“One use of the argument from analogy is found in
response to the question of what or who created the universe.
Some have argued that because the universe is like
a clock, there must be a Clockmaker. As the eighteenthcentury
British empiricist David Hume pointed out, this is
a slippery argument, because there is nothing that is really
perfectly analogous to the universe as a whole, unless it’s another
universe, so we shouldn’t try to pass off anything that
is just a part of this universe. Why a clock anyhow? Hume
asks. Why not say the universe is analogous to a kangaroo?
After all, both are organically interconnected systems. But
the kangaroo analogy would lead to a very different conclusion
about the origin of the universe: namely, that it was
born of another universe after that universe had sex with a
third universe.”