Posted by Paul Goodman on March 20, 19100 at 15:01:24:
In Reply to: argument from design posted by kaycie on March 13, 19100 at 16:48:13:
OK, here we are and we start off quite comfortable inthis world thanks to our natural endowment from billions of years of evolution.
But as we get thinking we our minds on the question "How the Hell did this happen!"
Hume would say (correctly) that we can never know, so a skeptical attitude is best.
Now billions of people would take issue with Hume's skepticism: God, they would say, created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo). One of the arguments they use is the argument from design: gee, all this stuff is so complicated and works so well that it must have had somebody to think it out before hand, namely God.
Two problems with this: Evolution of life forms from basic chemicals, and the formation of these atoms etc. from basic energy is, as the Pope himself said "more than just a theory."
But that brings up the question of where did that basic energy come from? And we're back to God as the first cause. Here is the problem with that in dialog form...
Pat Robertson: God created the universe.
David Hume: Then who created God?
Pat Robertson: God doesn't need a Creator, he has no beginning and no end.
David Hume: Oh really? Then neither does all this!
That's basically an Occam's Razor argument with another flaw: just because an argument is simpler, doesn't make it correct, we need empirical demonstration.
In this case, its not just the fact the we humans can't go back in time to watch an "instant replay," it is the very nature of our cognitive process that even if we see, we ought not believe we see correctly, or that we interperet what we see correctly. Hence we are forever skeptics: Hume becomes the Western equivalent of the Buddah.
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