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Arguments based on Observation - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The theory that the universe is made up of a finite number of particles moving freely in infinite time in all possible combinations
      - Any world has to fit together, at least up to a point, in order to continue
        
        If something could display order without being made to do by a grand designer, we would have an alternative way of explaining the phenomenon
      - Suppose we have we have infinite time. Now suppose that a huge but finite number of particles exist, freely moving around.
        
        In infinite time, these particles would undergo every possible combination. Every possible combination might very well include one - or more - which is relatively stable, that is, one which fits together quite well.
        
        That could be where we are living now, in a universe with at least some apparent order.
        
        Think of the old tale of monkeys in a room full of typewriters. In infinite time, they will types every possible combination of letters, including the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.
    - - What we choose to say the world is like, shapes the outcome of the argument
        
        A watch is a machine, and machines have watch-makers
        
        But consider a cabbage. A cabbage has leaves that fit perfectly together and they serve a purpose as a very healthy form of food.
        
        If we found a cabbage, we could not (and would not) draw the inference that there exists a cabbage-maker.
      - We see the world as a complex natural object at least as easily as we might see it as a machine
        
        By choosing a machine as their analogy, thinkers like Paley have already determined the result they want
    - - Hume gives the example of a set of scales
        
        Suppose we can only see only one pan, which has a known weight in it. The pan is in the air, so we know that what is in the other pan is heavier, even though it is hidden from our view.
        
        We have no idea whether what is in that pan is heavier by an ounce or by a ton, and we have no idea what that heavier thing might be, whether it is a ton of feathers or an elephant holding the pan down with its big toe.
        
        In the same way, we cannot go from the evidence of this world, with all its limitations, to the infinite, all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God in whom most believers believe,
        
        Hume suggests that perhaps this world is the discarded effort of an infant deity or the work of a committee of gods. We simply cannot know.
    - - He wrote these criticisms twenty years before the appearance of Natural Theology (1802)
        
        There is no evidence that Paley was familiar with Hume's criticisms of design arguments in general