Hume

• Hume made the criticism that the analogy between the watch and the world is weak. it cannot be assumed it is obvious that to everyone that the world is like a watch. characteristics and purpose may be obvious for a watch but not the world.
• Also argued that order in the world does not necessarily mean that someone has an idea of its design. even if we do see order in the world, that does not enable us to leap to the idea of a divine intelligence. The recognition of order also has limits because we do not have another world to compare this one too- perhaps there are other worlds far more ordered than this one.
• Hume believed that order is a necessary part of the worlds existence. If everything was made randomly then the world would not be here anymore. It is not enough to show that the world is orderly to prove the existence of God.
• Hume also criticised design arguments because of their assumption that if we look at the effects (the world), we can infer the cause (God)
• He said that even if we can assume the creator, there is no reason to assume the creator is the christian God.
• Hume uses the example of scales with one end hidden from view. The end we see contains the weight we know and we cannot see the counter weight. We cannot infer with any confidence that it contains 100kg or 9 or 2, we certainly cannot say it has infinite weight. similarly with the world we only have the effect and the cause is hidden from us
• Argued that the universe is unique so we are unable to say what its like.
• Criticisms based on reason and knowledge, argued that you cannot make great leaps and assume things.
• we cannot logically move from the idea that everything in the universe has a reason, to say that the whole universe has a reason.
• Bertrand Russell says that just because every human being has a mother does not mean that the human species as a whole has a mother
• Hume also says that imagining something into existence without a cause is an incoherent idea.