L5 | TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

• TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

  • INTELLIGENT DESIGN
  • Goal-oriented or purposeful
  • Thomas Aquinas crafted the argument but another philosopher popularizes the updated version 
• WILLIAM PALEY

  • believes that the nature of God could be understood by reference to His creation, the natural world
• • in the interest of consistency, whatever conclusions we’ve drawn about A, we ought to draw about B as well.

  
• WATCHMAKER ANALOGY

  • Paley was arguing that the teleology demonstrated by a watch would lead us to conclude that it was designed by an intelligent creator with a particular end in mind
  • Watch → watch maker
  • World → world maker
• TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

  • THERE MUST BE A DESIGNER
  • If you accept this analogy, then you agree with Paley that, just like the purposefulness of a watch compels us to believe in a watchmaker, the purposefulness of the world compels us to believe in a world maker – God
• • decisive proofs that the God of the Bible exists: incredible design in the natural order.
  • The Universe, the Earth, and all living things on the Earth manifest characteristics that demonstrate purposeful intention in their design variables. They constitute undeniable proof of a Supreme Designer Whose glory is declared by the work of His hands (Psalm 19:1).
• TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

  • The world had order, regularity and purpose
  • The complexity of the universe shows evidence of a design
  • Such design implies a designer
  • The designer of the universe is God.
• DISANALOGY

  • Situation A and Situation B are dissimilar enough that the analogy doesn’t actually work
  • Elements of the natural world – like human bodies – are relevantly dissimilar to watches.
• OBJECTION: WHY WOULD GOD HAVE DESIGNED OUR EYES TO HAVE A BLIND SPOT?

  • Paley responded that it doesn’t matter whether we can understand how something was created. The point is simply that it was.
• OBJECTION: SOME PARTS OF THE NATURE SEEM TO BE WITHOUT PURPOSE

  • Paley responded that just because we don't know there's a purpose doesn't mean there isn't one.
• DAVID HUME

  • pointed out that the world is chock full of stuff that looks cruel, ridiculous, impractical, and contrary to life.
  • "A flawed world, he said, implies a flawed creator."
• PALEY'S RESPONSE TO HUME:

  • Paley responded that just because we don't know there's a purpose doesn't mean there isn't one
• RICHARD SWINBURNE

  • made use of occam's razor
  • Even if there’s another possible explanation for the universe, we should go with the explanation that’s most likely true.
  • It’s simply more probable that God designed the world, than that it came about through the pure chance of evolutionary process.
• FINE-TUNING ARGUMENTS

  • These arguments accept the Big Bang and evolution as scientific truths, but they maintain that, for the evolution of life to occur, it’s most likely that God set up the precise conditions that it required, rather than them coming about by accident.
• ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION

  •  natural selection and random mutation.
  • We can concede that the existence of a designer-God helped make sense of the origins our world in a pre-scientific age, but now we have a perfectly good scientific explanation for how the complexity of the world came about