Topics Religion

Question Dear all, Am I right in thinking that what William Paley's mistake in his design argument, was not to suggest a designer but he was mistaken to 'specify' how design came about, so he came up with the concept of 'special creation' i.e. design coming instantaneously. Therefore that was his pitfall, not that the design argument is wrong, but just that he was stipulating conditions on how God should create. I think it was Bohr who said 'Don't tell God what to do'. I think to further show my point is where some argued that this creation was special because the earth was the center of the universe, and when this was proven wrong, certain religous figures acted violently because this assumption was proven wrong. Am I right in the above? Many thanks :) Kind regards!

Accepted:
October 14, 2006

Comments

I'm not sure I fully understand that question being asked here, and I should say, straight off, that I'm not familiar with Paley's particular version of the argument from design. (The argument goes back, in one form or another, a very long way.) But it's certainly true that, if the argument shows anything, it shows only something very abstract: The universe was created by some form of "intelligence". Indeed, part of Hume's criticism of the argument from design is precisely that it can show so little: The argument gives us no reason whatsoever to suppose that the intelligence that created the universe, if such there be, has any of the attributes traditionally associated with divinity. (In fact, Hume goes farther and argues that, if one is really proceeding by analogy here, one should conclude that the intelligence has few, if any, of those attributes.)