If one were to take Paley’s argument from the deductive perspective, it is clearly invalid: there exists a possible world in which the premises are true, yet God, in the guise required by theists, does not exist. However, the general consensus has been that the argument is an inference to the best explanation. It is not clear that this is the correct analysis, but let us assume that it is for now.It would seem that most people have disregarded Hume’s urgings primarily because they believe that he lacked a suitable alternate hypothesis explaining biological organisation. Dawkins claims that the organised complexity of the world requires an explanation, and that Hume simply “criticised the logic of using apparent design in nature as positive evidence for the existence of a God,” without offering a plausible substitute. Sober agrees in part with Dawkins in that “the problem is that Hume has no serious alternate explanation for the phenomena he discusses.” Conversely, Sober states that it is not unreasonable to think the design argument refutable without a different elucidation. For example, Sober claims, “this could happen if the hypothesis of an intelligent designer were incoherent or self-contradictory,” although he sees “no such defect in the argument.” Above all, what is being claimed by such responses is that the conclusion of an intelligent designer is strongly supported by the argument’s preceding premises, thus leading us to conclude that Paley’s argument should have been successful in its time. What proponents of such a view will claim is that the argument could only be justifiably rejected post-Darwinian theory, as this is the first emergence of a suitably acceptable substitute hypothesis, or a better explanation.This particular view is fatally flawed. Hume’s criticisms can be used, along with other observable intuitive evidence, to formulat...
