Hume—writing some twenty five years before Paley—argues (in a work called Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) that analogies between machines and the universe do not work because they assume similarities where really none ought be assumed. For example, while a useful analogy might be drawn between a frog and a man (they both have circulation, respiration, legs, etc) there is little to commend a comparison of a machine with contiguous parts and the universe with all of its violence as well as apparent order.
Furthermore, since we have no inductive knowledge of the origins of the universe (in other words, no observer was there to see under what conditions the Big Bang occurred) no one can say that it was the work of an Intelligent Designer.
And as far as beauty goes, he quotes the old adage: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Aesthetics is too subjective to be considered a serious philosophical claim.
No comments:
Post a Comment