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The Argument from Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

R. G. Swinburne
R. G. Swinburne
Affiliation:
University of Hull.
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The object of this paper is to show that there are no valid formal objections to the argument from design, so long as the argument is articulated with sufficient care. In particular I wish to analyse Hume's attack on the argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and to show that none of the formal objections made therein by Philo have any validity against a carefully articulated version of the argument.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 43 , Issue 165 , July 1968 , pp. 199 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1968

References

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.Google Scholar

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).Google Scholar

5 Ibid., loc. cit.

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

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

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

9 Dialogues, p. 33.Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar