The following is the minimum you would want to know about this topic for the exam.

• William Paley (1802) famously argued that the universe resembles a mechanism (e.g. a pocket watch) because the universe (like the watch) runs according to predictable rules (regularity) and seems to have purpose.

• He argues that since mechanisms have designers, the universe probably has a designer too — GOD.

  
  

• However, David Hume (1779), an eighteenth-century philosopher, argues that the analogy at the heart of the ‘design argument’ is flawed.

• First, many purposeful and complex things in the world DO NOT have designers.

• For example, spiders make webs because it is their instinct to make webs, they do not ‘design’ webs.

• Hume points out, ‘He will find it hard to give a satisfactory reason why an orderly system might not be spun from the belly as well as from the brain’ (1779: 33).

• So, while the world might be like a pocket watch, it might also be like a flower or a spider’s web — naturally occurring rather than designed.

• Second, even if the world is designed rather than naturally occurring, it does not follow that there is only ONE designer.

• As Hume notes, ‘A great many men join together to build a house or ship, to found and develop a city, to create a commonwealth; why couldn’t several gods combine in designing and making a world?’ (1779: 25).

• Indeed, the most complex machines in our world are designed and made by many people working together.

• So, even if the world is designed, it is probable that it had MORE THAN ONE designer too.
  

• Finally, even if the world did have a single designer, this was probably NOT the God of Christianity.

• The God of Christianity is supposed to be OMNIPOTENT (all-powerful) and OMNIBENEVOLENT (all-loving).

• Such a God could make a world of perfect happiness; but as Hume notes, ‘neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore God doesn’t will their happiness’ (1779: 44).

• The God of Christianity WOULD ‘will their happiness’, so even if the universe was designed by a god, it must have been SOME OTHER GOD.

• Hume concludes that the design argument is NOT a good reason to believe in God.

References

• Hume, David. 1779. 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', ed. Jonathan Bennett <https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1779.pdf> [accessed 21 May 2026]

• Paley, William. 1802. 'Natural Theology', ed. Jonathan Bennett <https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/paley1802.pdf> [accessed 21 May 2026]