Plato's Playground
Hume proposed this for discussion. He did not endorse it. But this "argument from design" is today very popular.
Uhm, this is pretty much the perspective my dear father takes up as evidence of God's hand in the creation of the world. I can appreciate the wonder and awe that such a perspective brings, and for certain folks, like my father, it is a great comfort to behold the perfection of things.
But it's not for me. I used to just spurn this perspective because it was my father's (the psychology of the teen years at work) later, because it felt both like an a priori approach - taking the desired outcome of God in an orderly universe, and finding the evidence in the world around us.
Our minds are adept at noticing and inferring pattern. That doesn't mean the pattern is there for a reason.
Plus the things I love most of the universe are not this clock work quality, but more it's antithesis. My hunch is that there's a humming wobble in the midst of all creation throwing it constantly akilter, perpetually into new and unexpected patterns. Thinking about that at work in the world we end up with something more like the wild and compelling rhythms of Paddy Keenan on the Uillean Pipes playing the Blackbird or the Kesh Jig. You get the clap on the off beat and the unexpected initontation and harmonies in the black holiness church down the road, you get the baby's wail and the mockingbird's song.
Preserve me from the easy con of the Hume's clock work universe! You may find the hardened institutions cooling their heels their, but I doubt you'll find much of the Spirit we call God, least not for long.
I was holding off to see who else would weigh in on this, but here are a couple of observations from the garrulous one. Speechless has touched upon some of the problems with this argument. I'll do it a bit more systematically.
* The argument by analogy is inherently very weak. Just because the universe reminds some people of a machine doesn't prove that it is one.
* A machine is built for a purpose, but if the universe was made for a puropse, no-one can say what that is. (If you know anything at all about the universe, you know that it wasn't to put us here, unless the creator's most important characteristic is profligacy.) So even if we are persuaded by the argument from design that a designer exists, we know absolutely nothing about him her or it, and certainly have no reason to believe that it resembles in any way the Judeo-Christian God or any other imagined being.
* The universe obviously exists, and it must have some properties. Whether we consider it to be, on the whole, "orderly" or not is pretty much an aesthetic judgment, not a verifiable conclusion. A great deal about it appears disorderly and the thing, on the whole, seems rather pointless, as far as we can tell. At least that's how it looks to some people.
* We evolved in this universe, and our minds evolved to cope with existence in it, or at least our very small part of it. So naturally we are equipped with senses, expectations and patterns of cognition that make sense out of our experience -- natural selection made sure of that. The argument that because the universe is comprehensible to us on some level, it must have a creator whose mind is similar to our own, was destroyed by Darwin.
There is a great deal more that can be said about the fallaciousness of this argument. I bring it up now because many religious people have decided that they need to find scientific arguments for their beliefs (not a new attempt by any means) and so they have created "research institutes" such as the Discovery Institute to push "intelligent design" as a supposedly scientific idea, which ought to be taught in school. It isn't. Religion is fundamentally not science. If there is ever a scientific proof of the existence of God, belief in God will no longer be religious belief. (This is a hypothetical which I personally consider vanishingly improbable, but that's beside the point.)
"If there is ever a scientific proof of the existence of God, belief in God will no longer be religious belief."--cervantes
ain't it just the truth. i appreciate both your and speechless' opinions here. hoping to respect you both; you are like the blindmen describing the elephant. not that i claim to be sighted.
physical reality is wondrous and amazing. consider a bird's feather. look closely. isn't that among the most beautiful things that grows from an animal? it's existence, per se, however, while it may to our feeble human intellect require a designer, offers no evidence of such.
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