Teleological Arguments on the Existence of God

Pre-final exam in Philosophy of Religion (PHIS003)

Submitted by:

Don Abanes

Coleen Effie Darag

Carla Estela Marmol

Rizza Angeli Naval

Jastine Pura

Alrianne Mica Relucio

Camilla Talagtag
 Part 1

Teleological Argument

1.1 Introduction

The sophisticated and indescribable phenomena brought about with the existence of the
universe cannot escape the queries of philosophically inclined thinkers. Now, it is a common trait
for people to find themselves thinking rationally that whatever unexplainable thing in nature could
not have just been a product of mere accident and evolution and, thus, questioning the urbane
details, design, and purpose behind the presence of nature. Derived from the Greek word telos,
meaning “end” or “purpose”, and logos, meaning “study”, the teleological arguments, as the
second traditional posteriori argument, attempt to explain the existence of a deity or God that
potentially be the designer of the purposive nature human lives in. Unlike the cosmological
arguments which begin with the fact that there are contingently existing things and end with the
idea that the existence of those things depend on the existence of power to account for,
teleological arguments, on the other hand, focus on a more specialized catalogue of properties
and end up with the idea that there exists a designer behind the intellectual properties which are
knowledge, purpose, understanding, foresight, wisdom and intention.

St. Thomas Aquinas used the teleological argument as one of his Five Ways of knowing that
God really exists. However, the most quoted statement on this argument is William Paley’s Design
Argument, the most famous variant of the teleological argument. Paley’s statement on his Design
Argument basically says that a watch and its intricate parts which work together in a precise
fashion to keep time could not have just been made by merely through evolution and that this
specific complex mechanism that keeps track of time cannot come into existence if there is no
creator. Now, Paley likened the universe with this watch and came up with the idea that the
universe is a like a watch in way that its intricate parts are working together to keep harmony and
further on some purpose which justify its existence. Furthermore, his analogy brought about the
idea there is a creator behind the universe from the reason that, like a watch, the universe must
have been made by someone also. However, such analogy is a bit simple for the matter. That is
why Paley presumed that the maker of the vast universe must have been someone who is great
and powerful. He further suggested that the complexity, order, details, and the beauty of the
universe like the watch implies an intelligent design. This argument that Paley constructed is a
form that comes from analogy. Design arguments are also known as teleological arguments since
the concept of both arguments are closely related.
1.2 The premises on this argument are as follows:

1. Human artifacts are products of intelligent design

In the first premise of teleological argument, Paley’s point is more on analogy. He says: “If
I stumbled on a stone and asked how it came to be there, it would be difficult to show that the
answer, it has lain there forever is absurd. Yet this is not true if the stone were to be a watch.”
Human artifacts are indeed products of intelligent design, because these said artifacts are a bit
sophisticated and refined that its mere existence could not be justified by evolution or accident.
Like, take for an example a watch. A watch has its thorough and intricate parts, designs, and details
which purpose is to provide the user a proper track of time. The existence of a watch cannot be
explained that it exists because of chance or accident. Thus, if there is a watch, there must have
been a watchmaker since design and purpose is a product of intelligence. Furthermore, there are
two features that explains why a watch is a product of intelligent design. First is that it has an
intelligent function that only an intelligent maker can make it as valuable. Second is that the watch
could not perform its precise function if its mechanisms were sized and arranged differently. Thus,
the fact that the watch can be depended as mechanism that keeps track of time suggests that it
was only possible because a certain agent designed it for a purpose. Human artifacts are made by
an intelligent maker for a certain purpose.

2. The universe resembles human artifacts

The second premise connects the dots on how similar the universe is to human artifacts.
Like human artifacts, the complexity and sophisticated design and details of the universe serves a
particular end.

3. Therefore, the universe is a product of intelligent design

The third premise of the teleological argument cites that the similarities of the universe
and human artifacts extended to the theory that the universe, like human artifacts, are made out
of intelligent design. The mere existence of the universe could not have just been an outcome of
an accident and a product of long end of evolution. The question on how the universe entirely
exist was theorized that, like the watch, a product of intelligent design, there must have been a
maker.

4. But the universe is complex and gigantic, in comparison to human artifacts

The fourth premise of the argument makes a contrast out of the two things – human
artifacts and the universe. Human artifacts is different from the universe in a way that the former
is very minute in comparison to the latter. Moreover, human artifacts are like small dots in the
gigantic universe.
 5. Conclusion: Therefore, there probably is a powerful and vastly intelligent designer who
created the universe

An analogy is made out of the “Watch” argument of William Paley. The universe, like
human artifacts, has a design and purpose in which this purpose highly benefits the intelligent
maker of the thing. Human artifacts exist for an end that would help its maker. Likewise, with the
universe, it is made to satisfy the need of its maker. However, the universe and human artifacts
differ in a way that human artifacts are small and it requires intelligence of a human. In contrast
with how vast and gigantic the universe its, the maker of it must have been someone who is
powerful and more intelligent that human alone.
 Part II

Counter Arguments

2.1 DAVID HUME’S COUNTER ARGUMENT

Hume argued that two dissimilar objects does not allow analogy. Analogy compares two
things and based from their similarities, allows us to draw conclusions about the objects. The more
closely each thing resembles the other, the more accurate the conclusion.

Nature is substantially different from human artifacts. However, advocates of the design
argument repeatedly mention the similarities between the cosmos and the human machine.
Comparing these two things is like, comparing apples and oranges – comparing two completely
different things. The analogy between the cosmos and the human machine shows an essential
difference between one another. The other one is self-sustaining, and the other is not. Hume
suggested that cosmos is more similar to a living organism than a machine. Since, the alleged
resemblance is not closely related with each other, the inference that God, the designer of the
universe, will be logically fragile.

When making an analogy between two things, one must be able to understand both terms.
Since we barely know things about the universe, we cannot compare it to any created thing that
is within our knowledge. If we want to employ a valid analogy between, say, the building of a house
and the building of the universe we must be able to understand both terms. Since we cannot know
about the building of the universe, a Design Analogy for the existence of God is nothing more than
a guess.

Here are some objections to the watch-maker argument:

1. The artist capable of making a watch is never known as well as how the work was
accomplished. Many persons were involved in the process of making a watch – from the
miners of the metal and gems, the craftsmen, workers, and distributors. This seem to
suggest that many gods are also involved in the universe-making. In other terms, design
argument does not establish monotheism. It does not prove the existence of only one God.
It implies polytheism which at best, gives us some reason to accept polytheism.

2. The parts of the watch do not work perfectly, and the designer is not evident. Imperfect
design would seem to indicate that the designer is neither all good nor all-powerful.
The problem of evil would then become an important consideration in any inference to
the characteristics of the universe-maker. Moreover, although initially the complexity of a
watch is contrasted to the simplicity of a stone, there is nothing to which the complexity
of the universe can be contrasted.
 3. The more the complexity of the universe or the improbability of its actual orderings, then
the less likely it is having an intelligent designer. The case made by the promoters of the
intelligent design argument provides evidence against the conclusion that there must be
an intelligent designer. The more the complexity of the universe is advocated or presented
by the promoters of the intelligent design argument then the more it works against the
conclusion that there must be an intelligent designer because, if there was an intelligent
designer there would be no need for all the complexity and waste observed in the physical
universe.

The design argument is fatally wounded by infinite regress. The more improbable the
specified complexity, the more improbable the god capable of designing it. Darwinism comes
through the regress unmarked, indeed triumphant. Improbability, the phenomenon we seek to
explain, is more or less defines as that which is difficult to explain. It is obviously self-defeating to
try to explain it by invoking a creative being of even greater complexity. Darwinism really does
explain complexity in terms of something simpler.

Sooner or later we are going to have to terminate the regress with something more
explanatory than design itself. Design can never be an ultimate explanation. The design theory
has an inadequate explanation, while the explanatory work done by the natural selection becomes
correspondingly more indispensable.

More generally, Hume argued that even if a conclusion were established, that left the
arguer far from anything like a traditional conception of God. For instance, natural evils or
apparently suboptimal designs might suggest an amateur designer or a committee of designers. If
phenomena involved to the production of natural evils exhibited various of the teleological object
(Rs), then they would probably further destroy the designer's resemblance to the wholly good
deity of tradition. Even the most impressive empirical data could properly establish only finite
power and wisdom, rather than the infinite power and wisdom usually associated with divinity.
But even were one to concede some substance to the design arguments’ conclusion, that would,
Hume suggested, merely set up a regress. The designing agent would itself demand explanation,
requiring ultimately a sequence of prior analogous intelligences producing intelligences. Even if
there is the existence of the designer of material things established, that did not yet automatically
establish the existence of a creator of the matter.

Hume concluded that while the argument might constitute some limited grounds for
thinking, “the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to
human intelligence”.

2.2 CHARLES DARWIN’S COUNTER ARGUMENT

 The theory of evolution or Darwinism by far would be the most conclusive counter argument
to the Argument from Design of Teleological theory. It convincingly explains the appearance of
biological design in nature. As scientists have shown how the spontaneous chemical origin of life
is compatible with certain natural laws, they have also explained the mechanisms by which life
developed from single to complex, and how it continues to develop and evolve to this day.
Conclusively it is one of the most extensively and rigorously tested scientific theories of all time,
and has somehow survived all tests, and, with the benefit of more advanced scientific techniques
have since been proven correct.

The evolutionary theory introduces the important factor that blind chance is not the only
alternative to divine design, as the creationist literature typically claims. And that the real
alternative is the cumulative process of natural selection, which is a self-contained and
comprehensive solution which makes more sense than the random proliferation of yet another
unexplained phenomena and which cancels out the need to consider who designed the designer.

It seems strange to speak of present conditions as designed when these conditions differ,
sometimes radically, from those of the distant past, and are in constant transition under the
evolutionary forces of mutation and natural selection. The Argument from Design is forced to
assume that all parts of a complex system must always have functioned expressly as they do today.
Otherwise, it would imply a designer who is always at work adjusting or fine-tuning his creations,
which were presumably faulty to begin with. The theory of evolution gives a much more convincing
explanation of the constantly unfolding changes observed by science, and provides a workable and
testable explanation of how complexity arose from simplicity.

Although science would never claim to understand everything about how the universe was
created and how it works, we certainly understand much more than we did five hundred years
ago (or even a hundred), and phenomena which then seemed miraculous turn out to have rather
mundane scientific and natural causes and mechanisms. While we may never completely
understand the workings of the universe, it seems likely that we will continue to progress in
explaining apparently unexplainable things.

2.3 The Atomists’ Counter Argument

In the fifth century B.C., the Greek philosopher Leucippus of Miletus proposed a theory that
bears an amazing likeness to modern atomic physics. Leucippus argued that if you were to begin
cutting a piece of matter such as a rock into smaller and smaller pieces, the process could not go
on forever; eventually you would have to reach particles that can no longer be cut in half. For if
the process could go on forever, he argued, then there is no smallest particle, in which case any
object of finite size is composed of an infinite number of parts each with a finite size. But it would
then seem to follow that any finite object is really infinite in size, not finite, which is absurd (since
an infinite number of finite parts adds up to an infinite quantity). Thus, Leucippus concluded, there
must exist a smallest possible particle—too tiny to see—a particle of matter that cannot be cut in
half, which he named an “atom” (Greek for an “uncuttable”). Everything, Leucippus argued, must
be composed of atoms. The school of philosophical thought started by Leucippus and his colleague
Democritus (ca 460-360 B.C.), came to be called “atomism” since it reduced all things to atoms.

The question naturally arises: How did all the atoms get themselves into the orderly and
complicated structures we see around us and into the overall structure that we call the cosmos?
In other words, how did the order of the universe and within it arise? Leucippus proposed a daring
hypothesis, which may be summarized as follows:

The origin of all order is simply accident. That is, there is no God or “Intelligent Designer,”
the orderly structure we call the cosmos is all just one big unintended chance event. Long
ago, atoms were randomly falling through empty space, and by pure chance, in an
accidental collision, they just fell into the pattern of an orderly universe. It just happened
that way, for no reason at all.

Of course, someone had to ask the further question: But how did the atoms themselves
originate? Aren’t we forced by logic to suppose they were originally created by God? Leucippus
had thought about this possibility, and he had rejected it as an unnecessary explanatory inference.
It is simpler, he argued, to hypothesize that the atoms have just always existed. If we suppose they
are eternal, then we have no need to explain how they came to be. This logic caused Leucippus
and his fellow atomists to hypothesize that three things are eternal and uncreated: atoms, motion,
and empty space, which the atomists called “the Void.” Nothing else exists, argued the atomists,
in particular, no Designer of the cosmos exists; everything is just atoms and the void. And with
that, Leucippus closed his philosophical shop for the day, saying in so many words, “Time to go
home, the questions have all been answered.”

Part III

Conclusion

This teleological argument does not establish the actual existence of a supernatural
deity. It attempts to argue for the existence of such a being by making comparisons that are
questionable as well as using evidence that is also questionable and for which there is alternative
explanations which is not rationally legitimate. However, the faults in the argument do not prove
that there is no God. The Burden of Proof demands that the positive claim that there is
a supernatural deity be established by reason and evidence and this argument does not meet that
standard. The believer in god can use the argument to establish the mere logical possibility that
there is a supernatural deity or at least that it is not irrational to believe in the possibility that there
is such a being. The argument does not establish any degree of probability at all when there are
alternative explanations for the existence of features of the known universe.

Part IV

Critical Analysis

As a posteriori argument, teleological arguments attempt to prove the existence of a deity

or God by searching for a purpose in the universe. It is an argument that use mainly an inductive
reasoning and analogy, where premises support the conclusion but not directly entail it, in order
to support the claim that there is a God that really exist. The complexity and sophistication of the
vast universe cannot be made by only accident. And to make something that big is one of what
the omnipotent God’s creation.

What makes teleological arguments as strong evidence on the point of the existence of
God is its inductive reasoning. Arguments based on inductive reasoning depends on the use of the
senses by observation. Because of this, it is not difficult to not take into consideration the presence
of order and purpose in the universe. Furthermore, inductive reasoning is very much subjective
for it depends on the experience which may be universal if everyone has had it before. Because it
is considered as subjective, teleological argument does not rely on fixed definitions unlike the
ontological argument. Moreover, it relies on different definitions to support claims. This argument,
as straight forward and simple to understand, is more comprehensible because of the use of
analogy by making use of our experience to something beyond it. By Paley’s use of the Watch as
something that has a purpose and may only exist because of the presence of a watchmaker, an
analogy was made using the same thought that the universe, which serves us a purpose, may have
been made only by someone. However, the universe is vast and more complex than the watch is.
Thus, the universe must have been made by someone powerful and more intelligent. Teleological
arguments make use of God as a designer and put out an idea that God is involved in the history
of the universe and its creation because, like other claims on God’s existence, He is omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnibenevolent. When joined with other arguments such as cosmological,
ontological, moral argument as evidence of the existence of God, teleological argument gives a
higher probability that God does really exist. In contradiction of creations as having a function and
purpose, an eye, for an example, is used to contradict the idea that all things which has a function
has a purpose too. Moreover, by using the eye, it has a function but it does not have a purpose.
This is what Darwin is trying to say in contradiction with Paley’s teleological argument. He further
stated that the universe indeed has a function to provide life but it does not have an ultimate
purpose for its existence.

The use of inductive reasoning does not give a concrete proof for the existence of God.
Inductive reasoning only leads to probable conclusions and not certain ones. At the end of the day,
such analogy is merely a hypothesis. Since the argument relies on subjective experience, it is just
to say as weakness of this argument that just because human artifacts in the world has designers
to make them, that does not mean the universe needs a designer in order to exist. Relying on
experience as proof for God’s existence is substantially unacceptable for other philosophical
thinkers because of the lack of experience on how the world was designed by a particular maker.
If the world is truly designed and architected, there may be not one but many designers of the
world, making the teleological argument as polytheistic.

The teleological argument does not verify the actual existence of a divine being who is
allegedly the creator of the universe, as insisted by the teleological argument advocates. This
argument was not able to attain the goal of establishing a deity since they could not provide
irrefutable reasons and evidences for its actual existence. The teleological argument does prove
that the existence of God is PROBABLE but not certain.

Sources:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/paley.shtml

http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/intro_text/Chapter%203%20Religion/Teleol
ogical.htm

http://www.argumentsforatheism.com/arguments_god_teleological.html

http://www.manyworldsoflogic.com/teleologicalArgument.html