ABSTRACT
Which character, if any, in the Dialogues speaks for Hume? The correct answer, I argue, is that no one character does, but that Philo and Cleanthes together may. Does Hume reject the argument from design in toto? The correct answer, again, is no. Hume does reject the argument for moral design, thereby aligning himself with Philo, but shows some grudging acceptance of the argument for amoral intelligent design, thereby aligning himself with this aspect of Cleanthes’ argument, but only to a point, for he is all too aware of the inductive weaknesses of the intelligent design argument. Hume is caught in something of a dilemma. On the one hand, he cannot bring himself to believe that organisms and their ecosystems came to be by way of no design process at all. But on the other, he is most reluctant to endorse the notion of a designing, even if amoral, intelligence, and there is, for him, no third option. The assumption of the existence of an amoral intelligent designer, however, does not preclude Humean rational religion, a body of doctrine that enhances the pro-social tendencies central to human species design.
