of succession, and consequently lacks the required scope of explanation to be an authentic rival to design. 496 Hume also suggests that a comet could provide the mechanism by which to seed new worlds. 497 If Hume believes that this mechanism and the seedlings required to populate the life found on this planet are the result of chance, then this suggestion faces all the issues related to an accidental existence that were rebutted in the previous section of this work, and for which the scientists’ claim that ‘no one knows how self-replicating organisms arose’ would seem to be particularly relevant. 498 There is however another concept, known as directed panspermia, whereby aliens intentionally seed other worlds. 499 If Hume believes that aliens seeded this planet using a comet as their delivery system, then he is merely substituting intentional aliens for an intentional creator, in effect adding a “middleman” to a distribution network in the same way that food typically arrives at a grocery store from a food distributor, and not directly from the farmer who grew it. The question then becomes, “Where did these alien beings come from who have the intelligence required to develop a mechanism capable of seeding other planets?” 500 In reality, 496 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200. 497 Compare with Hume, Dialogues, 45; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 112. 498 Cf. Collins, The Language of God, 90; Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, 31; and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 133-4. See also the subsection “The Complexity of Biological Life” in the section of this work titled “Chance is Not an Option” (105-109). Refer to F.H.C. Crick, and L.E. Orgel, “Directed Panspermia,” January 1, 1973: 342-3, doi:10.1016/00191035(73)90110-3 [accessed March 27, 2022]; and Roy D. Sleator, and Niall Smith, “Directed Panspermia: A 21st Century Perspective,” Science Progress (1933-) 100, no. 2 (2017): 187-8, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26406373, [accessed June 3, 2022]. 499 See Paul Chamberlain, “Christian Theism: Objections to the Design Argument” (lecture given as part of a course at ACTS Seminaries, Langley, British Columbia, May 11, 2007); and Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 91. 500 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 113 directed panspermia offers a novel rationale regarding how life arrived on this planet but does not explain how life originated. Hume asserts that his vegetation or animal generation hypothesis and design are equally valid analogies, but his proposed theory is simply inadequate. 501 A designer is certainly adequate to explain both the origination of life and its continued propagation, and one might claim that Hume acquiesces on this point, saying that an intentional agent is an acceptable analogical choice. However, given the extent of his criticisms of the design argument, I believe it would be a mistake to believe that Hume thinks that his premise cuts both ways. h. The Compatibility of Evil, Suffering and Design In his final comment about the world in which human beings reside, Hume implies that the evil and suffering found in this world indicates that its designer was a poor architect, and that the violence and misery humans inevitably encounter are both avoidable and unnecessary. 502 He further claims that the world’s state of affairs demonstrates a general lack of concern and indifference on the part of the original source of all things for this world’s inhabitants. 503 From these observations, he insists that Christians have no basis for asserting the existence of an intelligent or benevolent creator. 504 501 Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 66-7. Cf. Hume, Dialogues, 59-64, 66, 68-70, 73-4; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117-9; and Norton, "Hume's Thought," 29. 502 503 See Hume, Dialogues, 63, 68, 74, 75; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117, 119. 504 Refer to Hume, Dialogues, 63, 66, 68, 75; and Kemp Smith, “A Critical Analysis,” 117-9. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 114 For this criticism, Hume seems to be affirming a version of Rowe’s No God argument, an inference which proclaims that as far as human beings can comprehend, there is no outweighing good that requires a theistic God to allow many of the instances of horrific suffering that occur in this world. 505 Rowe alleges that “a wholly good being … would find any instance of horrific suffering, considered [in and of itself], as an evil,” and thus could not be indifferent towards it. 506 Such a being would only allow horrific suffering when it serves an essential role in producing an outweighing good of some kind. 507 From this, Rowe argues that for at least some instances of horrific suffering in the world, there is probably no outweighing good that makes them necessary and from this concludes that there is reason to believe that God does not exist. 508 Rowe recognizes that his argument is probabilistic and therefore subject to revision and possibly even annulment, but he contends that there is not enough evidence to overturn his assertion. 509 Rowe’s and Hume’s claims are based on the belief that “if, due to the input from some cognitive situation, it [appears (or seems)] that things are a certain way, this is serious prima facie evidence that things are that way.” 510 However, this inference is only epistemically valid if it is Cf. Stephen Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” in God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, ed. Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 105-8; and Daniel Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael J. Murray (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 101-4. 505 506 Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 107. 507 Compare with Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 107. 508 Refer to Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 105, 107-8; and Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 78, 102-4. 509 See Stephen Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 109. 510 Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 106. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 115 reasonable to believe that a person would be aware of all the reasons that a theistic God would have to allow such suffering and evil. 511 In favour of Rowe, Michael Tooley argues since humanity has not discovered any new intrinsic goods in several thousand years, it is very likely that humanity is aware of every intrinsic good that exists and therefore would know of the justification for the suffering and evil humanity experiences. 512 But are these assertions valid? The strength of Rowe’s inference is based on the likelihood that one would recognize the reason if one existed. 513 For example, if one were searching for milk in a refrigerator or checking to see if there was a horse in a school classroom, it would be very likely that these would be found if they were present. However, it would be very unlikely that one could observe slugs in their garden from the vantage point of their kitchen window or be able to determine whether a dropped hypodermic needle had been contaminated. 514 Stephen Wykstra claims that given the works being attributed to a theistic God that created of the universe, human beings should expect that there would be a vast disproportionality between this God’s mind and the human mind. 515 For Wykstra, this requires humanity to accept a position of epistemic humility and acknowledge that God may have good purposes that humanity is incapable of grasping. 516 It can thus be asserted that Tooley’s 511 Cf. Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 103-4; and Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 115. 512 See Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,”, 105-6. 513 Refer to Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 115. 514 Cf. Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 103-5; and Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 114. 515 Compare with Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 111. 516 Refer to Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 111; Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 108-9; and William Lane Craig, “A Molinist View,” in God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, ed. Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 53, 55. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 116 argument relies on assumptions that are unreasonable. At best, his assertion merely suggests that humanity has discovered all the intrinsic goods that it is capable of discovering. 517 Thus, in this circumstance, there is good reason to doubt the strength and integrity of Rowe and Hume’s inference. In support of Wykstra, Daniel Howard-Snyder asserts that doubt is a sufficient basis to deny the validity of Rowe’s inference and appeals to Alston’s analogies, the progress argument, and the argument from complexity as reasons for such doubt. 518 Alston’s analogies claim that since God is infinite and largely unknown to humanity and since human beings are finite and may well not be aware of the reasons of an infinite God, there is sufficient reason to doubt Rowe’s Inference in this instance. 519 The progress argument states that since humanity continues to discover aspects of reality that were previously unknown and since further progress is expected in the future regarding knowledge of which humanity is currently ignorant, humanity may well be ignorant of a number of existing intrinsic goods. 520 Finally, the argument from complexity proclaims that since evil and suffering in the world is so bad, “it would not be surprising if God’s reasons [pertain to] goods whose complexity is beyond” humanity’s ability to grasp. 521 Based on these considerations, 517 See Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 106-7. 518 Refer to Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 109. 519 Cf. Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 110. 520 Compare with Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 111. 521 See Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 111. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 117 Howard-Snyder concludes that to the extent that the argument against God’s existent due to the amount of evil relies on Rowe’s Inference, it fails. 522 Critics point to a lawyer making their case in court and assert that Howard-Snyder has copped out, because he has not provided a reason that justifies God permitting so much evil rather than a lot less. 523 As a response, Howard-Snyder states that his accusers’ use of the judicial analogy is flawed because although it is valid when considering the reasons of human beings due to the fact that humanity is generally aware of the rationale of other human beings, this analogy’s validity does not extend to God because His reasons may well be completely unknown to humanity. 524 This response seems to be in congruence with the classic Christian view that is part of the broad Augustinian tradition held by theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, Marin Luther, John Calvin and C.S. Lewis, a view which proclaims that “no evil takes place unless God permits it and that God has good reason for permitting each evil, which takes the form of a greater good that He uses the evil to bring about.” 525 This position is appropriately humble given the concept of God, but, if a possible reason could be offered whereby the benefit “outweighs the suffering, and that benefit [is] one that, in [humanity’s] circumstances, cannot be gotten just as well without the suffering,” 526 such a benefit would function both as a defeater and an adequate rebuttal of Hume’s criticism. 522 Refer to Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 112. 523 Cf. Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 112-3. 524 Compare with Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 113. Phillip Cary, “A Classic View,” in God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, ed. Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 14; cf. 13; and see Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 108-9. 525 526 Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 108. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 118 A Possible Reason When several elements of the Christian perspective are examined, a good overarching reason can be offered as to why God allows so much suffering and evil to permeate this world. While this reason does not attempt to explain every individual instance of evil and suffering, some of which may appear to be pointless and unnecessary, it does vindicate these instances from the cumulative perspective of humanity overall. First, and quite importantly, God’s primary goal is for rebellious human beings to repent and enter His kingdom where they will enjoy eternal happiness. 527 William Lane Craig notes that “it is precisely in the countries that have endured severe hardship that evangelical Christianity is growing at its greatest rates, while growth in the indulgent West is nearly flat.” 528 To support this claim, he offers China, El-Salvador, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Haiti as examples where people have endured harsh persecution, systematic violence, torture, civil war, famine, cyclones, and devastating earthquakes, with the resultant hardship leading literally millions to become committed followers of Jesus. 529 Craig also observes that despite the history of humankind being a history of suffering and war, and despite the rapid increase in the world’s population, there has also been significant growth in the per capita number of Christians. 530 As evidence, he refers to a chart released in 1990 by the US Center for World Missions that shows the number of committed Christian adherents growing 527 Cf. 2 Pet.3:9; Rev. 21:1-4; and Craig, “A Molinist View,” 48. 528 Craig, “A Molinist View,” 48. 529 Refer to Craig, “A Molinist View,” 49-50. 530 See Craig, “A Molinist View,” 50. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 119 from approximately 1 in 360 people in the world in 100 AD to 1 in 7 in 1989. 531 Based on these findings, Craig suggests that natural and moral evils are quite likely part of the means by which God draws people into His eternal kingdom, literally saving human beings from their own shortsightedness. 532 Secondly, given the Christian understanding that God is benevolent, when the goodness of being in relationship with God throughout eternity is considered, even a finite amount of goodness in this relationship over eternity must be deemed an infinite amount of goodness. Then, when the badness of the evil and suffering that exists in this world is assessed, no matter how bad it gets and no matter how much of it there is, the amount must be understood as being temporal and finite because God has promised that it will end at some future point in time. 533 Thus, when examined in the context of eternity, the evil and suffering in this world, regardless of its quantity and severity, does not compare with the goodness provided by Jesus’s sacrifice and atoning work to those who choose to follow Him. 534 Some opponents will protest that an entirely good being would not sentence finite beings to an eternity of conscious punishment and suffering because it violates any reasonable human perspective regarding justice. 535 But Michael J. Murray notes that eternal punishment can be 531 Compare with Craig, “A Molinist View,” 50-1. 532 See Craig, “A Molinist View,” 48, 52-3. 533 Heb. 1:10-11; Rev. 21:1. 534 Compare with Craig, “A Molinist View,” 53, 55. 535 Cf. Robert W. Yarbrough, “Jesus on Hell,” in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 90. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 120 understood as being completely just because “all sins are sins against God,” the type of being God is, the infinite and eternal creator of all, merits a correspondingly great penalty, and it may well be that those persons in hell continue to rebel against God, thus meriting a continuously cumulating sentence that is never exhausted. 536 Douglas Moo asserts that the writings of Paul denote “a destruction whose consequences last forever” for non-Christians and a portrayal of an actual hell “as an unending state of punishment and exclusion from the presence of the Lord” that is entirely just “because human beings have spurned God and merit His wrath.” 537 Similarly, George Beale concludes that the book of Revelation firmly declares that non-Christians will be tormented forever and ever. 538 Given that eternal punishment is a biblical reality for those who reject God’s offer of salvation, could this be the primary reason for God allowing evil and suffering to permeate the world? The Bible states that God is good, merciful, and compassionate and that when He created the world and human beings, all that He made was very good. 539 It also proclaims that humanity intentionally rebelled against God, bringing sin and corruption into the world, and that all human Cf. Michael J. Murray, “Heaven and Hell,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael J. Murray (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 292-4. 536 537 Douglas J. Moo, “Paul on Hell,” in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 106, 109, cf. 104-9; Rom. 1:182:11; and 2 Thess. 1:8-9. Compare with Gregory K. Beale, “The Revelation on Hell,” in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 132-33; Rev. 14:11; 20:10, 15; 21:8. 538 See Ps. 25:8; 34:8; 100:5; 106:1; 107:1; 145:7-9; Deut. 4:31; Jer. 3:12; Dan. 9:9; Luke 6:36; and Gen. 1: 10, 12, 18, 2, 25, 31; cf. 1-31. 539 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 121 beings continue to rebel against God. 540 Incredibly, God chose to allow humanity’s existence to continue, and, while constantly being offended by humanity’s rebellious behaviour, established the means by which humanity could be saved and restored. 541 Lastly, the Bible declares that God has been patiently enduring humanity’s insurrection for millennia because He desires that everyone come to repentance and be saved. 542 How is it then that such a caring and compassionate being would permit eternal damnation? 543 Why wouldn’t He allow those who have rejected Him to suffer punishment for some finite period and then mercifully annihilate them? This action would seem to align with the mercy and compassion that God has consistently poured out upon humanity, but the Bible clearly affirms an eternity of punishment for those who reject Him. While it must be asserted that God has the power to annihilate human beings, there are other constraints that place limitations of what one can do, even God. And while God cannot be limited by anything outside Himself, He also cannot do anything that violates the perfect integrity of His righteousness, for example lie, steal, tempt, deceive, or even contemplate doing evil, 544 and He is absolute in His faithfulness to this standard. Are there reasons then to think that God cannot, due the consistency of His being, annihilate human beings? Refer to Erickson, Christian Theology, 519-20, 523-4, 566-9; 1 Kings 8:46; Ps. 143:2; Eccles. 7:20; and Rom. 3:9-12; 23; 5:12; 8:20-1. 540 Compare with Erickson, Christian Theology, 736-9, 752; John 3:16; 14:6; 17:3; Rom. 5:8-9; 2 Cor. 5:19; Eph. 1:7; 5:2; Col. 1:20, 1 Tim. 4:10; and 1 John 2:2. 541 542 2 Pet 3:9; and 1 Tim 2:4. 543 See 2 Thess. 1:8-9; Jude 1:7; Rev. 14:9-11; 20:10, 15; Dan. 12:2; and 2 Pet. 3:9. 544 Refer to James 1:13; Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6:18; and 1 John 1:5. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 122 Creating human beings in His image 545 was an immeasurable good with significant relational dimensions but it is possible that God’s good intentions have unfortunate consequences for those who reject Him. It seems entirely plausible that Gen. 9:6, which declares the murder of human beings by other human beings to be a grievous sin because human beings are made in the image of God, when applied to God Himself, could mean that God cannot absolutely remove the entirety of a human’s being from existence because it would be a violation of His integrity and holiness. If true, then God’s incredible gift of making human beings in His image would seem to have the horrific consequence of requiring those who reject God’s offer of salvation to suffer eternal separation from Him. With the misery inflicted by evil and suffering having the observable positive result of acting as a catalyst for people to enter into the kingdom of God and an eternal life of bliss, coupled with the plausible scenario that God cannot annihilate human beings because He is absolutely righteous, the Christian framework would appear to offer a reasonable justification for allowing the evil and suffering experienced by this world’s inhabitants and is therefore a sound rebuttal of Hume’s criticism. As for a rationale for an individual’s specific situation, however difficult, it is reasonable to assert that “the clay” may not comprehend “the potter’s” reasons for the ordering and circumstances of one’s life, but it is quite reasonable to think that there could be a reason, even if human beings cannot fathom it. 546 545 Cf. Gen. 1: 26-7; 9:6; Eph. 4:24; and James 3:9. Refer to Howard-Snyder, “God Evil, and Suffering,” 108-9; Craig, “A Molinist View,” 53, 55; and Wykstra, “A Skeptical Theist View,” 111. See also Isa. 64:8; and Rom. 9:21. 546 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 123 IV. CONCLUSION In this study, David Hume’s long-standing and broadly accepted criticisms of the design argument for the existence of an intelligent creator have been carefully rebutted. In addition to finding that the design argument is free of any formal defects, 547 Hume’s criticisms have been found to be unpersuasive. First, Hume attempts to criticize the Christian centralized one designer proposal by suggesting that numerous finite beings could have operated in concert. From merely examining the artifacts of nature, both of these options are reasonable, but by offering an alternative form of design, Hume is actually affirming the tenets of the design argument, not disproving them. He also advocates for a finite anthropomorphite, which likewise entails a designer, but in doing so Hume goes beyond the limits of legitimate analogy and makes a logic error by attributing a maximum limit to the creator’s abilities when the situation only establishes said creator’s minimum capability. His assertion that an explanation of the proposed designer is required was similarly determined to be illogical because Hume does not account for the limits of humanity’s frame of reference from within this universe, a situation that makes the postulation of a necessary being quite reasonable. Then, it was concluded that Hume’s concept of animal and vegetable generation was wholly inadequate because it does not account for the origination of order, but only its ongoing transmission. As for Hume’s suggested accidental formation of the universe, his foundational premise that the universe is eternal was determined to be false according to modern cosmology, indicating that the Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190, 192-5; and Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 631. 547 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 124 time his proposal requires was not available. Hume also assumes the existence of the regularities of succession observable as the natural laws, but since the universe had a beginning, their explanation being required but absent makes Hume’s proposition insufficient in its explanatory scope. Furthermore, modern biology’s discovery of irreducibly complex organisms, the internally ordered, information laden complexity of DNA, and the complex biological mechanisms required to support and propagate life offer additional evidence that deems Hume’s proposal quite implausible. Hume’s claim that the suffering and evil in this world renders moot the notion that the designer is benevolent, wise, or moral was discredited based on the fact that suffering leads people to trust in God, that an infinite being could have good purposes that finite human beings are incapable of comprehending, because Hume does not acknowledge nor offer a response to the context presented by Christians for the existence of evil and suffering, and because the aforementioned character traits go beyond what the design argument purports to claim about its postulated creator. Lastly, Hume’s use of inference was found to be inappropriately restrictive and flawed because it does not account for rare or singular events, nor does it allow for acceptable differences when relevant similarities between compared objects are present. Also, the employment of Hume’s principle of inference would significantly hinder scientific inquiry and the advancement of knowledge. Based on the findings in this study, there is no reason that makes it necessary to accept Hume’s contentions against the design argument and numerous very good reasons to consider his criticisms deficient and ill-conceived. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 125 The Implications of this Study By rebutting Hume’s critiques of the design argument, this study reinforces the assertion that the argument is based upon valid philosophical and scientific grounds and strengthens the contention that a creative intelligence is required to explain the existence of the universe and its resident lifeforms. The fact that it is the gap revealed by humanity’s knowledge of science that leads to postulating an innovative intelligence as the best explanation demonstrates that the discoveries of modern science complement and further bolster the design argument’s claims. 548 That chance events and law-based outcomes are revealed to be insufficient only adds to the design argument’s legitimacy. While the design argument’s limitations do not allow for identification of the specific being responsible for the artifacts that signify contrivance in the universe and natural world, this study fully affirms the argument’s veracity and its assertion that existence is the product of an inventive rational agent. While the results of this study do not make a theistic worldview a certainty, they do clearly offer support for theism and the Christian faith by establishing that Hume’s attempts to discredit the design argument are unconvincing. When one realizes that doubt is an accompanying factor in all but certain beliefs, 549 and observes the banal commonality of “faith acts” in many aspects of life, human experience indicates that holding faith beliefs is an entirely reasonable behaviour. Thus, if the object of one’s faith is capable of accomplishing what is being attributed to it, then placing one’s faith in that object must be deemed to be a reasonable act. Given the evidence supporting the Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 85, 174, 179-80, 185, 188-9; Sober, “The Design Argument,” 107; and Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 196. 548 549 Compare with DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 159; cf. 158. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 126 existence of a designer provided in this study and the fact that testimony is a key element of all human knowledge claims, this study should be understood as offering firm supplementary support for the Christian faith. Hume’s objections simply fail to render Christian belief rationally objectionable. Regarding the implications for arguments for the existence of God, this study has revealed that a proper understanding of science and philosophy indicates that they are impressive allies of the Christian faith. The evidence and arguments presented here should help proponents articulate a more robust design argument; better respond to the assertions of naturalists and macroevolutionists; promote the particularist view of epistemology; and rebut the skeptic’s claim of philosophical and epistemic superiority. Building on some aspects of this study should even allow Christian philosophers to demonstrate that skepticism has numerous inconsistencies that make it an impractical philosophy. Finally, the possible reasons for so much evil and suffering in this world suggested in this study point to a potential benefit of further theological investigation into the question of human beings having an immortal soul. 550 While no argument from inference can adjudicate its assertions with certainty, this study demonstrates that the design argument for the existence of God, when properly understood, must be accepted as plausible within the context of human knowledge claims, and given the support of modern science and philosophy, can be deemed probable. Since this is the strongest knowledge claim that can be made through argument, arguments for God’s existence should be understood as 550 Refer to Dr. Ken Radant, in discussion with author, Carey Theological College, Vancouver BC, Aug 16, 2018. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 127 making a valuable contribution to the affirmation of the Christian faith and as forming a formidable defense against objectors. With this being said, this study concludes that Christians have a firm evidential basis for their belief that the God described in the Bible is the responsible intelligence behind all that exists. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT V. 128 APPENDIX A: LIST OF DEFINITIONS Abduction, or Adduction: a creative method of discovery employed by scientists whereby ideas are generated, and a theory is formed to explain observed facts. 551 Analogy: the comparison of two kinds of objects that are known to be similar in certain respects such that some of the known characteristics of one kind of object are concluded by inference to be possessed by the second kind of object. 552 Anthropic Principle: a hypothesis claiming that the universe must be very precisely structured to support life and that the conditions observed relating to the unfolding of the universe therefore indicate that life was caused by intelligent intention. 553 Basic Beliefs or Properly Basic Beliefs: beliefs that are not grounded in or based on other propositional truth claims, that are justified or grounded in the right kind of evidence, and that do not violate any epistemic duties, so the holder of a basic belief is acting within their epistemic rights. Examples: self-evident truths, truths evident to the senses, some memory beliefs, perception beliefs, and testimony. Perception beliefs are considered properly basic because they are “produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth.” Note: Nonbasic beliefs are beliefs based on reasons or other truth claims. 554 Certainty: The assertion that a proposition is true with the assurance that it could not possibly be mistaken or false. 555 Chance: something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause. 556 A formal mathematical possibilities concept or abstraction that describes the probability of a specific result based on the understanding of possible outcomes. Functions only as a descriptor and is completely devoid of causal power. 557 551 Cf. Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 314-5. 552 See Salmon, Logic, 97; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 58. 553 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 73; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 52. 554 Compare with Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 178-79; and DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 165-66. 555 Cf. DeWeese, “What Do I Know,” 157. 556 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Chance,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. 557 See Sproul, Not a Chance, 5-10. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 129 Cosmological Argument: an argument for the existence of God based on inference from causality. Specifically claims that everything known in creation or in the universe that begins to exist has a cause, that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, and that God is the initial cause. 558 Cryptogenic: a phenomenon describing how many branches of the Darwinian Tree of Life cannot be traced to ancestors. 559 Deductive Reasoning or Deduction: the formation of a conclusion about a particular set of circumstances based on generally accepted facts or premises. The application of thinking such that a general principle or rule is shown to be valid for a specific set of facts. A deductive argument is logically valid when the truth of the premises necessarily implies the truth of the conclusion. 560 Design: an attribute of an object that exists when individual parts or processes are assembled and functioning in such a way so as to achieve a goal or an end. 561 Epistemology: the study of the nature of and grounds for knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity. 562 Includes how knowledge is obtained and how it is that humanity knows what it claims to know. Empiricism: “a philosophical theory that assumes that all knowledge is gained through either internal experience (thoughts, emotions, etc.) or external experience (sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste).” 563 Essential Attribute: “one that cannot be changed or lost without the object or being in question ceasing to be the kind of thing it is.” 564 Cf. Craig, On Guard, 74; and Matt Slick, “The Cosmological Argument,” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, http://carm.org/cosmological-argument [accessed June 20, 2012]. 558 559 Compare with Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 116. 560 Refer to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Deductive Reasoning,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordsat-play/deduction-vs-induction-vs-abduction [accessed August 20, 2020]; Alina Bradford, “Deductive Reasoning vs. Inductive Reasoning,” Live Science, July 25, 2017, https://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vs-induction.html, [accessed August 22, 2020]; and Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Deductive Argument.” 561 See Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 45-6. 562 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Epistemology,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. 563 Grenz, Dictionary of Theological Terms, s.v. “Empiricism.” 564 Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 102. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 130 Inductive Reasoning: the application of evidence and arguments such that a generalization is formed from specific instances and detailed facts about the generalization. This form of reasoning does not assure certainty. 565 Inference: the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from that of the former. 566 Intermediate Life Form: “a form which could, on the criteria of some given scheme of classification, be placed between two entries A and B of that classification, without any necessary implication of whether it had descended from A or was an ancestor of B.” 567 Irreducible Complexity: the attribute of a “system composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." 568 Isotropic: means exhibiting properties (such as the velocity of light transmission) with the same values when measured along axes in all directions. 569 Law of Non-Contradiction: the logical construct that states that something cannot be classified as being part of one category of objects and the complementary category of those objects at the same time and in the same sense. 570 This law is sometimes expressed as the “impossibility of the contrary, … the strongest formal argument in logic.” 571 Macroevolution: the theory that the formation of new species occurs from other species through evolutionary changes. 572 Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Inductive Reasoning”; and The Free Dictionary, s.v. “Inductive Reasoning,” http://www.thefreedictionary.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. 565 566 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Inference,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. 567 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 116. David Berlinski, “Has Darwin Met His Match.” Commentary 114, no. 5 (Dec 2002), 31; Also see Behe, “Irreducible Complexity,” 353. 568 Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “Isotropic,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/isotropic [accessed September 12, 2021] 569 570 See Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 55, 81. 571 Sproul, Not a Chance, 17. 572 Compare with Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 212. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 131 Metaphysics: is the study of the nature of reality, asking what is beyond physics and considering questions about the existence of God and other entities postulated by science. 573 Multiverse: a theoretical reality that includes a possibly infinite number of parallel universes. 574 According to this theory, the universe inhabited by humanity “is but one member of an ensemble of randomly ordered universes.” 575 Neo-Darwinism: the theory that evolutionary change resulting in the formation of new species occurs through a large number of sequential steps with very small changes being realized at each step. 576 Occam’s Razor: A philosophical principle of reasoning that gives preference to the simplest explanation that accounts for all the data. It asserts one should attribute to an explanatory entity only what is necessary to explain the data and no other accidental features. Therefore, “when postulating entities, postulate as few as possible. While claiming that the simplest explanation is most likely correct, this principle acknowledges that the simplest explanation will not be correct in every case. 577 Prime Principle of Confirmation: A general principle of reasoning that states that “the degree to which the evidence counts in favour of one hypothesis over another is proportional to the degree to which the observation is more plausible under the one hypothesis than the other. 578 Punctuated Equilibrium: the theory that evolutionary change resulting in the formation of new species “occurs rapidly and is followed by long periods of stasis where no change occurs.” 579 Randomness: a relative attribute characterized by the absence of a perceived pattern and typically associated with chance occurrences. 580 573 See Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Metaphysics.” 574 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Multiverse,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 20, 2012]. 575 Cf. Craig, On Guard, 117. 576 Compare with Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 212. 577 Cf. Brian Duignan, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Occam’s Razor,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Occams-razor [accessed January 23, 2021]; and Your Dictionary, s.v. “Examples of Occam's Razor,” https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-occam-s-razor.html [accessed January 23, 2021]; Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 200; Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 64-5; and Hume, Dialogues, 36-7. 578 Robin Collins, “Fine-Tuning,” 51-2. 579 Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 213. 580 See Dembski, “Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design,” 312. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 132 Rebut: to show that the claims asserted by an argument have not been demonstrated as being valid or true. 581 Refute: to show that there are good reasons for believing that a specific view is false. 582 Regularities of Copresence: order that is exhibited in spatial patterns at a specific point in time. Examples include towns with its roads at right angles, library books arranged in alphabetical order, and the symmetry found in various life-forms. 583 Regularities of Succession: order exhibited within temporal sequences. Examples include music, dance choreography, the consistent function of the laws of nature, the growth and reproductive sequences of plants and animals. 584 Semantic Information: information that deals with the specific meaning being communicated. It is context dependent because the meaning cannot be determined without prior knowledge of its context. It is also algorithmically incompressible because it is not simply a repeated pattern, and it exhibits specified complexity in that only a very small portion of all possible symbol sequences convey meaningful information, and that information is independent of the medium through which it is conveyed. 585 Science: the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. 586 Scientific Method: “the principles and empirical processes of discovery and demonstration considered characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally involving the observation of phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the phenomena, experimentation to demonstrate the truth or falseness of the hypothesis, and a conclusion that validates or modifies the hypothesis.” 587 581 Refer to Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 4-5. 582 Cf. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 4-5. 583 Refer to Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190-1; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 44. 584 Compare with Swinburne, “The Argument from Design,” 190-1; and Moreland, Scaling the Secular City, 45. 585 Cf. Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 151, 153-6. 586 The Free Dictionary, s.v. “Science,” http://www.thefreedictionary.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. “Scientific Method,” http://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=scientific+method [accessed March 16, 2013]. 587 A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 133 Self-Evident: something known to be true even if it is not understood how it is known. Something that is clear or obvious without needing any proof or explanation. 588 Skepticism: a position of doubt that historically has argued from both fallibility and the possibility of error. It asserts that nothing can be demonstrated or known with certainty. 589 Specified Complexity: a pattern or event whose occurrence is unlikely enough that it eliminates chance and indicates intelligence, intention or design. It applies to intelligent causes such as occurrences of “order that is not repetitious and communicates a message or a clear function.” 590 Syntactic Information: Quantifiable information that is not concerned with meaning but is limited in its amount by the number of symbols used to convey the information. An example of the use of syntactic information would be a library assistant doing a word search for “nephrology” and finding 3 books about it in the library. The library assistant does not need to know the meaning of “nephrology” to perform this task but only interacts with this information at the syntactic level. 591 Test of Experience: one component of assessment used to determine a worldview’s validity that probes whether a worldview is relevant to one’s experience of the world and in alignment with what human beings know about themselves and humanity in general. 592 Test of Practice: one component of assessment used to determine a worldview’s validity that probes whether a person can actually live in consistent adherence to the worldview they proclaim. 593 Test of Reason: one component of assessment used to determine a worldview’s validity that seeks to determine whether a worldview is logically consistent, both as a whole and in its individual propositions. The law of non-contradiction is the primary construct used for this valuation. 594 Cambridge Dictionary, s.v. “Self-Evident,” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/self-evident [accessed August 11, 2020]. 588 589 Cf. Moreland, “Answering the Skeptic,” Tracks 5-7; Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 56; and Evans, Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy, s.v. “Skepticism.” Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990), 217; For a more thorough examination of this concept, see Dembski, “The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design,” 313-6; and William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004), 81-6, 101-5. 590 591 Refer to Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 149-151. 592 Cf. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 57-60. 593 Refer to Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 62. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 134 Testimony: a solemn declaration affirming the authenticity and veracity of some fact about a person, place or event. Today it is usually made orally by a witness under oath in response to interrogation by a lawyer or authorized public official. 595 Transitional Life Form: an intermediate form that can “be shown to have descended from A and was an ancestor of B. To establish those relationships, … some mechanism would have to be exhibited that was demonstrably adequate for the task.” 596 Truth: the property or characteristic of being in accordance/conformity with the facts or reality of a situation. 597 Universe: the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; 598 the celestial cosmos. 599 For the purposes of this study, it refers to the entirety of the physical space and phenomena that can be observed and within which human beings exist. 594 See Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, 55-7. 595 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Testimony,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 16, 2012]. 596 Lennox, God’s Undertaker, 116. Cf. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Truth,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed August 4, 2020]; and Dictionary.com, s.v. “Truth,” http://dictionary.reference.com [accessed August 4, 2020]. 597 598 Dictionary.com, s.v. “Universe,” http://dictionary.reference.com [accessed June 20, 2012]. 599 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Universe,” http://www.merriam-webster.com [accessed June 20, 2012]. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 135 VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY a. Hume’s Perspectives Flew, Antony. “Introduction.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, vii-xi. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “An Introduction to Two Scandalous Sections.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 53-62. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “Two Revealing Letters.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 15-16. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. Fogelin, Robert L. “Hume's Skepticism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, 209-37. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Gaskin, J. C. A. “Hume on Religion.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, 480-513. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hume, David. “Criticisms of the Analogy.” In Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach, 2nd ed., edited by Baruch Brody, 169-180. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992. ________. “David Hume to John Stewart,” Feb 1754. In The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J.Y.T. Greig. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932. ________. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 2nd ed. Edited by Richard H. Popkin. Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. ________. “My Own Life.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, 522-29. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ________. “A Note on the Profession of Priest.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 11-14. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “Of Miracles.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 63-88. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “Of Suicide.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 39-50. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 3-9. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 136 ________. “Of the Immortality of the Soul.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 29-38. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. “To Gilbert Elliot of Minto.” In David Hume: Writings on Religion, edited by Antony Flew, 21-25. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996. ________. A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects. [S.l.]: The Floating Press, 2009. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost [accessed July 13, 2018]. Hume, David, and P. F. Millican. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: OUP Oxford, 2007. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost [accessed June 1, 2018]. Kemp Smith, Norman. “A Critical Analysis of the Main Argument of the Dialogues, with Some Explanatory Notes.” In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Norman Kemp Smith, 97-123. Indianapolis, IN and New York: The Bobs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1947. ________. “Preface.” In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Norman Kemp Smith, v-vii. Indianapolis, IN and New York: The Bobs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1947. Norton, David Fate. “An Introduction to Hume's Thought.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume. 2nd ed., edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor, 1-39. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Popkin, Richard. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd ed., edited by Richard H. Popkin, vii-xx. Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. Smith. Adam, Kirkaldy, Fifeshire, to William Strachan, Esq. 9 November, 1776. “The Death of David Hume.” https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/smitha/humedead.htm [accessed June 6, 2018]. b. Philosophy Barr, Stephen M. “Anthropic Coincidences,” First Things, no. 114 (June-July 2001): 17-23. Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Cary, Phillip. “A Classic View.” In God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, ed. Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr., 13-36. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017. Chamberlain, Paul. “Christian Theism: Objections to the Design Argument.” Lecture, ACTS Seminaries, Langley, British Columbia, May 11, 2007. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 137 Collins, Robin. “A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument.” In Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael J. Murray, 47-75. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. Copan, Paul. and William Lane Craig. Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009. Corey, M.A. God and The New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1993. Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010. ________. “A Molinist View.” In God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, ed. Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr., 37-55. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017. ________. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008. Draper, Paul. “Irreducible Complexity and Darwinian Gradualism: A Reply to Michael J. Behe,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 1, no. 1 (Jan 1, 2002): 3-21, https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol19/iss1/1/ [accessed March 19, 2022]. DeWeese, Garrett J. “What Do I Know: Epistemology.” In Doing Philosophy as a Christian, 15077, Christian Worldview Integration Series. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011. DeWeese, Garret J., and J.P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2005. Earman, John. Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Evans, C. Stephen. Philosophy of Religion: Thinking about Faith, Contours of Christian Philosophy. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1982. Flew, Antony, with Roy Abraham Varghese. There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Franklin, James. "Emergentism as an Option in the Philosophy of Religion: Between Materialist Atheism and Pantheism" (PDF), Suri: Journal of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines 8 (2): 1–22 [retrieved 16 Feb 2023]. Halverson, William H. A Concise Introduction to Philosophy, 4th ed. New York: Random House 1981. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 138 Hilbert, David. “Lectures on the Infinite.” In David Hilbert's Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic 1917-1933, edited by William Ewald and Wilfried Sieg, 655-785. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69444-1. Howard-Snyder, Daniel. “God Evil, and Suffering.” In Reason for the Hope Within, edited by Michael J. Murray, 76-115. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. Lennox, John C. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 2d ed. Oxford, England: Lion Books, 2009. Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York, NY: Harper One, 1947. McGrath, Alister. The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World. New York and London: Doubleday, 2004. Moreland, J.P. “Answering the Skeptic,” Christian Apologetics DTF Lecture Series, Biola University, CD-ROM (La Mirada, CA: Biola University, n.d.). ________. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987. Moreland, J. P., and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003. Morris, Thomas V. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1986. Murray, Michael J. “Heaven and Hell.” In Reason for the Hope Within, edited by Michael J. Murray, 287-317. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999. Nash, Ronald H. Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992. O’Connor, Timothy. "Emergent Properties,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/propertiesemergent [accessed May 12, 2023]. Paley, William. Natural Theology: Selections, ed. Fredrick Ferre. Indianapolis, MI and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1963. Parravicini, Andrea. “Pragmatism and Emergentism,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 24 December 2019, https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.1623 [accessed May 12, 2023]. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 139 Pearcey, Nancy. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity. Study Guide ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005. Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ________. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Price, Richard. Four Dissertations (2d ed. 1768), Dissertation IV “On the Importance of Christianity and the Nature of Historical Evidence and Miracles.” In Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles, edited by John Earman, 157-72. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2004. PDF e-book. First Published 1946 by George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London. Salmon, Wesley C. Logic, 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973. Salvatore, Leonardo. “In Search of a Creator: Infinity and Existence in the Kalam Cosmological Argument,” Aporia 32, no. 1 (2022): 31-43. Sober, Elliott. “The Design Argument.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, edited by William Dembski and Michael Ruse, 98-129. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sproul, R. C. Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994. Swinburne, Richard. “The Argument from Design.” In Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach, 2nd ed., edited by Baruch Brody, 189-200. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992. ________. “The Argument from the Laws of Nature Reassessed.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, edited by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 294-310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ________. The Existence of God, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. ________. The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Wykstra, Stephen. “A Skeptical Theist View.” In God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views, edited by Chad Meister and James K Dew Jr., 99-127. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 140 c. Science N.A. “Facts about Isaac Newton.” Biography Online, https://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/facts-newton.html [accessed January 30, 2018]. N.A. Video on Isaac Newton – Facts and Summary, http://www.history.com/topics/isaac-newton [accessed January 30, 2018]. Arnhat, Larry. “Evolution and the New Creationism: A Proposal for Compromise.” Skeptic 8, no. 4 (2001): 46-52. Axe, D.D. “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Enzyme Exteriors.” Journal of Molecular Biology 301: 585-96. Behe, Michael J. A Mousetrap for Darwin. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2020. ________. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York, NY: Simon and Shuster Publishing Company, 1996. ________. Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, ed. Robert T. Pennock. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. ________. “Irreducible Complexity.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 352-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ________. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. New York, NY: Free Press, 2007. Bennett, Jay. “How Many Particles are in the Observable Universe,” Popular Mechanics, July 11, 2017, https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a27259/how-many-particles-are-in-the-entireuniverse/ [accessed October 24, 2022] Bickerton, Derek. Language and Species. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Borde, Arvind, Alan, Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin. “Inflationary Spacetimes are Not PastComplete.” General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, Cornell University, https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012. Jan 14, 2003, [accessed November 9, 2021]. ________. “Inflation is Not Past-Eternal.” General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, Cornell University, https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012v1. Oct 1, 2001, [accessed November 9, 2021]. Cajori, F., ed. Newton’s Principia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946. Carnes-Smith, Alexander Graham. The Life Puzzle: On Crystals and Organisms and on the Possibility of a Crystal as an Ancestor. Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver and Boyd, 1971. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 141 Collins, Francis. The Language of God. New York, NY: Simon and Shuster Free Press, 2006. Crick, F.H.C., and L.E. Orgel. “Directed Panspermia,” January 1, 1973: 341-6. doi:10.1016/00191035(73)90110-3 [accessed March 27, 2022]. Crick, Francis. Life Itself. New York, NY: Simon and Shuster, 1981. Curran, Noel. The Logical Universe: The Real Universe. Aldershot, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1994. Davies, Paul. “The Big Bang—and Before” paper presented at the Thomas Aquinas College Lecture Series. Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA, Mar. 2002. ________. The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. New York and London: Simon and Shuster, 1999. Davies, P.C.W. “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology.” In The Study of Time III, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: Springer Verlag, 1978. ________. The Physics of Time Asymmetry. London: Surrey University Press, 1974. Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, rev. ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996. Dembski, William A. “The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, edited by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 294-308. Cambridge.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Denton Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler Publishing Inc., 1986. ________. The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2022. Dose, Klaus. “The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 13 (1988), 348. Dyson, Freeman. Disturbing the Universe. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Gleiser, Marcelo. “Isaac Newton’s Life was One Long Search for God,” February 2, 2022. Big Think, https://bigthink.com/13-8/isaac-newton-search-god/ [accessed August 16, 2022]. Hedin, Eric. Cancelled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2021. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 142 Jones, Steven E. “A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion,” BYU Religious Studies Center. https://rsc.byu.edu/converging-paths-truth/brief-survey-sir-isaac-newtons-viewsreligion#_edn7 [accessed August 16, 2022]. Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. London: Viking, 1995. Kenyon, Dean H., and Gary Steinman. Biochemical Predestination. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1969. Kenyon, Dean H., and Percival Davis. Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, 2nd ed. ed. Charles Thaxton. Sunderland, UK: Haughton Pub Co., 1993. Lee, Gilho. “Genetic Variation in Mycoplasma Genitalium.” Urogenit Tract Infect. 2017 Aug 12(2): 65-76. Kamje Synapse, https://synapse.koreamed.org/articles/1084228 [accessed November 9, 2021]. Lester, Lane P., and Raymond G. Bohlin. The Natural Limits of Biological Change. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House and Dallas, TX: Probe Ministries International, 1984. Loewenstein, Werner. The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Meyer, Steven C. “The Cambrian Information Explosion.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, ed. William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 371-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ________. “The Methodological Equivalence of Design and Descent.” In The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer, ed. J.P. Moreland, 67-112. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994. ________. The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. New York, NY: Harper One, 2021. Miller, Kenneth R., and Joseph Levine. Biology: The Living Science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 1998. Orgel, Leslie. “The Origin of Life: A Review of the Facts and Speculations.” Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 23 (1998), 491-500. Orr, H. Allen. “Darwin v. Intelligent Design (Again),” Boston Review (December 1996/January1997): 28-31, https://web.archive.org/web/20141006072402/https://bostonreview.net/archives/BR21.6/orr.ht ml [accessed March 16, 2022]. Paley, William. Natural Theology: Selections, ed. Fredrick Ferre. Indianapolis, MI and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1963. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 143 Polkinghorne, John. One World. London, SPCK Publishing, 1984. Ross, Hugh. The Fingerprint of God. Pasadena, CA: Whitaker House, 1989. Sarfati, Jonathan. The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Refuting Dawkins on Evolution. Atlanta, GA: Creation Book Publishers, 2010. Schroeder, Gerald L. The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth. New York and London: The Free Press, 2001. Sleator, Roy D., and Niall Smith. “Directed Panspermia: A 21st Century Perspective.” Science Progress (1933-) 100, no. 2 (2017): 187–93. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26406373 [accessed June 3, 2022]. Spencer, Quayshawn. “Do Newton’s Rules of Reasoning Guarantee Truth … Must They.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35, no. 4 (2004):759-782. Language: English. DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2004.02.001, Database: ScienceDirect. Susskind, Leonard. “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind,” Closer to Truth Web site. YouTube video file [Jan 8, 2013]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cT4zZIHR3s [accessed February 8, 2022]. Thomas, Neil. Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute Press, 2021. White, Martin. “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis,” UC Berkley, https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html [accessed September 13, 2021]. Yockey, Hubert. “A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 67 (3) (7 Aug 1977): 377-98. d. Other Sources Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006. Beale, Gregory K. “The Revelation on Hell.” In Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, 111-134. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004. Bock, Darrell L. Can I Trust the Bible: Defending the Bible’s Reliability. Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2001. Brueggemann, Walter. The Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 144 Erickson, Millard J. Christian Theology, 3d ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013. Moo, Douglas J. “Paul on Hell.” In Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, 91-110. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004. Tobias, Cynthia Ulrich. The Way They Learn. Colorado Springs, CO: Focus On The Family Publishing, 1994. Yarbrough, Robert W. “Jesus on Hell.” In Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment, edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, 67-90. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004. e. Definitions Sources Behe, Michael J. “Irreducible Complexity.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, edited by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 352-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Berlinski, David. “Has Darwin Met His Match.” Commentary 114, no. 5 (Dec 2002): 31. Bhandari, Pritha. “Inductive Reasoning: Types, Examples, Explanation.” Scribbr, rev. July 15, 2022, https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/inductivereasoning/#:~:text=about%20inductive%20reasoning,What%20is%20inductive%20reasoning%3F,logic%20or%20bottom%2Dup%20reasoning [accessed August 13, 2022]. Bradford, Alina. “Deductive Reasoning vs. Inductive Reasoning.” Live Science, July 25, 2017. https://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vs-induction.html, [accessed August 22, 2020]. Brody, Lawrence C. “Nucleotide.” National Human Genome Research Institute. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Nucleotide [accessed December 27, 2021]. Craig, William Lane. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010. Dembski, William A. The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2004. ________. “The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design.” In Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, edited by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, 294-308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. DeWeese, Garrett J. “What Do I Know: Epistemology.” In Doing Philosophy as a Christian, 15077, Christian Worldview Integration Series. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011. A RESPONSE TO HUME’S CRITICISM OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT 145 Evans, C. Stephen. Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion. Downers Grove, IL. and Leicester, England: Intervarsity Press, 2002. Geisler, Norman L., and Ronald M. Brooks. When Skeptics Ask. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990. Grenz, Stanley J., David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1999. Lennox, John C. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, 2d ed. Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 2009. Moreland, J.P. Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987. Nash, Ronald H. Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992. Salmon, Wesley C. Logic, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973. Slick, Matt. “The Cosmological Argument,” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, http://carm.org/cosmological-argument [accessed June 20, 2012]. Sproul, R. C. Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994.