Paley vs. Hume and Design
It's been a while EMM, time to leave a bit of a footprint like back in the old days.
Believe it or not, Intelligent Design is not a new idea. And I don't mean the theories of the religious and holy books which date back to the creation myths of several thousand years BC old. I mean the scientific, logical side of the argument, the side which fights its way into schools in the US using reason, dragging fundamentalist Christianity behind it like a spoilt child.
The old form of ID lies in a man called Paley, all the way back in the enlightenment, soon after the British Empiricists, when guns were taking over from bows in Europe and the US was a backwater Europe sent it's religious rebels to.
I'm sure most of you will find Paley's argument familiar, it's the argument of the watchmaker. If you were to scuff your foot upon a stone, you would hardly sit, hard at thought, nearby, wondering what crazy series of circumstances would place this stone here, what savage creator being would position it just so it would interrupt your journey. To do so would have you labelled crazy, paranoid, or at the very least, having far too much time on your hands.
If you were, however, to trip over a watch, falling flat on your face unhappily for cause of the unusually heavy and stone-like watch. You wouldn't just casually shrug it off as a result of nature. Likely you would pick it up, check it for a name, or more importantly, a maker. You'd recognise the watch as something created, with all it's intricate links and combinations which case it to tick neatly in time with the world around it. Faced with such a machine you would have no doubt that someone crafted it carefully before the time you were to trip clumsily upon it.
Paley's point was, why don't we have the same reaction to the stone? Why don't we have the same reaction to walking into a cathedral as regarding a simulation of the solar system... oh wait... that's exactly what we do. Both of them inspire similar reactions of awe at their perfect magnificence, both imbued with a majesty of ages. Both, most importantly, rely upon every single part of their existence to keep them moving and remaining in the fashion they do, bringing us night and day, the tides, the growth of life and our being, a roof beneath which we may pray in security, and a place from which the bells may ring in perfect harmony.
Paley's argument is NOT one of analogy, he does not compare the watch to the universe, only provides it as an example of part of the universe. He is not so arrogant as to compare the watchmaker to God, only to question why we do not see something as magnificent, perfect and enduring as the universe with the same wonder at a creator.
He had a point, his argument still remain the most powerful argument from design that exists, and the most well known. But it had one flaw. It had already been countered, not only in a thorough in exact way which destroyed his argument, but in fact before he had even written it. The genius philosopher Hume, in his Dialogues concerning natural religion (by the way, a must read), had already forseen the argument and torn it apart, through the words of a character in the work who Hume aptly named Philo.
Firstly the argument against the analogy, as the one used by Paley. Secondly against the need for intelligence behind design. Thirdly as a poor analogy, as one amongst many which could be used for the same purpose. In this final argument he lays the ground for Darwin's Natural Selection as a superior analogy.
In the first argument, Hume points at the analogy Paley uses and calls it out, even though Paley's argument only sparingly even uses this analogy, it is the example he gives to spur us to the method of thought used to imagine the idea of a designer. Not only is the comparison between the watch and universe weak, but completely odd. What comparison really is there between the clear purpose and design of a watch and the world upon which we live? The watch has no spare uses, no parts which have no aim. Yes some may be designed for aesthetic or ergonomic purposes, but this still lies within the purpose of the watch as a wrist accessory. Meanwhile what comparison can be said of the world? It is clearly not designed for humanity to live upon it, it's many natural disasters, predators and diseases make sure that life does not thrive upon it, it is driven to it's most extremes just to survive. The only reason we are so successful now and have done away with the fight for survival of the fittest is due to our own efforts, not the design of the world. If only to drive in the point, we are exceptionally poorly designed animals: we have a blind spot; we suffer all kinds of injuries and pains from the stress our body endures standing upright, having been designed to be on all fours; our jaw develops too many teeth; we can wiggle our ears (for no reason); we are plagued by birth defects, our own system assaulting itself and weaknesses to all sorts of suffering the world throws at us.
In the second argument Hume points towards the chaos of the world around us. What is chaotic about a watch? What is random and disjointed? The world cannot be created with any sense of purpose else it would not be so bizarre and convoluted, it would be clear and ordered. Another flaw in this seeming analogy. What order these is in the world is caused by "generation and vegetation".
In his third argument he points to that there is no help found at all in singling out God as designer. The moment you do so you are faced with all the same questions of why the world is as it is. No more sense is found in naming God the reason than naming the universe it's own reason. Note these are all arguments against design, not against a creator of some form. To say the universe is designed in this way simply makes no more sense to say it randomly occurred in this way, because you would have to ask all the same questions of a designer as to why things occurred as they did.
In his last argument Hume shows that there are many other possible analogies, other than the analogy to machines, that are equally well supported by the evidence we find in nature. For instance, the universe can be analogized to an animal body and God to its soul. It is therefore almost random to choose the analogy between the universe and a machine.
It is in this last argument Hume opens the floodgates, he casts aside the analogy of creation as useless and unsupported, and asks all comers to give their own opinions, their own analogies, their own theories as to why the universe is how it is. It is into this gap Darwin stepped, using Paley's idea of design, and named evolution the designer. He gave it evidence, he gave it reason, and so smashed the idea of intelligent design.
Once Hume and Darwin were done, the theory of ID was dead. Not only had it been discarded as a useful theory of the order of the universe but had been superseded in the same light. Neither thinker had rejected the idea of a creator, Hume was an agnostic and fully accepted that Deism may be a correct position and Darwin was a Christian, but ID was finished. Why it arose in the twentieth century is anyone's guess, but it continues to flourish in uneducated regions of the world and, bizarrely, the US. This argument however was decided three hundred years ago, and should have been laid to rest then and there.
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Originally Posted by Silver Guard
