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William Paley "I knew Paley’s argument from design, knew about the watch and the watchmaker, and I knew now that these people—these Jesus freaks—were trundling out the same old argument dressed in new clothes. Intricacy requires design, that was what they said. And design requires a designer. That was as far as they could see, that was it, case closed: God exists. And the earth is ten thousand years old, just like the Bible says" (Dave, a character in a T.C Boyle story). [1] William Paley’s analogical argument from design is simultaneously the best known and most derided argument for the existence of God. Ironically, the derision started before Paley wrote it. David Hume had been busy dismantling analogical arguments some years before Paley put quill to parchment. In this paper I will argue that though most of Hume’s objections to the argument fail, there is one that succeeds in sufficiently weakening the probability of the conclusion. I will argue that the objection ...

The classic argument from design is as follows: The universe is ordered. Unless there is a God, it is unlikely that the universe would be ordered. So, given the orderliness of the universe, God is likely to exist. The argument has intuitive force. Designed things have designers. Order is a result of design so our observation of order leads naturally to the conclusion that the universe has been designed by a designer. Here is a good criticism from inverted probability. Simply put, to invert probability is to take an argument such as the design argument and switch it around. So, A. "given the existence of God, the universe is likely to be ordered" is inverted to render: B. "given the orderliness of the universe, it is likely that God exists" A. is very plausible. If God designed the universe, he would do so in an orderly manner. However, some philosophers argue that the inversion in the case of the design argument does not give us what we want. In oth...