e into its Darwin scorched lungs. The form that poses the most concern for Darwinian theory is that concerning the problem of how exactly it was that conditions arose to allow evolution to begin. The idea is put forward by John Leslie in The Evidence of Fine Tuning, where he claims that given the type of universe we inhabit it was very unlikely that conditions should ever arise to allow life to exist. He says that due to the huge improbability of the conditions appearing, it seems we require a distinct explanation as how this should be so – and that explanation is best described as a divine ‘fine tuner’; namely, God.It is altogether evident that one would have a great amount of difficulty appealing solely to a process of natural selection to dispute Leslie’s argument. This requires us to attack the rationality of the inference, and again this is nowhere better done than in Hume’s Dialogues. Alternatively, or in addition to, we could simply say that God is not the best explanation, even if we do not have an indisputable explanation yet: there is nothing to say that this will not become available to us in future developments in physics. Some will inevitably feel unsatisfied with this rejoinder, but one could still ask a theist if Leslie’s argument, or any other teleological argument for that matter, had offered a different conclusion, such as the existence of a juvenile, learning God, there would be any justifiable reason to assume this was incorrect, given their current dispositions towards the rationality of the inference. Also, one might doubt that God provides a wholly satisfactory account of the universe’s history either: there is much unexplained in terms of the ‘divine plan’. It would seem that the teleological argument is doomed to failure, unless some more concrete empirical evidence is discovered that would perhaps strengthen the inference, for there seems no reason...
