‘The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author, and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion’.

Thus might conclude almost any exposition of the traditional Argument from Design. In fact, this testimonial to teleology comes from the philosopher David Hume (1711 to 1776), usually thought of —correctly—as a foe of religion, and whose painstaking criticisms of natural theology still form the sine qua non of all rejections of that enterprise.

‘A purpose, an intention, a design is evident in every thing’, he declares, and ‘we must adopt with the strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent cause or author’ since monotheism may justly boast of ‘these invincible reasons on which it is undoubtedly founded’.