ABSTRACT
There are three main traditional arguments for the existence of God—the cosmological argument, the design argument, and the ontological argument. Cosmological arguments take different forms; each cites a general feature of the whole universe as evidence that there is a God. A global design argument cites a general feature of the whole universe and argues that the feature should be explained by the hypothesis that it is the product of intelligent design. Paley's design argument concludes that the intricacy and adaptedness of organisms are best explained by postulating the existence of an extremely intelligent designer. Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion contain several criticisms of the design argument. Hume’s idea is that the strength or weakness of an analogy argument depends on the overall similarity of target and analog. The design argument that Paley formulated considers two competing hypotheses—the hypothesis of intelligent design and the hypothesis of random physical processes.
