Hume's Criticism Of The Design Argument

Sometimes called the Teleological Argument (‘telos’ in Greek means ‘purpose’), the Design Argument is one of the oldest, most prevalent and most popular out of all the arguments for the existence of God that have been created throughout the years. Ever since it was first recorded in Greek philosophy by Xenophon in 390 BCE, various forms of the argument have been put forth by many different respected philosophers of their respective times from Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages to Richard Swinburne in the modern day. Comparatively, however, many notable philosophers have also put forth criticisms such as David Hume and Richard Dawkins. In this essay, I will be examining the different forms of the argument and discussing the criticisms against …show more content…
This is called anthropomorphism and suggests that God is not as mystical and supernatural as the Bible suggests. Many man-made objects, such as house, a built by a large number of people, so does that mean that the universe was created by many different gods working on different parts of it? This introduces the problem of polytheism into the Design Argument as if there were lots of different gods then no God could be omnipotent as each one would have things they couldn’t do as otherwise there wouldn’t be a need for many gods. Moreover, using this argument, our universe could have been an initial test of sorts that failed and so God decided to leave it be and create another, better one. This notion betrays the idea of the God of classical theism and the idea that humans are the most important beings ever created. Paley’s entire argument is based on believing that like effects mean there has to be like causes. If we reject that idea, the very basis of Paley’s argument fails and so the entire of Paley’s Teleological Argument fails. There are many examples of things looking designed but are in fact natural phenomena such as, for example, the Giant’s Causeway. Hume continues this criticism by stating that …show more content…
Others would argue that the existence of ugliness and evil in the world invalidated the argument as an omnibenevolent God would not put these sorts of stimuli in our world if he loved us so much.
Furthering on this point, John Stuart Mill criticised every version of the Design Argument by stating that if God had designed the world why is there so much evil and suffering? Surely God would have made a world in which there was only goodness and no pain or suffering ever took place? Mill claims that, because of the Problem of Evil, saying that God designed the world denies the God of classical theism because you are denying that God is omnibenevolent, omniscient or omnipotent and so the entire argument fails as you have defeated your conclusion with your