The oldest and most commonly used argument about the existence of God is "design theory"-that is, all the orders and "goals" of everything in the world are designed by God in advance. Some people think that design theory is a copy of modern creationism. Hume put forward a classic criticism of design theory in Dialogue between Natural Religion and Human Understanding. The following is Hume's argument: If the design theory is true, then the order and goals in the world must be observed only when they are designed. However, order is observed regularly, and its development process is like the formation of snow or crystals. Design only represents a small part of our experience. In addition, the design theory is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can identify which ones are designed by humans, such as the contrast between a brick wall and a pile of scattered stones. But if we want to prove that the universe was designed by the creator, we must first have knowledge of different universes. Since we have only one experience of the universe, such an analogy cannot be established. So we must ask ourselves, are we really qualified to compare the world with a machine? Even if the design theory is completely established, it cannot prove a convincing theism: the challenger can easily interpret such a cosmic design as a masterpiece created by other factors rather than God, such as some random elements without wisdom or creators completely unrelated to the design theory. From this perspective, perhaps we should question: Is the Creator really God? Or, who created the creator? If an orderly natural world needs a special creator to design and control it, then the head of this god (since it is so smart and orderly) also needs a special creator, and this creator must need another creator before, so it will be endless to trace back. Some people may answer that we can imagine the Creator as an unexplained sacred soul, but in this case, why not directly describe this hypothesis as an unexplained but orderly natural world? A common illusion is that if object X needs attribute F to achieve result O, there seems to be some established "goals" in this process. However, if we use the filtering method to test, we will find that it is very likely that the object X cannot exist without the attribute F. As a result, O is just an illusion that we project our target into nature. Hume's explanation of teleology here also foresees the later theory of natural selection (see anthropic principle). Political Theory Many people regard Hume as a political conservative and sometimes call him the first conservative philosopher. However, if conservatism refers to the modern definition, this statement may not be completely correct. From a modern point of view, Hume's thought includes both conservatism and liberalism, as well as contractualism and utilitarianism, although these terms have very different meanings from today because of their long history. Hume's political thought is to highlight the importance of the rule of law, and he also emphasized the political importance of moderate stance in his article Morality and Politics. Hume believes that society is best governed by a universal and fair judicial system, which is based on the principle of "cunning" contract. Hume pays little attention to the form of government that upholds the law. He believes that as long as the government can maintain justice, it is a good government (although he also believes that the Republic will be more effective than the monarchy in this respect). Hume has always expressed distrust of radical policies that try to reform society regardless of established traditions. He also suggested that people should not resist their government unless they face extremely bad tyranny. However, Hume did not support Whigs and Tories, the two major political parties in Britain at that time. He thinks that we should try to balance freedom and authority without sacrificing them. Hume supported freedom of the press and sympathized with democracy-as long as government power was properly controlled. It is generally believed that Hume influenced james madison's later works, especially his Federalist Anthology No. 10. Hume is also optimistic about social progress. He believes that the expansion of trade will bring economic prosperity and society will develop from an "uncivilized state" to a "civilized state". A civilized society is open, peaceful and has frequent social exchanges, so its citizens will live a happier life. Therefore, it is not entirely correct to directly classify Hume as a supporter of skepticism. Although it is generally believed that Hume has no vision of an ideal society, he did put forward the best form of government in his paper entitled "The Ideal and Perfect Republic". Hume's pragmatism carried through the whole text, but he still warned readers that we can only adopt such a form of government when the time is ripe, and should not overthrow the existing traditional structure on this ground. Hume also strongly advocated the separation and decentralization of political power, supported the extension of the right to vote to all citizens with property, and restricted the power of the church. Hume regards the Swiss militia system as the best national defense system. He also supports holding regular elections and believes that the representative of public opinion should be regarded as an unpaid position.