The main structure of the argument is centered around the view that whenever we see things made by people which are in a pattern or are complex in order to work well to achieve a goal, it is clear that this thing had an intelligent designer, as purpose does not arise by chance. Then, if you were to apply this logic to nature, it is evident that there are many things that work well to serve a purpose, for example trees and their intake of carbon dioxide. The natural world, according to the argument must then have an intelligent designer.
The teleological argument was used by as one of his Five Ways of knowing that God exists, but the most cited statement of the argument is that of . The most popular way to argue for the existence of God in Paley’s day was by use of an analogy. Therefore, in Natural Theology, we see Paley comparing the world to a watch in order to prove that an intelligent designer God created the world. Paley states that if one were crossing a heath and saw a stone, one would not question its existence, as it is just a stone which could have been there forever. However, if one came across a watch, one would be able to see that all of the cogs and hands worked together intricately for the purpose of telling the time. This would, Paley argues, lead one to believe that the watch must have been carefully put together by a human watchmaker. With this theory applied to earth, he stated that the intricacies of the world pointed to an intelligent creator.
As well as examining the purpose of the world, Paley also looks at its order and regularity, thus his argument is also one of Design Qua Regularity. Paley argues that as the cogs and hands of the watch move in an orderly way to tell the time, so the world has order in order to enable life. For example, the laws of gravity and motion and the orbits of the planets. For Paley, if the order of the watch can be explained through reference to a watchmaker, so the order of the world can be explained by the idea that there is an intelligent designer God who gave the world this order. Paley states that the order and purpose of the universe, just like the order and purpose of the watch, can not simply be down to chance, “if we must argue from the watch to a watchmaker, we must argue also from the world to a world maker.”
Aquinas presented his fifth ‘way’ to prove God exists. The last of the five ways takes up a version of the design argument and very much echoes what Paley’s argument – that nature seems to have an order and a purpose to it. Nothing inanimate can be of use unless there is someone or something to give it purpose, or a guiding hand as Aquinas stated it. Inanimate objects could not have ordered themselves – such as the planets – as; they do not have the capacity or intelligence to do this. Therefore, someone with intelligence must have put them in order, which would be God.
The aesthetic argument and Anthropic argument both stem from the design argument and can both be used as strengths also. The aesthetic argument states that there is so much more beauty in the world than human beings need to survive that it must have been placed there by an intelligent being or creator. This creator would therefore be God. The Anthropic argument also features in the design argument and is similar to Paleys analogy. It looks at the purposes that every part of the world has (for example trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen that we breathe) and from these purpose serving things in the world, the argument states it was placed there by a creator to serve this purpose.
The Design Argument has also been reformulated in modern times by Richard Swinburne. Swinburne’s two versions of the argument can be found in his book, “The Existence of God.” The first of these arguments is the Argument from Spatial Order, which examines the complexities of the world and uses these to point to the existence of God. This version uses the Anthropic Principle to argue that the order of the world and the scientific laws which allow for the conditions of life need to be explained. Swinburne, using Ockham’s Razor, states that the simplest and therefore best explanation for this order is that God created the world. “The probability of order of the right kind is very much greater if there is a God, and so, the existence of such order adds greatly to the probability that there is a God.”