William Paley

John Law observed at this time that "Paley has missed a mitre". Read Less

Since Paley is often read in university courses that address the philosophy of religion, the timing of his design argument has sometimes perplexed modern philosophers. Earlier in the century David Hume had argued against notions of design with counter examples drawn from monstrosity, imperfect forms of testimony and probability, and it has been assumed that Paley could not have read Hume. However, in both published works and in manuscript letters, you find that Paley was engaged directly with Hume from his time as an undergraduate to his last works. Hume's examples ring true with many 21st century readers, and they appealed to some of Paley's 18th-century contemporaries as well. Paley adopted a number of Hume's points, although he rejected most (but not all) of those aspects of his arguments which were considered to be inconsistent with Christian theology. Notably, Paley and Hume both rejected Scottish moral sense theory, on the grounds that one could not know with certainty that there was such a thing as a moral sense. Both based their philosophical hermeneutic in probability theory. Notions of evidence and probability were different then, being based in legal thought rather than statistics. Hume was trained as a lawyer, and Paley was regarded by his peers, some of whom were prominent lawyers themselves, as having one of the most acute legal minds of his age. Hume's arguments were only accepted gradually by the reading public, and his philosophical works sold poorly until agnostics like T H Huxley championed Hume's philosophy in the 19th century. Read Less