INTRODUCTION

What could be more clear or obvious when we look up to the sky and contemplate the heavens, than there is some divinity of superior intelligence?

Cicero

1. For Cicero, as for millions of others through history, the universe looks as though it has been carefully made. From the features of earthly life, to the order and regularity of planetary motion, there seem to be signs of a supernatural craftsman at work—a creator or designer, who made all things according to a plan and purpose. These type of arguments are known as ‘teleological’ or ‘design’ arguments, and they have a long and important history in philosophy.

This proof always deserves to be mentioned with respect. It is the oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind.

Kant

2. Many common design arguments are concerned with puzzling features of the universe and how we can best explain them. These include points like the following:

 A)     That the parts of the world fit together and function like a complex machine—for example, a watch; the product of a skilful designer.

B)     That living things appear constructed to suit their environment.

C)      That there is incredible regularity and order in the universe with respect to its physical laws.

D)     That life has developed on the earth at all, in spite of what might seem like extraordinary odds to the contrary.

Introducing Opposition to the Teleological Argument

1. On the other hand, and increasingly since the eighteenth century, there have also been a number of critics of arguments from design. For some, advances in modern science have made recourse to a designer redundant. Science and the ‘Big Bang’ can tell us all we need to know about the origins of the universe. Evolution can explain features that might look like the products of a designer as the outcome of natural selection.

3. For Darwin, the thought of a beneficent designer even started to seem repugnant. In a letter to Asa Gray, Darwin gives the example of the nesting instincts of Ichneumon wasps, who inject their eggs into the larvae of other insects. When the wasp larvae hatch, they eat their way out of the hosts, killing them off in the process. ‘I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have … created Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars,’ wrote Darwin.  

Recap of Key Vocabulary

1. Before we look at some specific design arguments, it is helpful to revisit again some terms that will help us on our journey:

Teleology. As discussed before, the word ‘teleological’ comes from the Greek words telos, which means ‘end’ or ‘goal,’ and logos, which means ‘account’ or ‘study.’ Tele-ology is the study of ends or goals. As in Aristotle, the ‘ends’ here can also refer to the characteristic activities or purposes of living creatures, to which, it seems, their biological development tend (the full-grown flower for example, receiving water and photosynthesising, with parts and organs adapted especially for this). Teleological arguments for God’s existence make the further inference that these point to the work of a designer.

A posteriori. Since design arguments are based on our experience of the universe, they are always a posteriori—that is, based on experience. This makes them unlike ontological arguments, which, we have seen, are a priori, and can be made apart from prior experience.

Design arguments come in a variety of forms and can be deductive, inductive, and abductive. Design arguments, which are not deductive, do not attempt to prove the existence of God exclusively, but instead that evidence for design in the world makes the existence of God more probable.

The Design Argument as Presented by Aquinas

1. Like many philosophical ideas, the teleological argument can be traced all the way back to Plato (d. 347 BC). We start our investigation, though, with the medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 CE).

2. Aquinas wrote in an era marked by the recovery of Aristotle (384–322 BC). With this, came a ‘teleological’ view of the universe and of the working of natural things. Aristotle, as discussed last lesson, thought that all natural things tended towards a specific end or ‘telos’—a set of characteristic activities to which their development led. Aquinas accepted this view, and saw in it an opportunity to make a case for God’s existence.

3. Aquinas, in fact, presents ‘five ways’ of arguing for God’s existence near the start of his Summa Theologiae. Only the last of these is his argument from design. His argument reads as follows:

P1. Things that lack intelligence, like living organisms, act towards an end.

(Aquinas thinks this premise can be reached through experience and induction).

P2. Things that lack intelligence cannot move towards an end unless they are directed there by someone with knowledge and intelligence.

(Aquinas gives the example of an arrow, which does not direct itself towards its target, but needs an archer to direct it there).

C. Therefore—by analogy—there must be some intelligent being which directs all unintelligent natural things towards their end. This being we call God.

Changes Between Aquinas and Hume in the Theory of Natural Science

1. In the centuries between Aquinas and Hume (1711–1776), the natural sciences experienced a revolution. The teleological account of nature, which Aristotle had argued for, was replaced by a mechanistic picture of nature, made famous by the work of Descartes (1596–1650). Here final ends or ‘causes’ were unnecessary for explaining the works of nature. All that was needed instead was knowledge of physical causes and laws.  In medicine, new mechanistic accounts of human anatomy and circulation became popular, while by the turn of the eighteenth century, Isaac Newton (1642–1727) had claimed to discover a universal law of motion, governing the movement of all objects. The universe itself seemed to work like a giant machine.

2. In time, the mechanistic picture of nature would give rise to its own form of teleological argument. If the universe was like a machine, then surely it needed a designer, as was the case for other machines. It is this new form of the argument from design—with its new form of analogy— that we find in David Hume.

The Design Argument as Presented by Hume

1. Hume himself was probably an atheist or agnostic, though during the age he wrote it was difficult to air these views. Instead, Hume’s strategy was to present his philosophy in the form of a dialogue, in which three fictional characters debated God’s existence. Hume’s three characters all have different profiles. They are:

Philo (the radical sceptic)

Cleanthes (the ‘precise’ philosopher)

Demea (the defender of Christian orthodoxy)

2. At one stage, Cleanthes (the supposedly precise philosopher) presents a teleological argument. If we arrange this in propositions, the argument looks as follows:

P1. Experience tells us that the world is a giant machine, made up of smaller machines.

P2. The parts of these machines are incredibly adjusted to each other.

P3. This resembles (and even exceeds) what we see in objects made by human designers, using their wisdom, thought, and intelligence.

P4. Since the effects are similar, we can infer by analogy that the causes must also be similar.

C. Therefore, we can prove that there is an Author of Nature (or God), similar to (and even exceeding) the mind of man in wisdom, thought, and intelligence.

3. Cleanthes’ argument is a posteriori (from experience), abductive (reasoning from effects to causes), and makes use of a central analogy (the analogy of the universe to a complex machine). It reasons backwards from an observation about this analogy between effects (between a machine and the world), to a conclusion about an analogy with respect to their causes (a human designer and God). The conclusion attributes to God a mind similar to the human mind, though even greater in wisdom, thought, and intelligence.

Hume’s Objections to Design Arguments from Analogy

Prong One: Cleanthes’ Analogy is Too Weak to Support His Conclusions

1. Hume was an empiricist, and believed that all of our justifiable beliefs come from observation and experience. ‘A wise man,’ according to Hume, ‘proportions his belief to the evidence.’ Such a starting point is close to that of his character, Philo, ‘the careless skeptic.’

2. In the dialogue, Philo offers a number of arguments against Cleanthes’ position, some of which we will consider in the course of later lessons. Here we will look at two objections that together form a kind or pincer against the parts of Cleanthes’ argument that depend upon the use of analogy. The first prong of the pincer claims that Cleanthes’ analogy is too weak to support the conclusions he draws.

2. An argument from analogy, explains Philo, claims that because X is like Y in one (observed) respect, they are probably also alike in some other (unobserved) respect. For this to work X and Y have to a lot in common. The less X and Y have in common, the weaker the analogy, and the riskier it starts to become to make claims for the points unobserved.

3. For example, if we have observed the circulation of blood in a number of different humans (Will, Foster, and Baxter), Philo thinks we will have good grounds for inferring a similar process in the case of Ben and Adam. Because the humans here are similar in the relevant respects, we have the basis for a strong analogy.

4. But if we try to reason from the circulation in frogs and fishes to how circulation works in humans, or from the way the sap moves in plants to how blood moves in Ben and Adam, our analogies become much weaker, and we risk making crucial mistakes.

4. The question then for Cleanthes is: ‘is the universe really similar enough to a machine to support the conclusion that it was designed?’ The answer for Philo is ‘no.’ We know so little about the universe, and the things that we do know offer no more grounds for thinking that the universe is like a machine (the product of a man-made process) than for thinking it is like a vegetable (the product of something organic). While the world/vegetable analogy might seem weak, so is the world­/machine one. Certainly, the analogy is too weak to support the conclusions that Cleanthes draws.

Prong Two: If Cleanthes’ Analogy was Really that Strong it would Support Absurd Conclusions/Undermine a 3-O God

1. Cleanthes could try to object that the analogy is really much stronger than Philo is willing to accept. But here Philo is waiting with the second prong of his pincer. If the analogy is really that strong then a number of absurdities would follow.

2. If the universe really is like a machine, as Cleanthes suggests, then why suppose that its designer is anything like a 3-O God? Why could the designer not be still more like the designers of other machines? For example:

i. In most cases, complex machines are the products of trial and error, with each new generation an improvement on those that came before. If the universe is like a machine, then why not suppose that many worlds came before it and had been badly ‘botched and bungled?’ It’s maker or designer could be far from a perfect being, but rather an incompetent bungler, who had gone through a number of failed attempts before landing on something that worked.

ii. In most cases, complex machines are products not of a single brilliant designer, but a team of designers and people involved in their design and construction. So, by the ‘like causes’ principle, couldn’t we suggest that the universe may have been designed and created by a team of many gods, not a single, all-powerful deity?

iii. The designers of complex machines can be foolish and also immoral. They can be male and female and also reproduce. In the same way, couldn’t the designers of the universe be foolish and immoral? Couldn’t they be male and female and reproduce?

3. Cleanthes then, thinks Philo (and probably Hume), is caught between these two pincers. If he accepts the analogy is weak, then he has no right to draw his conclusions. If claims the analogy is strong, then there seems no good reason to deny a series of unwanted claims.

Paley’s Argument from Spatial Order and Purpose

1. The Archdeacon of Carlisle, William Paley (1743-1845) is responsible for perhaps the most famous version of the teleology argument. Paley imagines himself walking across a heath. He first comes across a stone, which he strikes with his foot. He then finds a watch on the ground. The same question occurs to him both times: ‘How did that object come to be here?’ In the case of the stone, for all Paley knows it might have lain there for ever. In the case of the watch, however, this answer is unsatisfactory: there is something about the presence of the watch that demands a further explanation.

 2. Comparing the watch and stone, Paley notices several features that belong to the watch, which are lacking in the case of the stone: 1. It has several parts. 2. The parts are framed and work together for a purpose. 3. The parts have been made with specific material, appropriate to their action. 4. Together the parts produce regulated motion. 5. If the parts had been different in any way, such motion would not be produced.

3. For Paley, these features serve as evidence for what Paley calls ‘contrivance’—they are indicators that the watch has been put together with purpose and care. Because of this, they point to the work of a skilful designer. In order for the watch to be there, there would have to have been a watchmaker.

4. On the basis of these foundations, Paley turns to the natural world. Here he finds the same indicators of design or ‘contrivance’ that he had found in the case of the watch. Indeed, the works of nature far exceed the watch in this respect. On this basis, Paley makes the claim that the natural world must also have a designer (God). We can summarise his argument as follows:

1.      A watch has certain complex features of spatial order and purpose (for example, it consists of parts, each of which has a function, and they work together for a specific purpose).

2.      Anything which exhibits these features of spatial order and purpose must have been designed.

3.      From 1 and 2: Therefore, the watch has been designed by a designer.

4.      The universe possesses features of spatial order and purpose, except on a far more wondrous scale.

5.      From 4 and 2: Therefore, the universe has been designed, except the designer of the universe must be a wondrous designer.

6.      Therefore, God exists.

Paley’s Anticipation of Two Possible Objections

1. Paley considers a number of objections that could be raised against his argument. One objection is that we do not need a designer to explain the universe, but only to understand the properties of physical objects and the principles or laws of nature. Paley is quick to dismiss this. It would be absurd, Paley thinks, to try to explain the watch as merely ‘a possible combination of material forms,’ emerging from a ‘principle of order,’ and ‘law of metallic nature.’ So it should be absurd, when we consider the products we find in nature.

2. Another objection is that the watch might not have been made by a watchmaker, but instead by a watchmaking machine. This watchmaking machine might have been made by another watchmaking machine, and this watchmaking machine by another watchmaking machine, and so on. Perhaps the universe is like this, developing out of previous versions of itself, without the need for any designer. Paley thinks this is also absurd. Appeal to a watchmaking machine simply defers the question, ‘Yes, but who designed this?’ However far back we go, we are going to need a designer, who made the original watchmaking machine with a view to producing watches. Where there is a contrivance there must eventually be a contriver.

What is the Logical Form of Paley’s Argument?

1. Paley’s argument has often been understood as an argument from analogy—in this case ’a watch is to a watchmaker as the universe is to God.’  More recently, though, this reading has been contested. According to the philosophers Himma and Ratzsch, Paley’s argument does not work by analogy. Instead, Paley’s claim is that the same inference we make in seeing certain features in a watch (to conclude that it has a designer) is the one we should also make when considering those features in the world. This is not about comparing X to Y (an analogy), but applying the self-same rule in cases with the same set of features. In this form, Paley’s argument would not be vulnerable to Hume’s critiques of the use of analogy we considered in the last lesson.

2. It is debated in the scholarly literature, whether this reading of Paley is accurate.

The Problem of Spatial Disorder (as posed by Hume and responded to Paley)

1. Another of Hume’s criticisms against the teleological argument (raised again by his character, Philo), concerns the issue of spatial disorder. In contrast to the spatial order in universe noted by Cleanthes (and Paley), Philo points to a universe full of disorder and chaos. Where there are design faults in a machine, he says, we usually infer that the designer lacked resources or skill, or simply didn’t care what he was doing. On the basis of the faults in the universe, a theist should do the same.

 2. We can classify the faults described here into one of two basic categories. On the one hand, we have faults with the mechanisms of the universe. As the philosopher, Richard Swinburne (1934–), points out, ‘although the universe contains may striking regularities … it also contains many examples of spatial disorder.’ The uniform distribution of galactic clusters might be a striking example of spatial order. The arrangement of trees in the jungle—according to Swinburne—is not. Still less ambiguous examples are the growth of cancer molecules; the meteor that killed the dinosaurs; the fact that the sun will one day become a red giant, destroying the solar system.

3. The other kind of fault has to do with the amount of suffering that we find in the natural world. Here we are revisiting ground we encountered with the problem of evil. Hume’s other character Demea puts it like this: ‘The whole earth is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want stimulate the strong and courageous; fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and infirm.’ Demea tries to exempt human beings from this rule, but Philo includes them too.

4. Taking all of this into account, Philo concludes that whatever positive experiences nature may contain, they are ‘overbalanced by … opposite phenomena of still greater importance.’ Rather than pointing to a 3-O God of the kind that Cleanthes (or Paley) imagines, the disorder in the universe points, at best, to a God, who is infantile or senile. Such a God must have lacked the skill or the power to create a better world; either that or have been indifferent to evil and good altogether.

Paley’s Response to Issue of Disorder

1. As before, Paley anticipates the objection raised from spatial disorder. Returning to the example of the watch, Paley asks us to imagine that we found problems with the working of the watch; for example, some irregularity in its movement, or even that it had ceased to work. Even in this case, thinks Paley, we would still be able to observe the details of the machinery, the cogs and the gears, and all of the other qualities outlined in our first inspection. This would still be enough to infer the existence of a watchmaker.

2. For Paley, then, it is not necessary that a machine be perfect to point us to some form of designer. All that is necessary is that the machine exhibit some purpose, and evidence of definite contrivance. This would certainly be true in the case of a faulty watch; it should also be true, thinks Paley, in the case of a faulty universe. Evidence of faults, or a certain degree of disorder, needn’t be a fatal objection.

The Argument that the Design Argument Fails as it is an Argument from a Unique Case (Hume)

Hume on Causation and Constant Conjunction

1. Hume’s account of causation is a mixture of his empiricism and scepticism. As an empiricist, Hume argues that the most reliable foundations for any of our beliefs are those based on observation and experience. This is also true for his theory of cause and effect. As a sceptic, however, Hume is doubtful that causation itself is something we directly experience.

2. At first sight, it might certainly seem that causation is something we directly observe. A cat’s tail knocks a glass on a desk; the glass falls over. A cricketer swings her bat against a cricket ball; the ball hurtles over the boundary for six. For Hume, however, things are not quite so simple.

3. Using an example of a billiard ball, Hume asks what we actually see when we observe one ball striking another. We see the first ball approach and make contact; we see the second ball move away. But do we see ‘causation’ itself? Imagine there was an elaborate system of magnets under the table; that these had moved the first ball up to the second, and then a separate magnet had moved the second ball away. Would the outcome look any different? If, according to Hume, the answer to this is ‘no,’ then we should be sceptical about ‘causation itself’ as something we directly experience.

 4. Instead, Hume thinks that the idea of ‘causation’ results from our experiences of ‘constant conjunction.’ This is where we notice patterns of things that frequently occur together and come to regard them because of this as being governed by causal laws. We see one billiard ball strike another, again, and again, and again, and notice that each time this happens, the other ball moves away. Eventually, this creates a feeling of anticipation, such that if we see the first thing happen, we expect the second to happen as well. On the basis of this feeling, our mind infers that the first thing is acting as ‘cause’ for the second.

 5. In this way, Hume suggests that what we experience as cause and effect is the product of constant conjunction. Our very idea of ‘causation’ comes from a feeling of anticipation that arises in our minds when we come to expect that one event will follow another, because it has done so before. In this way, he is able to trace the source of our concept of cause back to a kind of experience: not primarily an experience of something external to us, but the feeling of expectation we develop that one event will follow another.

Applying Hume’s Theory of Causation to the Teleological Argument

1. One implication of Hume’s theory, is that to think of something as a ‘cause,’ we have to have built up a large data bank of experiences, where we have observed the constant conjunction of that thing with another thing that seems to follow it. By the time a child is ten, she will have seen many instances of glass things shattering when being struck by hard objects. The child can then build up a rule of thumb, which she applies to other cases: being struck by another hard object will ‘cause’ a glass thing to shatter.

2. For Hume, the experiences in question have to be relevant and multiple—no single experience will suffice, and nor will an experience of something insufficiently relevant or similar. (Philo gives the example of the design of houses, which would not allow us to infer something like the design of the universe).

3. The problem this raises for the teleological argument is captured well by Philo:

“When two species of objects have always been observed to be conjoined together, I can infer, by custom, the existence of whenever I see the existence of the other. … But how this argument can have place, where the objects are single, individual, without parallel, or specific resemblance, may be difficult to explain. […] Have worlds been formed under your eye? And have you the leisure to observe the whole phenomenon [of world-making] from the first appearance of order to its final consummation.”

4. The problem then, for Philo, is that the making of the universe is a unique case. For an inference about causation to be formed, our experiences of conjunction must be relevant and multiple. But we have no relevant or multiple experiences of universes being designed. Because of this, we cannot observe ‘constant conjunction,’ and because of this, we have cannot posit God as ‘a cause.’
 

Defence by Paley

1. Anticipating criticisms like this, Paley argues that it does not matter if we have never seen a watch being made. He asks how many people in his day would have been familiar with the inside of a watchmaker’s studio (the implication is not very many). If this is the case, says Paley, then how is it that we nonetheless infer that the watch must have a designer? His answer, again, is that this is due to the features the watch possesses, which indicate the presence of contrivance. Where these are present, we are entitled to infer a designer, even where we have never observed a designer, or the process of a watch being made.

2. An example sometimes offered in support of Paley is the fragment of Antikythera, an ancient piece of bronze discovered in 1902 at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. This fragment was remarkable in that it seemed to be perfectly shaped to support a system of gears, dials, and cogs. Through a process of reverse engineering, scientists came up with several competing models to explain what these were cogs used for (the most plausible being that the mechanism was an ‘orrery,’ or working model of the solar system, based on Babylonian astronomy). Even though no one had witnessed the Antikythera mechanism being constructed—it was a ‘unique’ case in this regard—the people who analysed the fragment concluded that it had a designer on the basis of its visible features.

3. One possible response to this, considered, for example, by the textbook, is to say that the Antikythera mechanism, and other one-off objects like it, aren’t really ‘unique cases.’ We can successfully infer that objects like this have designers on the basis of other similar objects we have encountered, where we have seen a designer at work. In the case of the universe, we have nothing to compare the object to, and no kind of experience at all of the process through which it was made. This, in turn, seems to open a further question of what experiences count as ‘relevant,’ and how the uniqueness of cases is determined, though even a defender of the teleological argument might have to grant that the design of the universe is unique in a number of respects.

Whether God is the Best or Only Explanation

The Appearance of Design May Be Explained by Random Processes

1. Design arguments proceed from observations of features of the natural universe to a conclusion that the best explanation of these features is the existence of God. But over the past three hundred years, philosophers and scientists have given alternative accounts of these phenomena which do not require God’s existence.

2. Even before theories like evolution had been developed, Hume, through his character Philo, had suggested that the apparent order and existence of life in the universe might simply be the product of chance, not the result of design or intelligence. This theory is often referred to as the Epicurean hypothesis, after the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus (341-270 BCE). According to Epicurus, everything in the universe was the result of random movements of a finite number of atoms. Given infinite time, these atoms would eventually find themselves in every possible order. At the moment, it just so happens that this has left the universe in a state of order and resulted in conscious beings. Philo argues that though the chances of this might be small, there is no way it can be discounted as an explanation for all the seeming order and purpose we see.

The Appearance of Design May Be Explained by a ‘Worldly Architect’ rather than by God (Kant)

1. In general, Kant, like Hume, was sceptical of theoretical arguments made to prove God’s existence. We saw this, for example, in his critique of existence as a predicate in response to the ontological argument. Instead, Kant based his own arguments for God’s existence in the realm of practical reason (according to Kant, we need to believe in God, if we are going to persist in the moral life in the face of injustice in the world).

2. Although Kant also held some respect for teleological argument—at one point, he refers to it as ‘the oldest, the clearest, and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind’ of the traditional arguments for God’s existence—his writings also contain a number of criticisms of it, which largely go unanswered.

3. One of these criticisms is a bit like the argument against ‘strong’ analogies that we encountered already with Hume. Suppose we allow, says Kant, that there is a likeness between the objects we find in the universe and human artefacts, produced by a human designer. This might allow us to infer a designer for the universe, but why should we suppose this was a designer, who created the world from nothing? In the case of human artefacts, we see architects and builders creating things from already existing material. Why suppose that the universe isn’t also like this, or that there isn’t a ‘worldly architect,’ who put the universe together on the basis of existing materials?

4. According to this position, the evidence of design in the universe might allow us to draw some inferences about the likelihood of an architect or designer, but they do not support the stronger conclusions that defenders of the design argument claim (for, example, that this is a God, who also made the universe from nothing, and made all of its further materials). This, Kant suggests, is stretching the conclusion or analogy beyond what the evidence allows.

4. A second criticism in Kant’s work makes a point that is closely related. The defenders of the teleological argument use the evidence of design to posit a 3-O God (that is, a God, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent). But here again, their conclusions take us well beyond the evidence. The design in the universe might tell us the architect of the world has great power, great skill, and great knowledge, but we cannot make the leap from this to say the qualities in the architect are infinite. This again, would be going beyond the evidence. According to Kant, we cannot make a leap from finite observations to infinite or absolute qualities: ‘to advance to absolute totality by the empirical road is utterly impossible.’

The Appearance of Design May Be Explained by the Natural Processes of Evolution (Darwin and Dawkins)

1. For many philosophers, Darwin’s theory of evolution is thought to have landed a hammer blow to the teleological argument. In his book, On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin explained how the features of living organisms, which appear to suggest design and purpose, were instead the product of a process of natural selection. One of his famous examples was the rise of dark-coloured moths on the trees of Victorian London. As London became more polluted, the trunks of trees like birch trees, which had earlier been white, started to look dark and sooty. This meant that light-coloured moths were easier to see by their predators. Dark-coloured moths, by contrast, blended into the background, making them harder to spot and more difficult for predators to catch. In time, this led to a growth in the population of dark-coloured moths, and a decline in the population of light-coloured ones, as dark-coloured moths outlived and reproduced their light-coloured relatives. Darwin thought something similar could explain all of the apparent ‘adaptions,’ which might indicate purpose in nature.

2. Darwin himself commented on the importance of his work in undermining Paley’s position:

‘The old argument from design in nature, as given by Paley … fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability organic beings … than in the course which the wind blows.’

3. In recent years this, a point like this that has been further developed by the biologist, Richard Dawkin’s (1941–). Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene (1976), built on Darwin by offering an account of the role of genetics in the process of natural selection. For Dawkins, features resembling purpose in living organisms, were simply the result of the random mutation of genes working together with the process of natural selection. No designer, and certainly no God, was needed to explain them.

Richard Swinburne’s Design Argument: Argument from Temporal Order/Regularity

Three Parameters of Swinburne’s Argument

1. At the end of the last century, the teleological project was revived by Richard Swinburne (1934–), who put forward a design argument that he believed avoided the objections that had been made by figures like Kant and Hume. At the beginning of his paper, Swinburne outlines some initial parameters within which he thinks his argument can be successful.

2. First, Swinburne acknowledges that the design argument cannot prove the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good being, nor the existence of the Biblical God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Swinburne thinks instead that the design argument shows the existence of ‘a very powerful, free, non-embodied rational agent,’ responsible for the regularity in the universe. By modifying his argument this way, Swinburne hopes to side-step the objection of Kant, that design arguments claim too much in claiming to prove the existence of the kind of God believed in by theologians.

3. Second, Swinburne concedes that his argument is an argument from analogy, and as such vulnerable to the criticism that the analogy between human artefacts and the universe may be too weak to support any definite conclusions. Swinburne offers instead a modified claim that the explanation he offers (that God is responsible for the order in the universe) is the best explanation available, because it is so simple and unifying.

4. Third, Swinburne thinks we need to distinguish between two types of regularity or order. The first type is ‘spatial order,’ which is the arrangements of objects in space (like the relation of parts in a watch, or the arrangement of parts in an eyeball). The second type is ‘temporal order’, which is the pattern of the way objects behave in time (for example, a billiard ball being moved, or a stone falling to the ground). This is an important distinction for Swinburne because he thinks that most well-known design arguments (Paley’s in particular), rely on the first type of order to prove that God exists. This has made them vulnerable not only to Hume’s criticisms, but also to Darwin’s theory of evolution, which Swinburne acknowledges to have had a devastating effect on traditional arguments from design.

5. Swinburne thinks there is hope, however, in the form of a revised teleological argument. Here the proof proceeds on the basis not of spatial order, but of the temporal order in nature; what Swinburne calls regularities of succession, as had been the case earlier for Aquinas.

The Heart of Swinburne’s Argument

1. Having established the parameters above, Swinburne proceeds with his argument:

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* An example of a regularity of succession occurring as the result of a natural law, would be a stone falling to the ground, as a result of the force of gravity. An example of a regularity of succession occurring as a result of free human action would be a hungry student at Bennett heading to the lunch-hall for food.

2. One final supposition leads Swinburne to conclude that the powerful, rational agent who shapes the universe has a different physical status from us. We humans are free rational agents who control our bodies, and it is through our bodies that we are able to act on the universe. Swinburne argues that an agent who could directly control the whole universe cannot have a body. So we should amend the conclusion (point 7) to acknowledge that the being who shapes the universe is disembodied. The amended conclusion reads thus:

7a. Therefore (from points 5 and 3) regularities of succession in the natural world are best explained by a free agent who is disembodied and has the immense intelligence, power, and freedom needed to bring about such order in the universe.

Swinburne’s Responses to Hume

1. As we have seen, Swinburne’s argument is designed to respond to some of the traditional objections to the teleological argument, particularly those associated with Kant and Hume. In terms of the topics we have studied in the past few weeks, we could summarise his responses to Hume as follows:

i. Response to Hume’s objection that ‘the design argument fails as it is an argument from a unique case.’ Swinburne argues that Hume is wrong to criticize the design argument on this count. After all, scientists proceed by proposing and testing theories for things they have not observed and for things which are unique. Most obviously, theoretical physicists and cosmologists propose respectable theories about the universe, which is unique. For Swinburne, this suggests that Hume has an inadequate understanding of how science and scientists work.

ii. Response to Hume’s objection that ‘God is not the best or only explanation.’ Swinburne responds to Hume’s ‘Epicurean hypothesis,’ by saying that even if the random movement of atoms could explain the spatial order within the universe, it could not explain the fundamental laws of physics which underpin this and is therefore still vulnerable to Swinburne’s argument.

iii. Response to Hume’s objections to design arguments from analogy. Swinburne concedes that his argument is vulnerable to criticism from people who are not convinced by the analogy, but thinks that invoking a disembodied, free agent of immense intelligence, power, and freedom is still the best of the available explanations.