>From David Hume, _Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion_:
"But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain
uncertain, whether all the excellences of the work can justly be ascribed to
the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the
ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful
a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid
mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long
succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections,
deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds
might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system
was struck out; much labour lost, many fruitless trials made; and a slow,
but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of
world-making. In such subjects, who can determine, where the truth; nay, who
can conjecture where the probability lies, amidst a great number of
hypotheses which may be proposed, and a still greater which may be
imagined?"
Yuri Tulupenko
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