The Teleological Argument

October 7th 2004

The Teleological Argument

Learning Objective:

To analyse the argument from Design, considering its

strengths and weaknesses as a valid theistic argument.

The Argument – in a nut shell!

• Begin your mind map for the Teleological Argument!

• Outline the argument qua regularity and qua purpose.

David Hume :Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

• Humans do not have enough knowledge and understanding of the world to reach the conclusion that there is only one designer , GOD. Our experience is limited!

• If we could argue for a designer existing - how then do we reach the classical understanding of God – why not lots of Gods – why not the world the work of an apprentice?

‘ The world, for all he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who afterwards abandoned it.’

And…

• Where does the idea of a benevolent God come from – what about the existence of evil in the world?

• Hume felt the analogy suggested many gods rather than one God.

• He also felt that the analogy was weak because it likened the world to a machine, whereas he felt the world to be more like an vegetable or inert animal.

David Hume

• ‘If design needs to be explained, then explain it; but only by appealing to a design-producing being. To say that this is God is to go beyond the evidence presented by design.’

David Hume

• Hume felt that because the world is unique, we have no basis for inferring that there is anything like a human designer lying behind it.

• He also felt that if we could infer a designer we would then have to infer a designer for the designer and this would lead to infinite regression.

Many gods..?

• ‘A great number of men join together in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several Deities combine in contriving and framing a world?’

Further critique…1. Is the Designer:• Plural• Stupid or just • Downright evil?2. Is the order we see

imposed by humans on the chaos in which we actually live?

• John Stuart Mill also challenged the idea that evidence of design in the world proves the existence of God as understood in Classical Theism.

• He argued that because there is evil and suffering in the world, then the designer cannot have been omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent.

Darwin’s Theory – The origin of the Species

• Natural Selection - the struggle for selection is seen as lying behind the evolution of life into increasingly complex forms – human life being the pinnacle! Darwin saw this as an alternative to the design argument , a mechanical argument with no need for a creator God.

The Anthropic Principle• A more modern version of the Teleological

Argument is the Anthropic Principle. The argument is based on the premis that the world is so formed for the development of intelligent life. It denies any claim that there is a chain of coincidences that led to the evolution of human life. It was developed by F.R. Tennant (1930). He believed that it would be possible to imagine a chaotic world and that the universe is obviously not chaotic. Human life is the culmination of God’s plan.

Tennant and Swinburne both argue through the Anthropic Principle that although an intelligently designed universe cannot be proved , it is more probable than a universe ruled by chance.

Can we really sat that order and beauty are merely as a result of chaos?

Isn’t this a more satisfactory argument of the evidence we appear to have than anything else?

To accept a world resulting from chance does little justice to the mystery of what it means to be human.

Do we need beauty in the world? Awe and wonder? Aesthetic dimension.

What do you think?

Richard Dawkins

• ‘ In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky . And you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.’ (River out of Eden)

Believes that scientific

explanations will always have more

immediate attraction than religious explanations.

The Blind Watchmaker

Strengths and Weaknesses

• Aristotle

• Aquinas

• Paley

• F. R. Tennant

• Austin Farrer

• Polkinghorne

• David Hume

• John Stuart Mill

• Charles Darwin

• Richard Dawkins

Conclusion?

• The teleological argument will probably always be open to attacks from empirical explanations, they do not have the problem of evil and suffering to explain away.

• However, what do we do with aspects such as art, beauty and morality, the aesthetic dimension?

• Whether or not there is design in the universe seems in the end to come down to probabilities!

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the teleological argument?

To what extent can modern scientific theories be said to have disproved the

claim that the universe has been designed?