The Design and Natural Law Arguments
Next Russell takes on what he calls the “argument from design.” This was Aquinas's fifth way. It is at once the most renowned of the five arguments and the one that the proverbial man in the street is most apt to embrace. It appeals to anyone who believes that the universe is too orderly and too good to have occurred without being designed by some supreme being. Design of the universe implies a designer.
The design argument has lost some steam since the nineteenth century, specifically since Darwin, who, says Russell, “understood much better why living creatures are adapted to their environment.” It is not that the environment was made suitable for us; rather, it is the other way around. Creatures grew suitable to the environment and that is the basis of adaptation.
Could it really be, Russell wonders, that if a being with omnipotence and omniscience were given a million years to perfect his design he could produce nothing better than the one we have? “Nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascisti?” Russell persists. And still believers persist — in calling such a being supreme.
Even a casual acquaintance with the most basic laws of science shows that “human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the pan.” Life is but a momentary stage in the ultimate decay of the universe. What we now see in the moon, Russell maintains, is the sort of thing to which the earth is tending — something dead, cold, and lifeless.
