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In This Famous Dialogue Philo (Who Reflects Hume's Views on the Subject)

question 9

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In this famous dialogue Philo (who reflects Hume's views on the subject) gives us the classic critique of the argument from design. In the parts reproduced here, Cleanthes (the natural theologian) states the argument and asserts, "By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity and his similarity to human mind and intelligence." Philo replies that the argument rests on an extremely weak analogy from which we can derive no more than a guess about a deity. The dissimilarities between the universe and a human-crafted machine are too great to draw the conclusion that Cleanthes seeks. We cannot, for example, draw a conclusion about the origin of the vast universe as a whole from a fact about the origin of a tiny part of the universe (a house or a ship, for instance) . Furthermore, if we try to infer the nature of a Designer from facts about the natural world and human designers, we would have to conclude that the Designer may not be infinite (because the world is finite) , may not be perfect (because nature is full of imperfections) , and may not be single (because it is possible that the world was made by many deities) .
-Philo insists that we cannot argue from a fact about a small part of the universe to conclusions about

Definitions:

Sampling Distribution

The spectrum of probabilities for a predetermined statistic, collected from a random sample.

Probability Density Function

A function that describes the likelihood of obtaining the possible values that a random variable can assume, used in continuous probability distributions.

Finite Population Correction Factor

A correction applied to standard errors or variances when sampling from a finite population without replacement, to account for the decreased variability.

Population Mean

The average of all the values in a population, calculated as the sum of all values divided by the number of values.