The Argument from Design

¹ I am most grateful to Christopher Williams and to colleagues at Hull for their helpful criticisms of an earlier version of this paper.

² Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Aiken, H. D. (New York, 1948), p. 28.

³ I understand by a ‘normal scientific explanation’ one conforming to the pattern of deductive or statistical explanation utilised in paradigm empirical sciences such as physics and chemistry, elucidated in recent years by Hempel, Braithwaite, Popper and others. Although there are many uncertain points about scientific explanation, those to which I appeal in the text are accepted by all philosophers of science.

⁴ St Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1a, 2, 3. Translated by McDermott, Timothy, O.P. (London, 1964).

⁵ Ibid., loc. cit.

⁶ Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. L. A. Selby Bigge. Second Edition, 1902, p. 136.

⁷ Hume, David, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Aiken, H. D. (New York, 1948), p. 23.

⁸ For this argument see also The Enquiry, pp. 147f.

⁹ Dialogues, p. 33.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 36.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 40.

¹² Ibid., p. 39.

¹³ Ibid., p. 40.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 50.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 47.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 53.

¹⁷ See, for example, Dialogues, p. 18 and p. 37.