The Teleological Argument

What is the Teleological Argument?

looking at the end results and use it to drawn the conclusion that there is a creator and that is God

What is the Teleological Argument commonly known as?

the design argument

Is the Teleological argument a priori or a posteriori?

a posteriori

What is Aquinas’ 5th Argument?

when we observe natural things, they do not behave randomly; goal-directed

• must be some intelligent being which is responsible for setting that goal and orientating natural beings according to it

How does Aquinas’ archer analogy support his design Argument?

• the arrow hits the target even though it isn’t intelligent enough to direct its behaviour

• if we see an arrow directed towards a target, we can infer that there must be an archer who shot it

Since we observe goal-directed behaviour of non-intelligent natural beings, we can infer there must be an intelligent mind responsible for that

How are objects directed towards their good end?

through design and the creation of natural laws

• a designer of natural laws must exist - God

What are the two things that Paley noticed about the universe?

Regularity and Purpose

What is Regularity according to Paley?

complex things seems to work with regularity - e.g. seasons, planets rotation

• this order and regularity is deliberate and intentional by a designer

What is Purpose according to Paley?

the way in which things are ordered; not just deliberate, but purposeful

• many complex elements to the universe points towards there being some sort of designer

e.g. Wings of Birds - intricately constructed to allow them to fly

What is Paley’s watch analogy?

walking on a heath and seeing a rock, rock seems like it could have existed forever; nothing about it suggests otherwise - we would think differently if we found a watch - complexity enabling purpose

• purpose depends on the exact individually intricate structure of its parts and their precise arrangement in relation to each other

we can infer design when a thing has the property of purpose enabled by complexity

Why is Paley’s argument often interpreted as inductive and posteriori?

premise involve observations of the world which are used as evidence for the conclusion that God exists

• complexity itself can occur by chance, but it is astronomically unlikely

What is the underlying thinking of Paley’s argument?

it is the combination of complexity with its enabling of a purpose that indicates design by a mind

Why does Swinburne support the design arguments?

arguing analogical argumentation is scientifically valid

• if a scientist doesn’t know the cause of X, but they know X is similar to Y (which they do know the cause of)

• reasonable for the scientist to hypothesises that the cause of X is analogous to the cause of Y

Why does Hume reject analogical design arguments? (causes)

things which are like each other can have very different causes - e.g. dry ice and fire produce the similar effect of smoke, but are not analogous causes

• even if things in nature are like a watch or an arrow - doesn’t mean the causes are alike

Why does Hume reject analogical design arguments? (artifacts)

analogy between artefacts and natural beings is weak

• Artefacts are mechanical; quite mathematically precisely constructed

• the universe is more of an organic things

How does Hume’s critique of analogy fail against versions of the design argument based on probability rather than analogy?

Paley - universe is designed because it has complexity and purpose (not because it’s like a watch)

• argument is that fundamentally it is astronomically improbable for complexity and purpose to arise by chance

Aquinas - arrow is just an illustration of how goal-directedness comes from a designed

What is a more successful Hume critique on the design argument?

God is not the only explanation

What is Hume’s critique that God is not the only explanation?

even if the design argument worked - it would not prove the Christian God in particular

• no basis for preferring the Christian God as an explanation - just as possible as a committee of Gods (polytheism)

even if the design argument if logically sound, it is limited

How does Swinburne’s Ockham’s razor counter Hume’s criticism that God is not the only explanation?

one God is simpler than multiple

What is a successful counter to Hume’s criticism that God is not the only explanation?

Aquinas, Paley and Swinburne aren’t trying to prove the Christian God in particular

• broadly follow Aquinas Natural theology - reasoned inductive argument, intended to support faith by providing evidence for a creator/designer

proponents of the design argument never claimed that it proved what Hume is accusing them of

What is Darwin’s quote on design?

“I cannot see evidence of design”

What evidence does Darwin provide to suggest a perfect God could not have designed this world?

e.g. digger wasp lays her eggs inside a caterpillar, stinging it to paralyse it rather than kill it - larvae have fresh, living food for weeks as they consume the caterpillar from the inside out

• inconsistent with a benevolent God

What does Hume’s evidential problem of evil suggest about God?

excessive and dysteleological suffering could have been avoided if nature was designed differently

• natural evil is evidence against a perfect creator - could not have been designed by the Christian God

Which philosophers attempts to respond to the problem of evil by claiming that God cannot remove evil?

• Augustine - our deserved punishment

• Plantinga - free will

• Hick - soul-making

Why are theodicies unsuccessful in explaining natural evil?

natural evil kills innocent children and animals

How does Hick attempt to explain natural evil?

random evil is actually how a perfect God would design the world to avoid breaking the epistemic distance - enabling soul-making

How does the Design Argument fail in its aim of support faith in the Christian God through inductive evidence?

design argument conveniently focuses on features of the world that helps us - a full account including natural evil suggests that if there is a designer; it is not a perfect God

What is evolution by natural selection?

• there is variation in species

• members that are better adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on the genes which code for that adaptation

• overtime, this causes a greater prevalence of those traits in the species

• animals appear designed for survival - traits evolved over million of years due to natural selection causing increased adaption

What is Dawkins “the blind watchmaker” explaining?

explains how Paley’s example of the eye could have evolved part by part over hundreds of millions of years - there is a watchmaker, but it is a ‘blind’ mechanical force of natural selection

• complexity and purpose in organisms can be explained through simpler, more scientific means - belief in a designer is unnecessary

How does Aquinas’ design argument somewhat survive the evolution critique?

doesn’t focus on just animals - but on everything, such as planets

How did F R Tennant improve Paley’s approach by reformulating the design argument to address evolution?

anthropic principle claims that God must have designed the earth for evolution to be possible

• the earth has the right chemical composition for life

chances that a planet would have all these feature are very low - more reasonable to think God designed it

How is Tennant’s improvement on Paley’s design argument to focus on the spatial order of the earth unsuccessful?

we have discovered many other earth-like planets

• advances in astrophysics disproved his argument

How does Physicist L. Krauss criticise Tennant’s design argument focused on earth?

universe is big and old and rare things happen all the time by chance - evolution demonstrates a broader point about the bad logic and strategy in design arguments

• identify scientific ignorance and assume God must be the explanation

Which design argument does Swinburne develop?

Aquinas’ approach

What is Swinburne’s design argument?

Evolution cannot explain natural laws

• if the laws of physics were different to an infinitesimal degree, we couldn’t exist

science is limited to explaining ‘what’ the laws are, but has no way to investigate ‘why’ we have these laws

• more reasonable to believe that God intentionally designed the laws of physics to be ‘fine tuned’ for our existence

How does Physicist Max Tegmark counter Swinburne’s design argument with the multiverse?

multiverse theory - our universe is just one of an infinite number of every possible type of universe

• whatever spatial or temporal order a design argument might point to can be explained by every type of universe existing in the multiverse

a special explanation like God is unnecessary

How did Swinburne attempt to respond to Tegmark’s multiverse counter?

no scientific evidence for the multiverse

Why can Swinburne not successfully respond to Tegmark’s multiverse counter?

multiverse theory could be true - no longer must accept Swinburne’s conclusion that God is the only explanation of our universe

Why does the teleological argument fail to justify concluding that God is the only explanation of the way the universe is?

design argument falsely assumes that if science can’t explain something, then God does

• Swinburne gave reasons for thinking a scientific explanation is impossible - but the multiverse hypothesis showed it failed