T H E D E S I G N A R G U M E N T

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Dialogue Education - The Design Argument

T H E  D E S I G N   A R G U M E N T

for the existence of God

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Design arguments are A POSTERIORI and INDUCTIVE - they seek to move from facts about the world to God and can only establish a level of probability never a philosophical proof. Early forms of the argument were put forward by Socrates and Plato (cf the Phaedo). There are various types of argument.

  1. TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS - Arguments from a general pattern of order in the Universe- arguments qua regularity
  2. TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS - Arguments which seek to show that the universe has direction and a goal -qua purpose
  3. THE ARGUMENT FROM BEAUTY

Old forms of teleological argument tend to rely on arguments qua purpose and modern teleological arguments tend to rely on arguments qua regularity. Older forms often rely on analogy, such as those given by Aquinas and Paley.

EARLY TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS - qua purpose

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St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-75)

Aquinas’ fifth Way is a form of the teleological argument:

‘Goal directed behaviour is observed in all bodies obeying natural laws, even when they lack awareness...But nothing lacking awareness can tend to a goal except it be directed by someone with awareness and understanding; the arrow, for example, requires an archer. Everything in nature, therefore is directed to its goal by someone with understanding, and this we call God.’

Aquinas is arguing that the world is like an arrow shot from an archer’s bow. It has direction and purpose behind it and it is moving towards a goal. Every thing in nature operates in what appears to be a purposeful manner with a sense of direction. An acorn has the goal of becoming an oak tree and will behave in such a way as to fulfil this purpose. It has no intelligence of its own and must therefore have been designed to behave like this by an intelligent designer. This is God.

Aquinas maintains that every inanimate thing is being directed towards some purpose or goal (he drew this idea from Aristotle) and from this he comes to the conclusion that God is responsible. The plausibility of this takes us back to the basic problem of the Cosmological argument: Is God or the brute fact of the universe the better ultimate explanation? Also, the whole idea of purpose is highly debatable and is certainly a premise that many opponents of the argument would reject.

William Paley.(1743-1805)

William Paley argues in a similar way but uses the analogy of a watch. If you were walking across a heath and found a watch you would notice how:

’its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose’.

The purpose of telling the time. You would conclude that the watch was designed by an intelligent mind. Even if the watch was broken or damaged you would still conclude that it had been designed by and intelligent mind. Even if you could not understand all of its working parts and how they functioned together you would still conclude that it had been designed by an intelligent mind. There could be no naturalistic explanation for the watch.  Just as the existence of a watch implies a watchmaker, so the existence of the world implies an even greater designer - God. Notice that we do not need to know the purpose of the watch or the universe in order to infer a designer - simply that the design implies a designer with a purpose.  This is the argument qua purpose.

There have been two major sources of criticism of these arguments - the first by David Hume and the second stemming from the work of DARWIN.

David Hume

Note that Hume's points were put forward 22 years BEFORE Paley's - they were not after Paley.  It is a mistake, therefore, to say that Hume was replying to Paley - it is perhaps an indication of the gap between philosophy and theology that Paley does not seem to be aware of Hume’s earlier work.

David Hume's DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION is one of the greatest works on Philosophy of Religion ever written. It is really worth reading Hume in the original. He uses three main characters:

  • CLEANTHES - who believes in Natural Theology and argues a posteriori to God,
  • PHILO     - Who is their critic and who puts forward Hume's own views.
  • DEMEA - Who puts forward arguments starting from a faith position and who is not directly relevant to the design argument.

Cleanthes first puts forward a version of the Teleological argument:

‘Look around the world, contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines.’  

       All design necessarily implies a designer,

       A great design necessarily implies Greatness in the designer

       There is clearly great design in the world which is like a great machine, therefore

       There must be a great designer of the world.

Notice how similar this is to Paley’s approach. Central to Cleanthes’ whole approach is that LIKE EFFECTS HAVE LIKE CAUSES  he explicitly recognizes that his argument is based on analogy.  He concludes that the Universe is like a great machine so the implication is that the creator of the world must be like the creator of a machine only far greater.  Hume's criticisms aim to destroy the argument of Cleanthes by mockery.

Philo then replies with two arguments:

Philo’s First Argument

Like effects imply like causes - so we end of with a caricature of God, a God who is just a super-human designer, perhaps with the same kind of flaws and imperfections.

If like effects produce like causes, then the logic is that God must be rather like a superhuman figure - the result is an anthropomorphic God.  Possibly, Philo says, there are many Gods, possibly they are male and female, possibly they are born and die, possibly they are imperfect. 

Hume is not denying the design argument works - at least not explicitly. What he is  saying in Philo’s first argument is that if it works it comes up with a limited, anthropomorphic and imperfect God and the theistic reader, for whom this is unacceptable, must therefore conclude that the design argument is a total failure. At best we come up with a limited God  - possibly this universe was the first rude attempt of a TRAINEE GOD who then left it, possibly it is the creation of a SENILE GOD:

  • If we look at the imperfections in the world, particularly the extent to which nature is ‘red in tooth and claw’ and the incidence of natural disasters, earthquakes, tidal waves, disease and the like, this surely points to malevolence or inadequacy on the part of God?  

  • If we saw a badly designed house we would have grave reservations about the architect - the same applies to God. Many carpenters collaborate together to build a ship, why should there not be many Gods?

  • The first argument maintains that the closer the analogy between design within the world and design of the universe as a whole, the more the picture emerges of a God who is dissimilar to the God of Classical Theism.

This criticism effectively exposes the weakness of arguments based on analogy. The closer the analogy works the less palatable the picture of God: if the analogy does not work then the argument fails anyway. Hume (through Philo) further attacks the analogical basis of the argument by criticising the inadequacy of the analogy: the world is not like a machine. It is more like a vegetable and therefore the creator of the world is probably more like a vegetable than the creator of a machine with an intelligent mind!

Hume argues that our concepts of design are so limited that we cannot apply them to the creation of the world. The fact that a machine needs a designer is part of our experience of being in the world, but we have no experience of making worlds,

‘Have worlds ever been formed under your eye?’

Hume is here attacking the inductive logic once more. The leap from an observation in this world does not justify a metaphysical conclusion about the creation of the world, of this we have no experience. How could a goldfish in a pond conclude anything about the process of pond making? It has no knowledge of pond making;  whether the pond is a natural formation or the work of a clever gardener could not be known by the fish unless it had experience of pond making. Hume argues that without experience of the making of a world we cannot know whether it was designed or simply emerged. There is a leap in logic from seeing order in the world to concluding that the order is the result of intelligent design...we just cannot tell.

‘...we have no data to establish any system of cosmogony. Our experience, so imperfect in itself and so limited both in extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the whole of things.’

Hume is pointing to the fact that in an inductive argument the conclusion is not logically necessary. There is a leap in logic between the premises and the conclusion which means that to deny the conclusion does not render the objector irrational.

Some early supporters of the teleological argument suggested that the incredible design of human beings and animals for their own needs required a designer. The human eye was used by Paley as an example of this claimed intricate design, as was the lacteal systems in mammals and the ‘design’ of a bird’s wing. This sort of evidence was brought forward in support of the first premise of the argument that the world showed evidence of design qua purpose. A pig is designed with many teats because it brings many offspring into the world, it is so designed for the purpose of feeding its young.

Hume objected to this premise and countered the evidence brought forward in support of it by claiming that animal adaptation cannot be used to prove that animals are designed by an intelligent mind for their own distinct purpose. If they were not suited to their environment they would not survive. It is not legitimate to use what could not be otherwise as evidence of intelligent planning.

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‘I would fain ask how an animal could subsist unless its parts were so adjusted?’

In other words it is not surprising that the human body is perfectly adjusted, if you had no lungs you could not breathe and you would die. Things are the way they are and if things were different then everything would be different. The way things are does not imply design or a designer.  

Philo’s second argument

It is possible that the Universe resulted from chance

Philo's second argument can be summarized as follows:

  1. The world is ...

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