Outline and explain two criticisms of the teleological argument
Daniel Horner LVISJW
Outline and explain two criticisms of the teleological argument
The word teleology comes from the Greek word telos which means ‘an account of’ and originally meant the final ends, but now takes the meaning that everything has a purpose and a goal. The teleological argument attempts to establish the existence of God relevant to the observations of order and purpose in the universe, the teleological argument is also referred to as the argument from design as it takes the view point that there is evidence for the God, the designer. Although as Antony Flew had discovered that really it is an argument to design where as an argument from design infers that it argues from the premise that the world had been designed which petition principi, assumes what it is trying to prove.
William Paley’s argument from analogy begins with him imagining himself kicking a stone whilst walking, and then later finding a watch; he asks the same question of ‘how did that object come to be here?’. Paley can accept that the stone may have been there forever, but the watch which is a man-made object surely could not have been there forever, therefore there must be something about the presence of the watch which requires further explanation. Paley notes down the differences between the watch and the stone, he discovers that the watch has means, ends and adaptation as it is able to tell the time; the watch has a specific shape with hands which move around and the overall mechanism means you have to conclude that it is designed for a particular purpose, to think that it came around by chance is spurious that all the clogs and battery and hands fell into place and served the purpose of a watch. This leads Paley to believe that there must be some sort of design of the watch due to its complexity; the watch is evidence of what Paley terms ‘contrivance’ which is to say there is a design, and therefore there must be a designer or contriver. Paley then notes the complexity of the watch and compares it to the natural world and realises that everything in the natural world indicates that there is a design, such as the human design. Paley then concludes that the universe which is like the watch had been designed, but by a wondrous universe maker, God.
