There’s no ‘intelligent design’ for life – Socialist Worker

There’s no ‘intelligent design’ for life – Socialist Worker: "This argument has a good deal of superficial plausibility, but its merits cannot survive close scrutiny. The philosopher David Hume had already subjected the argument from design to a devastating critique in the mid-18th century.

Hume argued that, even if the argument from design succeeds in showing that the world must have a designer, it has little power to disclose what that designer is like.

The world is filled with avoidable evil — war, disease, natural disasters and so on — and any creator of the universe either lacked the power or the will to prevent these evils.

But of course an omnipotent being could not lack the power, and an infinitely benevolent one could not lack the will, so the argument from design contradicts some of the traditional attributes of the deity.

A further weakness of the argument from design is that it is not a unique explanation — and it is certainly not the best explanation. And that, finally, is what evolution provides us with — the best available account of the origin of life.

It may be that one day we will find a much better one. But to render the argument from design completely useless we have only to note that evolution provides a vastly better explanation than does a vague appeal to a creator about whom nothing whatsoever is known."