I don't know what Dennett says about Hume's arguments, but Hume himself mounted quite a few attacks on the Argument from Design in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, including the famous "so the designer gets to be undesigned?" objection:
But what happens
in the end of that book? Hume ends up caving to the AfD with the face saving caveat of calling the designer "Mind" instead of God. But that caveat doesn't fool us anymore than when IDers use it, does it? Despite all the problems, Hume cannot find any other way to get design than to have intelligent entity(ies) manufacture it.
Not only that, even
Christians objected to the overuse of the Design Argument, notably John Henry Newman in his
Idea of a University speech (see the last part of
this).
You need to note when Newman was delivering his talk -- it looks like 1830-1840. It was during the period 1830-1860 that Special Creation and the AfD were beginning to generate problems for Christianity. As naturalists looked at more and more species in detail, they began to see some really strange designs. Now, we can infer characteristics about human designers from their designs. For instance, we can infer something about the intelligence of the designers of the Pinto, or the Soviet designers who put a very vulnerable lubicating oil tank right below the huge red star on the sides of their helicopters, or the automatic main gun loader on the T-72 tank that, about every 10 rounds, tries to load the gunner!
Well, many of the designs that were being found in animals were leading to the inference that God as a designer was stupid, sadistic, and suffering from Alzheimer's. This is why Newman is trying to limit the use of the AfD. It is also why Darwin and natural selection were viewed as rescuing God.
But you need to show how he was wrong. Yes, Dawkins is wrong about many things, but this isn't one of them. As I noted above, despite all his counterarguments, Hume eventually accedes to the AfD. Darwin thought the argument was very sound. It is Darwin's discovery of an unintelligent process that gives design that is the true counter to the AfD. Yes, living organisms are designed. Designed by natural selection.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly in creation as general revelation. I even believe that the heavens declare the glory of God.
What specifically in the heavens
unambiguously declares the glory of God?
But do the heavens also declare that the Big Bang occurred 14 billion years ago - and do they do so with the same finality and orthodoxy as they declare the glory of God, or as the Bible declares the gospel of God? I am not convinced.
How do they not? Are you questionining whether the Big Bang occurred or the specific time? We can go through and find ambiguities about the gospel of God. We can start with "what does the phrase "son of man" mean to Jesus and his listeners?"
I think that, while creation is a revelation, science is not revealed. Science is a set of human models that attempts to capture the regular behavior of the universe.
And those "models" are of what? Revelation. I don't see how you can unlink the conclusions drawn from the revelation from the revelation.
Scripture is revelation, too. By your reasoning, we would say "translations are not revealed". Yes, the translations are powerful, but they are done by humans.
But I am not convinced that rejecting a particular model of the universe a priori - even if it is the best model we currently have, even if it has tremendous explanatory and predictive power, even if your alternative is an infernal blancmange of adhockery sprinkled with pureed misinterpreted Bible - is quite the same as rejecting the revelatory status of creation, or the revelation of God that creation brings.
Let's see. We have the translation of the Greek of the Great Commandment. The translation has considerable evidence behind it that it is the correct translation. Wouldn't rejecting that translation for one that is contradicted by the Greek text be rejecting revelation?
We have evidence in God's Creation directly contradictory to a literal reading of Genesis 1-3. You are saying that should not be equivalent to rejecting a false translation of the Great Commandment? Or do it the other way. Translations are human wisdom. Shouldn't we accept the translation of the Great Commandment unless and until some further evidence comes to light to reject it? Why should we behave any differently to well-supported theories of science? Aren't they "translations" of God's other book?
Do creationists reject creation? Again, no, just one model of it (albeit one which happens to be a wee bit more popular and widely used).
Creationists reject all the evidence behind the theory (the word "model" is misused here as a scientific term). That would be the equivalent of rejecting the words in the text of scripture. Remember, that evidence is put there, if creation is correct, by God. Even more surely than the words of text in scripture.
the appalling science of creationism still requires that creation is relevant to the creationist.
But Creation is not relevant, is it? What was created is not relevant to the creationist. Creationism does not require Creation. It only requires scripture, right?
Yes, but what they dump is science, not creation.
In dumping science, they dump Creation -- what was created. They are saying that people who read God's Book of Creation get nothing out of it that is relevant.
