To allege the occurrence of order in creation, purpose in its constituent parts and in its constituted whole, regularity in the meter of its rhythm and syncopations, and mindful structure in the design and construction of Nature is by far the most widely used and generally accepted ground for launching from the world belief in an intelligent and omnipotent designer god. One does not have to read for very long to find some modern intellectual involved in the analysis of some part of Nature come to the "Aha!" that there's a power at work imposing order, design, structure and purpose in creation. Modern religious piety salivates at the prospect of converting scientists and will take them any way it can.

The cause must be proportioned to the effect. To Hume it is sinful to assume greater effects to an actually lesser cause. No sooner have we engodded the gods with power and intelligence and benevolence than we summon "exaggeration and flattery" to supply gaps and tease out the argument. We structure an entire edifice in our imaginations while standing on the porch. Hume countered this thinking because it constructed belief and certainty out of mere possibility. It is an exercise in uselessness: "Because our knowledge of this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature, we can never, according to the rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause with any new inference, or making additions to the common and experienced course of nature, establish any new principles of conduct and behaviour."

Nature is a mixed, balkanized state. And so the coup de grace: If one is baffled about the true state of the world, how can one argue from design? Rather than following Demea out the door, however, Cleanthes converts.

Ok, OK, so I was not as careful as I might have been in formulating my principle that on the other side of experience there is no door leading to conjecture or hypothesis. I have expressed myself badly in places, but I think I can salvage my cause with a more circumspect exposition.

And so do we. We look at our children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters and parents and infer heredity, or more specifically, genes. DNA is an unostentatious reality, inexperienced, but we see its effect. Can we not legitimately infer God as a way to account and even foretell phenomena of the universe?

[W]hen we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies: When we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and properties of spirits; the powers and operations of one universal spirit, existing without beginning and without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from the smallest tendency to skepticism not to be apprehensive, that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculties. So long as we confine our speculations to trade, or morals, or politics, or criticism, we make appeals, every moment, to common sense and experience, which strengthen our philosophical conclusions, and remove (at least, in part) the suspicion, which we so justly entertain with regard to every reasoning that is very sub tile and refined. But in theological reasoning's, we have not this advantage; while at the same time we are employed upon object . . . too large for our grasp. . . . We are like foreigners in a strange country, to whom every thing must seem suspicious, and who are in danger every moment of transgressing against the laws and customs of the people with whom they live and converse. We know not how far we ought to trust our vulgar methods of reasoning in such a subject; since, even in common life and in that province which is peculiarly appropriated to them, we cannot account for them, and are entirely guided by a kind of instinct or necessity in employing them.

Cleanthes makes no substantial reply, and Demea the pietist comes to the stage with another set of conditions with which the Argument from Design must be reconciled. These conditions include the unhappiness of humanity and human corruption. With his famous ejaculation, "The whole earth, believe me Philo, is cursed and polluted," he sounds the note Philo has been waiting to hear to drown out Cleanthes' flat pitch. He queries Cleanthes how, in the face of the orchestrated facts, can he assert the "moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy, and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in the human creature? His power we allow infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor animal are happy

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Approximate Word count = 4768
Approximate Pages = 19 (250 words per page double spaced)