Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

22 J.J.C. Smart
argument from ostensible fine tuning is the currently fashionable form of
the traditional ‘teleological argument’ for the existence of God. Sometimes
this is called ‘the argument from design’ but this, like a too literal construal of
‘fine tuning’, would be question begging. Years ago Norman Kemp Smith
suggested that the argument should be called ‘the argument to design’. 36
Equally we could call it ‘the argument from apparent design’, or for brevity
‘the design argument’.
Unlike some other traditional arguments for the existence of God the
design argument was never meant to be apodeictic. In contrast the ontological
argument was meant to be quite a priori and the cosmological argument
almost so, requiring only the assertion that something contingently exists.
The design argument is best thought of as an argument to the best explanation,
such as we use in science and everyday life. The best explanation for the
appearance of design in the world is said to be a designer.
David Hume in his great posthumously published book, Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, 37 obviously thought that there were alternative
explanations which are as plausible as that of design. However, he retained
a sceptical position, rather than a dogmatically atheist one. Philo, who was
probably Hume’s representative mouthpiece in the Dialogues, said that the
universe might as well be compared to an organism as to an artefact, and
organisms, prima facie, are not designed. They ‘just grow’. (Antony Flew has
commended the childlike acumen and common sense of Topsy in Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 38 ) Of course we know from the modern
synthesis of the theory of evolution by natural selection together with
neo-Mendelian genetics that organisms do not need to have been designed.
If we appreciate the huge time-scale of evolutionary processes and the opportunistic
way in which they work, our minds need not be intellectually
overwhelmed, even though perhaps imaginatively at a loss. However, I am
here considering the argument from design in a post-Darwinian context,
the new teleology not the old, in relation to the great appearance of design in
the laws of physics.
As was just remarked, Hume held that the analogy between the universe
and an organism was as good as that between the universe and an artefact.
There are possibly many other analogies, equally good or bad. Indeed Hume’s
Dialogues concludes with Philo’s concession to his main interlocutor Cleanthes
that there is some analogy between the cause of the universe and a human
mind. This is perhaps in one way a very small concession since with enough
ingenuity one can find some analogy between almost any two things. However,
in another way it is a big concession, namely that the universe does have
a cause external to itself.
One trouble with the design argument is that there would have to be
a ‘cosmic blueprint’ 39 in the mind of God. This conflicts with the supposition