REASONING ABOUT DESIGN
For example:
P1: Cannibals eat people P2: Hannibal is a cannibal C: Hannibal eats people. This is an a posteriori argument because Hannibal being a cannibal isn't logically true. Not everyone named Hannibal is a cannibal. It's a fact based on experience (maybe you caught Hannibal doing it). It produces synthetic knowledge: you now know what Hannibal might do in the future. He might eat YOU!
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Wait - what's Donald about to eat? No Donald! Nooooooooooo!
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YES
A posteriori arguments are rooted in the real world of experience and prove that things exist in that real world. If the Design Argument is an a posteriori argument then it is adding to our synthetic knowledge of a world which has God in it, not just describing that world in a different way.
A posteriori arguments gain support from evidence. Scientific investigation reveals more and more puzzling features about the universe: its size, its physical laws, its oddness. The more we learn about these things, the more persuasive the Design Argument becomes.
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NO
God is not a "thing" that exists "in" the physical world. For many believers, God is a transcendent being that exists outside of time and space (aseity). This makes proving God's existence a bit more like a mathematical proof (like Pythagorus or pi) instead of weighing up physical evidence.
The world is too varied to produce evidence for or against God. The Design Argument "cherry picks" experiences of order and beauty but ignores experiences of horror and ugliness. John Hick is right to describe the universe as "religiously ambiguous", meaning the evidence can be interpreted either as a product of design or chance.
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