Oppy (1996)
Oppy, Graham. (1996) Hume and the Argument for Biological Design. Biology and Philosophy 11, 519-534.
| Title | Hume and the Argument for Biological Design |
|---|---|
| Resource Type | journal article |
| Author(s) | Graham Oppy |
| Year | 1996 |
| Journal | Biology and Philosophy |
| Volume | 11 |
| Pages | 519-534 |
Abstract
There seems to be a widespread conviction - evidenced, for example, in the work of Mackie, Dawkins and Sober - that it is Darwinian rather than Humean considerations which deal the fatal logical blow to arguments for intelligent design. I argue that this conviction cannot be well-founded. If there are current logically decisive objections to design arguments, they must be Humean - for Darwinian considerations count not at all against design arguments based upon apparent cosmological fine-tuning. I argue, further, that there are good Humean reasons for atheists and agnostics to resist the suggestion that apparent design - apparent biological design and/or apparent cosmological fine-tuning - establishes (or even strongly supports) the hypothesis of intelligent design.
