The Design Argument

1. Cleanthes’s presentation of the argument:

“Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be
nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines,
which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties
can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are
adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who
have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all
nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance;
of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects
resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also
resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though
possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he
has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at
once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.”
(Hume, Part II, p.15)
2. Philo’s summary of the argument:
“From similar effects we infer similar causes. The adjustment of means to ends is alike
in the universe, as in a machine of human contrivance. The causes, therefore, must be
resembling.” (Hume, Part II, p.18)

3. The logical form of arguments by analogy:

(1) Object A has features P, Q, R, etc.
(2) Objects B, C, D, etc. also have features P, Q, R, etc.
(3) Objects B, C, D, etc. have feature X.
(4) Therefore, probably, Object A also has feature X.

4. The Design Argument, Formalized:

(1) The world is well-ordered, functionally complex, and its parts are well-adapted to
serve various purposes.
(2) Houses, watches, books, etc. are also well-ordered, functionally complex, and their
parts are well-adapted to serve various purposes.
(3) Houses, watches, books, etc., have intelligent designers.
(4) Therefore, probably, the world also has an intelligent designer, i.e., God.
Premisses (1) and (2) list some observed features (i.e., order, functional complexity, purpose)
that the world and designed artifacts have in common. Premiss (3) notes that these observed
features in designed artifacts are the effects of intelligent design. In other words, intelligent
design is the observed cause of order, functional complexity, and purpose in designed
artifacts. On the strength of the analogy with designed artifacts given in (2) and (3),
Conclusion (4) infers that there is an intelligent designer who is the cause of order, functional
complexity, and purpose in the world. In short, the features listed in (1) and (2) are the
observed effects. The feature listed in (3) is the observed cause of the features listed in (2).
The feature listed in (4) is the inferred cause of the features listed in (1).

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5. Hume’s Rules of Inductive Inference:
Hume relies upon three rules of inference, which justify our reading the Design Argument as
an argument by analogy. Here are the rules.
(a) When the observed features of objects A, B, C, and D are similar, we may infer that
the unobserved features of A, B, C, and D are also similar.1
(b) From similar observed effects, we may infer similar causes.2
(c) The more similar the observed effects and the more similar the inferred causes, the
stronger the inference; the more dissimilar, the weaker the inference.3

6. Evaluating the Design Argument:

To find out how strong or weak the argument is (i.e., how likely the conclusion is given the
premisses), you need to use criteria A~F listed in the “Argument by Analogy” handout.
Philo’s three main criticisms of the Design Argument can be seen in light of criteria A~F.
(1) Philo’s criticism that the order, complexity and purpose found in artifacts designed by
humans is a very tiny part of the order, complexity and purpose found throughout the
universe (Hume, Part II),4 depends on criterion C. Philo is noting that the Design
Argument relies upon our observation of an infinitesimally small sample of the order,
complexity and purpose found in the whole universe, and that this greatly weakens the
probability of the conclusion about the origin of the whole universe.
(2) Philo’s criticism that so long as we are comparing divine intelligence with human
intelligence, the order, complexity and purpose in the universe is more likely to be the
product of many finite and imperfect gods than the product of a single infinitely perfect
God (Hume, Part V),5 depends on Criterion F. Houses and ships are often the products of
many mechanics with limited intelligence improving on the work of previous mechanics
or collaborating together in construction work. So on the strength of the analogy with
human intelligence, we have better warrant for concluding that many gods with limited
intelligence have collaborated together in the building of the universe over a long period
of trial and error, than for concluding that one infinitely perfect being has created the
universe from scratch. We have an even better warrant for the very weak conclusion that
the universe arose from something like design.6 [See Note 5, rule (c), just above.]
1
See Hume, Part VI, p.39; Philo says, “where several known circumstances are observed to be similar, the unknown
will also be found similar.”
2
See Hume, Part V, p.34, where Philo says, “Like effects prove like causes.”
3
See Hume, Part V, p.34: “Now it is certain that the liker the effects are which are seen and the liker the causes
which are inferred, the stronger is the argument. Every departure on either side diminishes the probability and
renders the experiment less conclusive.” More briefly, on p.35, “…the liker the better.”
4
“A very small part of this great system, during a very short time, is very imperfectly discovered to us; and do we
thence pronounce decisively concerning the origin of the whole? Admirable conclusion! Stone, wood, brick, iron,
brass, have not, at this time, in this minute globe of earth, an order or arrangement without human art and
contrivance; therefore, the universe could not originally attain its order and arrangement without something similar
to human art. But is a part of nature a rule for another part very wide of the former? Is it a rule for the whole? Is a
very small part a rule for the universe? Is nature in one situation a certain rule for nature in another situation vastly
different from the former?” (Hume, Part II, p.20) This line of criticism begins from top of p.19.
5
More specifically, see Hume, pp.35~7.
6
“In a word, Cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able, perhaps, to assert or conjecture that the universe
sometime arose from something like design: But beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance,

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 (3) Philo’s criticism that many instances of the order, complexity and purpose in the universe
are produced not by intelligent design, but by other causes like animal reproduction,
vegetable reproduction, and blind instinct (Hume, Part VII),7 depends on Criterion E.
Animal reproduction is the cause of order, complexity and purpose in animal organisms.
Vegetable reproduction is the cause of order, complexity and purpose in plants. Blind
instinct is the cause of order, complexity and purpose in beehives, tunnels built by ant
colonies, and beaver dams. These causes show that there can be order, complexity and
purpose without intelligent design, and thus serve as relevant disanalogies which make
the conclusion of the Design Argument less probable.

7. Philo’s Remaining Criticisms of the Design Argument:

(4) Not only do animal and vegetable reproduction serve as relevant disanalogies, but they
also serve as better analogies (than human artifacts) for the universe as a whole (Hume,
Part VI). As Philo notes, “if we survey the universe, so far as it falls under our
knowledge, it bears a great resemblance to an animal or organized body, and seems
actuated with a like principle of life and motion” (p.39). Then Philo lists relevant
similarities to support this claim. Then he concludes that the world more likely “is an
animal; and the Deity is the Soul of the world, actuating it, and actuated by it” (p.40).
This conclusion is strengthened by what we know from experience, that there is no mind
without body: there seems to be no observed exception to this rule. So it is more
reasonable to infer that if there is a divine mind then the universe is the body of the deity.
Cleanthes then notes that there are some defects in likening the universe to an
animal body. An animal body has sensory organs and a nervous system, for instance, but
the universe as a whole does not seem to have sensory organs and a nervous system. So
Cleanthes concludes that the universe “seems to bear a stronger resemblance to a
vegetable than to an animal” (p.41). So the universe is more probably a vegetable than an
animal body, and more probably an animal body than a designed artifact. According to
Philo, this is the conclusion we are compelled to accept by the very logic of argument by
analogy, which so to speak is the engine driving the Design Argument.
To round off this line of thought. According to the Design Argument, if the
universe is like a designed artifact then it probably arose from intelligent design. But
since the universe is more like an animal, it more probably arose from animal
reproduction. And since the universe is even more like a vegetable, it even more
probably arose from vegetable reproduction. (See Part VII, pp.44~6.)

and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world,
for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay
of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: It is the work only of some
dependent, inferior deity, and is the object of derision to his superiors: It is the production of old age and dotage in
some superannuated deity; and ever since his death has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force
which it received from him…” (Hume, Part V, pp.37~8).
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“In this little corner of the world alone, there are four principles, reason, instinct, generation, vegetation, which are
similar to each other, and are the causes of similar effects. What a number of other principles may we naturally
suppose in the immense extent and variety of the universe could we travel from planet to planet, and from system to
system, in order to examine each part of this mighty fabric? Any one of these four principles above mentioned (and
a hundred others which lie open to our conjecture) may afford us a theory by which to judge of the origin of the
world; and it is a palpable and egregious partiality to confine our view entirely to that principle by which our own
minds operate…” (Hume, Part VII, p.46).

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 (5) Demea (in Part VII, p.46) responds to Philo’s criticism in (4) by noting that if biological
reproduction and blind instinct can bring about all the order and functional complexity in
the universe, then it seems mysterious how they do so. This mystery can be explained by
concluding that biological reproduction and blind instinct produce order and functional
complexity in the universe by God’s intelligent design.
Philo blocks Demea’s move by observing that the internal workings of reason and
intelligence are just as mysterious to us as the internal workings of biological
reproduction and blind instinct. We do not understand how the mind produces order,
complexity and purpose in the arrangement of ideas. So, by the same token, we must
conclude that there must be another cause to explain the order, complexity and purpose in
the God’s mind. And that cause would require another cause, and so on, resulting in
infinite regress of explanation.
So it seems that we must stop somewhere in our explanation of the order and
complexity in the universe. But if we must stop somewhere in our explanation, we need
not go beyond the universe to seek the explanation in the order and complexity of the
divine mind. We can simply assume that the universe contains the principles of order and
complexity within itself. Philo then rounds off this rebuttal by pointing out that we
always observe the order and complexity of minds as arising from the order and
complexity in our bodies (more specifically our brains), and not the other way around.
So we have no empirical evidence to justify the claim that the order and complexity of
bodies arise from the order and complexity of mind and reason. (Philo lays out these
considerations in Part VII, pp.46~7 and also earlier in Part IV, pp.30~33.)
(6) So far Cleanthes and Philo have discussed four possible hypotheses which explain the
order and complexity of the universe as a whole. These are:
i. intelligent design,
ii. blind instinct,
iii. animal reproduction,
iv. vegetable reproduction.
In Part VIII, Philo proposes a fifth:
v. the Epicurean hypothesis.
According to this hypothesis, the universe consists of a finite number of atoms in
constant motion, going through an infinite number of combinations and permutations in
an infinite amount of time. Then by this “blind, unguided force” (p.51) the atoms will
eventually hit upon the orderly arrangement and functional complexity we find in the
universe today. Though this result is overwhelmingly unlikely, the finite number of
atoms and the infinite amount of time seem to guarantee the result.8
Now, Philo himself thinks that the Epicurean hypothesis is a very unlikely
explanation of the order and complexity of the universe. The point of proposing this
hypothesis is to show that it is compatible with everything we know about the universe
and could be true, though it is unlikely to be true.

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And it seems also to guarantee that the situation we now find ourselves in will repeat an infinite number of times.
This is the idea of eternal recurrence, which Hume does not mention in connection with the Epicurean hypothesis,
but which comes from the hypothesis.

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8. To the above list of five hypotheses purporting the explain the order and complexity in the
universe, we may add a sixth:
vi. the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Scientists use it not to explain the order and complexity of the entire universe, but to explain
the order and functional complexity of living organisms. Since Darwin publicized his theory
of evolution eighty years after Hume’s death, it never occurred to Hume to propose the
theory of evolution as one of the possible hypotheses.
In any case, the theory of evolution can be seen as a vast improvement over the
Epicurean hypothesis, even though both use the idea of random variation. Richard
Dawkins’s distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection will help you
understand why.

9. In his book The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Dawkins explains the essential difference between
single-step selection and cumulative selection as follows:
In single-step selection the entities selected or sorted, pebbles or whatever they are,
are sorted once and for all. In cumulative selection, on the other hand, they
“reproduce”; or in some other way the results of one [selection and sorting] process
are fed into a subsequent [selection and sorting], which is fed into…, and so on. The
entities are subjected to selection or sorting over many “generations” in succession.
The end-product of one generation of selection is the starting point for the next
generation of selection, and so on for many generations.
To illustrate this distinction, Dawkins discusses two different types of computer program
used to produce the sentence METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL (consisting of 28
characters including the spaces) by selecting and sorting from 27 characters on the keyboard
(that is, 26 capital letters of the alphabet and “space”).
(a) One program uses the procedure of single-step selection. It generates a completely
random sequence of 28 characters on each attempt, as follows:
WDLDMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
Y YVMQKZPGJXWVHGLAWFVCHQYOPY
MWR SWTNUXMLCDLEUBXTQHNZVJQF
FU OVAODVYKDGXDEKYVMOGGS VT
HZQZDSFZIHIVPHZPETPWVOVPMZGF
GEWRGZRPBCTPGQMCKHFDBGW ZCCF
And so on. The odds of producing the sentence METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
using this program is about 1 chance in 10,000 million million million million million
million. So we can expect that it will probably take a very long time for the program to
produce the sentence—more than a million million million times as long as the entire
history of universe from the Big Bang until now.
(b) The other program uses the procedure of cumulative selection. On its first run, the
program begins by choosing the following random sequence:
WDLDMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
The program then “breeds” from this sequence: it duplicates the sequence, but with some
chance of random error or “mutation” in the copying process. The computer compares
the resulting mutant sequences with the target sentence METHINKS IT IS LIKE A

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 WEASEL and chooses the sequence which most resembles the target sentence, however
slightly. So the winning sequence of the next “generation” happens to be:
WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P
The breeding and choosing procedure is repeated generation after generation. So, after
10 generations, the winning sequence is:
MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P
And after 20 generations it is:
MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL
By now we can begin a resemblance to the target sentence. By 30 generations we have:
METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL
Generation 40 brings us to within one letter of the target:
METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL
And the target is finally reached in generation 43. Now this was the result obtained by
the second program on its first run, and it took about half an hour. Since this was back in
the 1980’s and we have much faster computers nowadays, we can probably generate the
target sentence in a matter of seconds.
What these two programs demonstrate is that if evolution had relied upon single-step
selection, it would have never gotten anywhere. But evolution relies upon cumulative
selection rather than single-step selection.
According to the Epicurean hypothesis, we get the order and complexity of living
organisms via single-step selection. This is why the Epicurean hypothesis is very
unlikely. The theory of evolution is immensely more plausible than the Epicurean
hypothesis because evolutionary progress involves cumulative selection.

10. Against cumulative selection, and in favor of intelligent design, you could distinguish
between two types of complexity: cumulative and irreducible complexity. According to
William Dembski in The Design Inference (1998), a system is cumulatively complex “if the
components of the system can be arranged sequentially so that the successive removal of
components never leads to the complete loss of function”. On the other hand, a system is
irreducibly complex “if it consists of several interrelated parts so that removing even one part
completely destroys the system’s function”. For instance, a city for instance is cumulatively
complex because we can remove buildings, roads, etc. without making it unable to function.
A mousetrap is irreducibly complex because the removal of any one of its parts results in
complete loss of function.
Those who argue for intelligent design first give examples of optimally designed
biochemical systems which seem irreducibly complex. Then they argue that it is extremely
unlikely that the irreducible complexity of such a system can be explained in terms of
cumulative selection. That’s because there could not have been a precursor system in earlier
generations which lacked one of the parts: such a system couldn’t have functioned at all, and
thus couldn’t have any adaptive value that contributes towards reproductive success.

11. In favor of the theory of evolution, and against intelligent design, you can note instances of
poor design in living organisms. As Stephen Jay Gould notes in “The Panda’s Peculiar
Thumb”, it is not optimal design, but “[o]dd arrangements and funny solutions [which] are
the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural
process, constrained by history, follows perforce”.