o a purpose.

Now, if the theist could prove that out of a number of equally possible
lines of development living beings show one fixed form, and that against
the compulsion of environmental forces, he would do something to prove
the probability of some sort of guidance. But that we know cannot be
done. The forms of life are infinite in number. They vary within all
possible limits; and always in terms of environmental conditions. In
brief, what is said to occur with God, can be shown to be inevitable
without him. "God" in nature is a wholly gratuitous hypothesis.

Later it will be seen that the whole basis of the argument from design
is fallacious; that it proceeds along altogether wrong lines, and that
the final objection to it is that it is completely irrelevant to the
point at issue. For the moment, however, we proceed with a criticism of
the argument as usually stated.

It must be borne in mind that what the theist desires to reach is a
_Creator_, but it is obvious that this plea can never give us more than
a mere designer working on materials that already exist. Of necessity
design implies two things, difficulties to be overcome, and skill or
wisdom in overcoming them. Design is an understandable thing in
connection with man, because man is always occupied in overcoming the
resistance of forces that exist quite independently of him, and which
operate without reference to his needs or desires. But it would be
absurd to assume design on the part of one for whom difficulties had no
existence, or on the part of one who himself created the forces that had
to be overcome, and endowed them with all the properties which made the
work of design necessary. Granting the relevance of the data upon which
the belief in design rests, one could only assume, with Mill, that "the
author of the Cosmos worked under limitations; that he was obliged to
adapt himself to conditions independent of his will, and to attain his
ends by such arrangements as these conditions admitted of."

In the next place, the argument for design is an argument from analogy,
and an analogy can by its very nature never give a complete
demonstration. It can never offer more than a probability, more or less
convincing as the analogy is more of less complete. But in the case
under consideration the analogy is considerably less rather than more.
Paley's classical illustration--taken almost verbatim from Malebranche,
but as old otherwise as the days of Greek phi