ABSTRACT
Design arguments have a long history, probably being the most commonly cited argument for believing in a deity. In ancient India, for instance, the argument from design was advanced by the so-called Nyaya (or logical-atomist) school (100-1000 ce), which argued for the existence of a deity based on the order of the world, which they compared both to human artifacts and to the human body (Smart 1964: 153-4). In the West, the design argument goes back to at least Heraclitus (500 bce). It reached its highpoint with the publication of Paley’s Natural Theology (1802), which primarily appealed to the intricate structure of plants and animals as evidence for design. With the advent of Darwin’s theory of evolution, this version of the argument underwent an almost fatal blow, although it has gained a small following since the 1990s among advocates of the so-called intelligent design movement. By far the most widely cited evidence for design, however, is that from ndings in physics and cosmology during the twentieth century. In this essay we will mainly focus on the evidence from the so-called ne-tuning of the cosmos for conscious, embodied life (CEL), although we will brie y look at other evidence from the beauty and elegance of the laws of nature.
