argument from design

Each year I ask my students to devise arguments for God. They respond less like well diggers than like beachcombers, gathering bits of evidence.

Many people have an intuition that the natural world shows purpose, order, or providence. Benjamin Jantzen does a marvelous job analyzing the attempts to turn that intuition into arguments.

Early modern versions of the argument from design relied upon a simple analogy: the universe looks like an artifact, which implies a maker. But as David Hume pointed out, one would need experience observing universes being made to judge that the analogy holds true.