Design argument

• Who created the design argument?

  Thomas Aquinas
• the world appear to have been designed and that this shows that there is an intelligent designer: God. This is known as the design argument and can be summarised as follows:

  1. The world around us looks as if it has been designed
  2. Designed things need an intelligent designer
  3. The intelligent designer of the world is God.
• Inspired by Aquinas's original idea, an 18th-century English philosopher and priest called William Paley used the example of a watch in his version of the Design argument. He noted that all the complex parts of a watch fit together in an orderly way so that it can achieve its purpose of telling the time. This is not simply an accident that has happened by chance; it is because a watch has watchmaker. Just as a watch needs a watchmaker, he argued, then something even more complex, orderly and purposeful like the world must have a world maker
• Who criticised the Design argument and why?

  David Hume argued that the designer could be any sort of being or beings. Others have argued that the evil and suffering in the world are evidence of a bad designer not a perfect, god-like designer
• What was the greatest challenge to the design argument?

  Charles Darwin theory of evolution by natural selection because it provides another explanation for why things look designed. Living things have adapted over millions of years, becoming more complex in order to survive. If they had not adapted and become complex, they would have died out.
• What is the counter argument to the greatest challenge to the design argument?

  If evolution is a blind, unconscious process without anyone guiding it, it would be unlikely to result in something as complex as a human. Therefore, some would argue that perhaps God uses the method of evolution to create complex forms of life