teleological argument Flashcards
intro
- Idea given to the fact we can know God exists or know things about God by referring to the natural world
- Paul Romans 1:20 - For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen
what is the teleological argument
You can observe that everything in the natural world follows laws – even if they are not conscious/rational
If things follow laws then they tend to have some goal or purpose
However, if a thing cannot think for itself it does not have any goal or purpose unless it is directed by something that thinks
Conclusion: Everything in the natural world that does not think for itself heads towards its goal or purpose because it is directed by something which does think. That being is what we call God
aquinas 5th way
- Examples of regularity and order - Rotation of the planets, Seasons, Cycle of life and death
- used example of an archer shooting an arrow - must know that something aimed and fired it
- therefore, we look at the order and pattern of inanimate objects and conclude the guiding hand of God must be behind it
william paley design argument
- in Natural Theology (1802)
Paley used an analogy of someone coming across a watch on a heath- the person finding the watch would conclude that someone must have made the watch, rather than a random ordering of particles
- looking at a watch was similar to looking at the world or human body - it all works together so intricately that one can infer that there must have been a divine intelligence ordering it
- even on the smallest scale, there is evidence of craft and skill
- this is not only evidence of intelligent design, but of God’s care
david hume analogy criticism
We have experience of watch making, however we do not have experience of universe making, and there is no reason for us to believe that the universe was made in the same way as a watch.
universe is unique, so we cannot say what it could have been like, or how it must have come about, because we have no experience of any other way that things might have been
- we only make watches because the world is NOT like a watch - we would stop to pick up a watch on the heath because it is unlike what we see in nature (such design is not seen in nature) - it is not right to draw these comparisons and use them as analogies when there is little similarity
Similarly with archer, it illogical to compare human experience to God, and this anthropomorphism aligns God with mortal perception
Mill
Paley’s “proof” is based on the assumption that similarity in effect implies similarity in cause.
watches imply watchmakers to us only because we associate the one with the other from pastexperience.
But we cannot claim to know, from past experience, that nature implies a Designer – it should be too much for us to make that leap.
BUT Mill argued that random chance could not account for marvellously complicated structures like the human eye.
simple induction and probability were better indicators of design than analogy.
Therefore, the probability of a designer for such structures is high.
BUT recognition of order and laws at all has limitations as we do not have other worlds to compare with this one, to see which one is more ordered (no standard to judge it by)
- any world will look designed because if it were chaotic, it would not survive
- It is entirely plausible that the world resulted from chance:
It is possible that the universe of matter in motion is eternal.
In an infinity of chance operations every combination will be realized.
Combinations that best fit will tend to perpetuate themselves.
swinburne/ douglas adams
the scientific method cannot explain why there is deep and fundamental order in the first place.
If there is no possible scientific explanation for this, then we are required to look for another simple and elegant explanation – the most likely answer, he claims, is God.
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is … an interesting hole I find myself in, …t fits me staggeringly well, must have been
made to have me in it!”
(Douglas Adams: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
- order is a necessary part of the world’s existence
jumping to many assumptions
there is no evidence from it that it was designed by the Christian God
Paley jumps to a lot of conclusions - the designer does not have to be all-good or all-powerful, there may have been multiple designers, and the designer or designers may have actually died a long time ago.
- Hume uses example of a pair of scales, with one end hidden from view
- the end we can see contains a weight that we know
- we can also see that the other end outweighs it
- however, we have no means of knowing by how much - we cannot infer with any confidence the exact weight, and we cannot claim that the weight is infinite
- similarly, when we look at the world, the cause is hidden
charles darwin??
- we cannot prove that this order could not have come about except by God - impossible to showDarwin argued that “natural selection” (“survival of the fittest”) accounts for apparent design in nature.Animals best equipped to survive do survive, passing their abilities on, genetically, to their descendants.
this only goes to show that Paley’s argument is nothing but an inductive theory which jumps to conclusions, and it is only ever able to be possible and hypothetical, rather than proof for the existence of God.
Ockhams razor (introduces the fewest extra assumptions in order to explain the phenomenon) points to the conc that ‘chance’ is a better explanation that God - if is a possible explanation for the order and beauty of the world, then we do not need to have the assumption that god exists, and that he is omnipotent, benevolent, etc.
