Teleological Design

Assess the teleological (design) argument for the existence of God Phenomena within the natural world exhibit structure, function and sometimes impossibility. Many people have found it,inevitably perhaps, natural to see a mind behind those phenomena. The mind, coming before nature, is typically taken to be supernatural (God). Many people have laboured to shape the evidence into a more formal, logically thorough argument. The resulting arguments share a focus on plan, purpose, intention and design, and are thus classified as teleological arguments (or, frequently, as arguments from or to design). All are from 'A posteriori' knowledge. Both critics and advocates are found not only among philosophers, but come from scientific and other disciplines as well. There are many parts to the teleological argument: Cosmic fine tuning arguments, multi-verse theories, and intelligent design – to name just a few. I will be focusing on intelligent design. Saint Thomas Aquinas theorized five different logical arguments to prove the existence of God, using scientific hypotheses and a basic knowledge of nature. In the fifth of his famous "Five Ways", Aquinas sets forth the assumption that all natural bodies move toward an end. Since bodies are constantly moving in the best way possible to achieve that end, the path must be designed. God is the designer of the universe. The obvious hypothesis that follows is that God created the universe, including the human race, for a purpose or to achieve an end, and thus the universe and all life moves toward that end constantly and in the best manner possible. He uses an analogy of an arrow: "The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God." He deduces that things that lack knowledge; that is birds, plants and natural bodies behave as if with purpose, and achieve, or work toward, certain ends. Aquinas concludes that there must be an intelligent being who directs all these natural bodies to their end, namely God. He assumes there must be a single cause of the universe which he calls God. Aquinas provides no evidence for this point, however. It could be argued for example that there may be a multiple number of causes at the beginning? Also there is nothing in his argument to support the claim that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. It could be for example that the world/universe has always been in existence, one thing causing another, evolving constantly according to what has come before? Modern physics offers an alternative explanation of the world along these lines, and suggests that events without cause are possible. Another point that can be challenged is Aquinas' conclusion at the end of each of the five ways - that the only explanation for the phenomena he discusses is 'God'. Such a conclusion is not likely to convince atheists or those with alternative spiritualities who recognise other beings and deities. If however we accept Aquinas' arguments, on what basis can he be sure about what kind of God it is? Aquinas assumes the God he describes is a fundamentally good one. His reply to the objection that - if God existed there would be no evil in the world - is that God allows evil so as to bring good out of it. But how can we be sure that God's actions, if he exists, are fundamentally good. It could be for example that God is playing tricks on humanity. What if it was a God conducting experiments in world making and universe creating? Who says this existence is perfectly designed? It could be a baby God's first attempt; or two Gods playing chess with their creations. These are all possible alternative explanations - ones that Aquinas does not take up. Teleological arguments (or arguments from design) by contrast begin with a much more

specialized catalogue of properties and end with a conclusion concerning the existence of a designer with the intellectual properties (knowledge, purpose, understanding, foresight, wisdom, intention) necessary to design the things exhibiting the special properties in question. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. (Chesterton) In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there: I might possibly answer, that for any thing I know to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose . . . This mechanism being observed . . . the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place of other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (Paley) William Paley's analogy of a watch was one of the strongest explanations for God's existence. The explanation's basis is that complexity implies design, and design implies designer. The main object of Paley's argument was the eye. It is so complex, he argued, that it could not have happened by chance. This analogy is weakened by the fact it is an analogy. A watch is not an eye, and to compare one to the other seems almost non-sensical. It was recognized a long time ago that conditions necessary for life were extremely precise, but not until a few years ago when it was revealed through science just how precise it actually is. Here is an example of the constraints for life as we know it: If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed by as little as one part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. A weakness of this argument, however, is that there are alternative explanations. Chance and necessity are the two focused upon. One might claim that: 1. In a space that has the appearance of being designed, a universe like ours was virtually inevitable, or, 2. any cosmos in which intelligent beings found themselves would have to have some level of complexity and order, as that is a necessary condition for the existence of any (observing) intelligent beings to begin with. The former explanation never gained substantial influence. The second alternative would be a version of the 'Anthropic Principle' (the world was designed for us). Whilst being true on a shallow, selfish, and rather insubstantial level, such a theory has no explanatory power, and does not make a substantive alternative explanation. The idea of a lucky production of a universe that could maintain intelligent lifeforms was occasionally injected into discussions. Although logic could not prove this incorrect in any technical sense, few philosophers or scientists saw that suggestion as likely. This argument is known as the 'levers of the universe' – the modern version of Paley's watch. As the rules are so precise and there is such a small margin of error, it seems as though 'God' is pulling the 'levers of the universe' (or so it is argued). Despite Hume's earlier arguments, most people would agree the world looks designed—that things are intention-shaped. For instance, Francis Crick (no fan of design) issued a warning to his

fellow biologists: Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. (Crick). Crick's warning to biologists would have been pointless if there were no implication toward design. There are often 'gaps' in nature - phenomena for which, it is claimed, there can be no purely natural explanation - there being a gap between nature's production capabilities and the phenomenon in question. (the watch, or the eye) Design cases resting upon nature's alleged inability to produce some relevant ‘natural’ phenomenon are generally assumed to explicitly or implicitly appeal to supernatural agency, and are typically described as “God-of-the-gaps” arguments. But evidence of design in nature does not automatically imply gaps. Design built into nature from the very beginning would require no further interventions, no gaps in nature would require no God. The position that there are gaps in nature is not inherently irrational— and would seem to be a legitimate empirical question. But although gaps would profoundly strengthen design arguments, they do import their own suite of difficulties. The way that alleged gaps typically disappear is, of course, through new proposed scientific theories proposing means of natural production of phenomena previously thought to be beyond nature's capabilities. The most obvious example of that is, of course, Darwin's evolutionary theory and its descendants. Darwinian processes fueled by undesigned, unplanned, chance variations would, it is argued, over time produce organisms adapted to their environmental situations. And since many of the characteristics traditionally cited as evidences of design were adaptations, evolution would thus produce evidence fitting the traditional criteria of design. Darwinian evolution, then, unaided by intention or intervention could account for the existence of many (perhaps all) of the apparently designed things which we find in nature. What had earlier appeared to be purpose was not apparently revealed as mere unintended but successful and preserved function. That was—and is—widely taken as meaning that design arguments depending upon specific biological gaps would be weakened—perhaps fatally. Thus Darwin in a very famous passage from his autobiography: The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. (Darwin 1887) But the damage which gap closings inflict upon the overall teleological project was less extensive than sometimes suggested. Gap-based arguments did not represent the only – or even the most important – such arguments. However, one could still ask the question: Who or what created/initiated evolution. David Hume (1711-1776), took up the design analogy a few years before Paley, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. One of the characters, Philo, suggests that "If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than that of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design." (Book VII) "The world," says Philo, "plainly resembles more an animal or a vegetable than it does a watch or knitting-loom. Its cause, therefore, it is more probable, resembles the cause of the former. The cause of the former is generation or vegetation. The cause, therefore, of the world we may infer to be something similar or analogous to generation or vegetation." Hume, apparently thought the analogy was a joke, but

perhaps Paley is still laughing from that Great Carrot Patch in the Sky. Having already examined David Hume's epistemological theory which rejected the possibility of knowing a posteriori matters, it is no surprise that he would object to the Teleological Argument. In the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume argued that knowledge of all "matters of fact" rests on the idea of causation. But Empiricism, Hume argues, forces us to acknowledge that all ideas are derived from sensation, and that any idea which is not traceable to some sensory experience is without content. Since we cannot observe causation, there really is no corresponding idea of causation, only the mind's habit of expecting a "constant conjunction" of events based on previous experience. But if we look carefully at the Teleological Argument we see that it, along with the Cosmological Argument, rests squarely on the idea that something caused the things we observe in the universe. While Hume would grant that we can be reasonably certain of the things we observe, we cannot be certain of the causes of those observations. Thus, the TA is simply inconsistent with an empirical theory of knowledge. Like Plato, Hume articulates his objections to the arguments for God's existence in the form of a dialogue. The three characters are important in that each represents a particular philosophical point of view and each are used to present one of his objections. First Objection - The argument rests on a weak analogy: The conclusion of an analogical argument is only as strong as the analogy between the compared things and any dissimilarity between the compared things proportionately weakens the analogy. There are more dissimilarities than similarities between the universe and a machine. Further more, we should not expect the parts of the universe to exhibit the same qualities as the whole, and lastly,the Universe may be best understood from a non-human point of view (anthropocentricity).Second Objection - Reductio Ad Absurdum (assuming the argument works: if order exists in minds only, and if the only examples of minds are human minds, then it follows that) - There is no reason to believe God has infinite attributes. We could not conclude that God is perfect because: a. The creator of the universe may not be the designer of the universe; and, therefore, b. There could be more than one God; c. This may be only one of many possible creations (God could be infantile or elderly); d. God(s) would have to be generated; e. God would have to have a body The point of these objections is that no Theist could accept such conclusions. But, if there is a strong analogy between the universe and a machine, each would clearly follow. We do not get to pick and choose which conclusions follow from an argument; it's a package deal. So, if the adaptation of means to ends we observe in the universe forces us to conclude an intelligent designer/creator, that designer/creator will be far more like us than the Theist wants to accept. Fortunately, as Philo has already pointed out, the analogy itself is weak and does not support any reasonable conclusion as to the cause of the order we observe in the universe. Third Objection - The only legitimate conclusion to be drawn from our observations is that the universe may have come into being (i.e., is temporal), and it seems to follow some kind of order (though we can make no inferences about the nature of that order). It's also important to note that there is a significant difference between order and design. The notion of design implies intention while order does not. That is, something may have an order without there being any intention behind the order. If the universe is not random, there is a cause or set of causes for all observable events. But, if we identify the cause(s) of an event, we do not necessarily identify a design. Here is Richard Dawkins against the teleological arguments for the existence of God. However he seems to ignore that the religious position today, rather than entirely ignoring evolution, is usually that there wasn't time for something as complex as an eye to evolve. This is what he says, however: “The only one of the traditional arguments for God that is widely used today is the

teleological argument... the name begs the question of its validity...It is the familiar 'watchmaker' argument, which is surely one of the most superficially plausible bad arguments ever discovered... and it is rediscovered by just about everybody until they are taught the logical fallacy and Darwin's brilliant alternative... complicated things that look designed are designed. To naíve observers, it seems to follow that similarly complicated things in the natural world that look designed... things like eyes and hearts... It isn't just an argument by analogy. There is a semblance of statistical reasoning here too... If you randomly scramble the fragments of an eye or a leg or a heart a million times, you'd be lucky to hit even one combination that could see, walk or pump. This demonstrates that such devices could not have been put together by chance. And of course, no sensible scientist ever said they could... Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn't know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science's future ability to explain everything else.” Dawkins is trying to argue that the universe could be created by chance. He doesn't appreciate that religion do not discount evolution and that often they accept it (but use God to explain it). His argument is strong in the way that it supports the biggest weakness of design – that the universe is pretty much pure luck – but it also is weak as the probability is so low (a fact he acknowledges. The teleological and design arguments are the strongest because the intricacies of things in nature imply a maker or designer. I don't think that any of the counter arguments are as strong as the presented teleological arguments, but this does not necessarily point to the One God. Saying this however, it is quite a strong argument for His existence.