From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The teleological argument (from τέλος, telos, 'end, aim, goal'; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an intelligent creator.
The earliest recorded versions of this argument are associated with Socrates in ancient Greece, although it has been argued that he was taking up an older argument. Plato and Aristotle developed complex approaches to the proposal that the cosmos has an intelligent cause, but it was the Stoics
who, under their influence, "developed the battery of creationist
arguments broadly known under the label 'The Argument from Design'".
Abrahamic religions have used the teleological argument in many ways, and it has a long association with them. In the Middle Ages, Islamic theologians such as Al-Ghazali used the argument, although it was rejected as unnecessary by Quranic literalists, and as unconvincing by many Islamic philosophers. Later, the teleological argument was accepted by Saint Thomas Aquinas and included as the fifth of his "Five Ways" of proving the existence of God. In early modern England clergymen such as William Turner and John Ray were well-known proponents. In the early 18th century, William Derham published his Physico-Theology, which gave his "demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation". Later, William Paley, in his 1802 Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity published a prominent presentation of the design argument with his version of the watchmaker analogy and the first use of the phrase "argument from design".
From its beginning, there have been numerous criticisms of the
different versions of the teleological argument, and responses to its
challenge to the claims against non-teleological natural science.
Especially important were the general logical arguments made by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published in 1779, and the explanation of biological complexity given in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, published in 1859. Since the 1960s, Paley's arguments have been influential in the development of a creation science movement which used phrases such as "design by an intelligent designer", and post 1987 this was rebranded as "intelligent design", promoted by the intelligent design movement which refers to an intelligent designer. Both movements have used the teleological argument to argue against the modern scientific understanding of evolution, and to claim that supernatural explanations should be given equal validity in the public school science curriculum.
Also starting already in classical Greece, two approaches to the
teleological argument developed, distinguished by their understanding of
whether the natural order was literally created or not. The
non-creationist approach starts most clearly with Aristotle, although
many thinkers, such as the Neoplatonists,
believed it was already intended by Plato. This approach is not
creationist in a simple sense, because while it agrees that a cosmic
intelligence is responsible for the natural order, it rejects the
proposal that this requires a "creator" to physically make and maintain
this order. The Neoplatonists did not find the teleological argument
convincing, and in this they were followed by medieval philosophers such
as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. Later, Averroes and Thomas Aquinas considered the argument acceptable, but not necessarily the best argument.
While the concept of an intelligence behind the natural order is
ancient, a rational argument that concludes that we can know that the
natural world has a designer, or a creating intelligence which has
human-like purposes, appears to have begun with classical philosophy. Religious thinkers in Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity also developed versions of the teleological argument. Later, variants on the argument from design were produced in Western philosophy and by Christian fundamentalism.
Contemporary defenders of the teleological argument are mainly Christians, for example Richard Swinburne and John Lennox.
Classical philosophy
Socrates and the pre-Socratics
The argument from intelligent design appears to have begun with Socrates, although the concept of a cosmic intelligence is older and David Sedley has argued that Socrates was developing an older idea, citing Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about 500 BC, as a possible earlier proponent.
The proposal that the order of nature showed evidence of having its own
human-like "intelligence" goes back to the origins of Greek natural
philosophy and science, and its attention to the orderliness of nature,
often with special reference to the revolving of the heavens. Anaxagoras
is the first person who is definitely known to have explained such a
concept using the word "nous"
(which is the original Greek term that leads to modern English
"intelligence" via its Latin and French translations). Aristotle reports
an earlier philosopher from Clazomenae named Hermotimus who had taken a similar position. Amongst Pre-Socratic philosophers
before Anaxagoras, other philosophers had proposed a similar
intelligent ordering principle causing life and the rotation of the
heavens. For example Empedocles, like Hesiod much earlier, described cosmic order and living things as caused by a cosmic version of love, and Pythagoras and Heraclitus attributed the cosmos with "reason" (logos). In his Philebus 28c Plato has Socrates speak of this as a tradition, saying that "all philosophers agree—whereby they really exalt themselves—that mind (nous)
is king of heaven and earth. Perhaps they are right." and later states
that the ensuing discussion "confirms the utterances of those who
declared of old that mind (nous) always rules the universe".
Xenophon's report in his Memorabilia might be the earliest clear account of an argument that there is evidence in nature of intelligent design. The word traditionally translated and discussed as "design" is gnōmē
and Socrates is reported by Xenophon to have pressed doubting young men
to look at things in the market, and consider whether they could tell
which things showed evidence of gnōmē, and which seemed more to
be by blind chance, and then to compare this to nature and consider
whether it could be by blind chance. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates is made to say just before dying that his discovery of Anaxagoras' concept of a cosmic nous
as the cause of the order of things, was an important turning point for
him. But he also expressed disagreement with Anaxagoras' understanding
of the implications of his own doctrine, because of Anaxagoras' materialist understanding of causation. Socrates complained that Anaxagoras restricted the work of the cosmic nous to the beginning, as if it were uninterested and all events since then just happened because of causes like air and water.
Socrates, on the other hand, apparently insisted that the demiurge must
be "loving", particularly concerning humanity. (In this desire to go
beyond Anaxagoras and make the cosmic nous a more active manager, Socrates was apparently preceded by Diogenes of Apollonia.)
Plato and Aristotle
Plato's Timaeus
is presented as a description of someone who is explaining a "likely
story" in the form of a myth, and so throughout history commentators
have disagreed about which elements of the myth can be seen as the
position of Plato.
Sedley (2007) nevertheless calls it "the creationist manifesto" and
points out that although some of Plato's followers denied that he
intended it, in classical times writers such as Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and Galen all understood Plato as proposing the world originated in an "intelligent creative act". Plato has a character explain the concept of a "demiurge" with supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work.
Plato's teleological perspective is also built upon the analysis of a priori order and structure in the world that he had already presented in The Republic. The story does not propose creation ex nihilo; rather, the demiurge made order from the chaos of the cosmos, imitating the eternal Forms.
Plato's world of eternal and unchanging Forms, imperfectly represented in matter by a divine Artisan, contrasts sharply with the various mechanistic Weltanschauungen, of which atomism
was, by the 4th century at least, the most prominent... This debate was
to persist throughout the ancient world. Atomistic mechanism got a shot
in the arm from Epicurus... while the Stoics
adopted a divine teleology... The choice seems simple: either show how a
structured, regular world could arise out of undirected processes, or
inject intelligence into the system.
— R. J. Hankinson, Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought
Plato's student and friend Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 BC), continued the
Socratic tradition of criticising natural scientists such as Democritus
who sought (as in modern science) to explain everything in terms of
matter and chance motion. He was very influential in the future
development of classical creationism, but was not a straightforward
"creationist" because he required no creation interventions in nature,
meaning he "insulated god from any requirement to intervene in nature,
either as creator or as administrator".
Instead of direct intervention by a creator it is "scarcely an
exaggeration to say that for Aristotle the entire functioning of the
natural world, as also the heavens, is ultimately to be understood as a
shared striving towards godlike actuality". And whereas the myth in the Timaeus
suggests that all living things are based on one single paradigm, not
one for each species, and even tells a story of "devolution" whereby
other living things devolved from humans, it was Aristotle who presented
the influential idea that each type of normal living thing must be
based on a fixed paradigm or form for that species.
Aristotle felt that biology was a particularly important example
of a field where materialist natural science ignored information which
was needed in order to understand living things well. For example birds
use wings for the purpose of flight. Therefore the most complete explanation in regard to the natural, as well as the artificial, is for the most part teleological. In fact, proposals that species had changed by chance survival of the fittest, similar to what is now called "natural selection", were already known to Aristotle, and he rejected these with the same logic. He conceded that monstrosities (new forms of life) could come about by chance, but he disagreed with those who ascribed all nature purely to chance because he believed science can only provide a general account of that which is normal, "always, or for the most part".
The distinction between what is normal, or by nature, and what is
"accidental", or not by nature, is important in Aristotle's
understanding of nature. As pointed out by Sedley, "Aristotle is happy
to say (Physics II 8, 199a33-b4) without the slightest fear of
blasphemy, crafts make occasional mistakes; therefore, by analogy, so
can nature." According to Aristotle the changes which happen by nature are caused by their "formal causes", and for example in the case of a bird's wings there is also a final cause which is the purpose of flying. He explicitly compared this to human technology:
If then what comes from art is for
the sake of something, it is clear that what come from nature is too
[...] This is clear most of all in the other animals, which do nothing
by art, inquiry, or deliberation; for which reason some people are
completely at a loss whether it is by intelligence or in some other way
that spiders, ants, and such things work. [...] It is absurd to think
that a thing does not happen for the sake of something if we do not see
what sets it in motion deliberating. [...] This is most clear when
someone practices medicine himself on himself; for nature is like that.
— Aristotle, Physics, II 8.
The question of how to understand Aristotle's conception of nature
having a purpose and direction something like human activity is
controversial in the details. Martha Nussbaum
for example has argued that in his biology this approach was practical
and meant to show nature only being analogous to human art, explanations
of an organ being greatly informed by knowledge of its essential
function.
Nevertheless, Nussbaum's position is not universally accepted. In any
case, Aristotle was not understood this way by his followers in the
Middle Ages, who saw him as consistent with monotheistic religion and a
teleological understanding of all nature. Consistent with the medieval
interpretation, in his Metaphysics and other works Aristotle clearly argued a case for there being one highest god or "prime mover"
which was the ultimate cause, though specifically not the material
cause, of the eternal forms or natures which cause the natural order,
including all living things. He clearly refers to this entity having an intellect
that humans somehow share in, which helps humans see the true natures
or forms of things without relying purely on sense perception of
physical things, including living species. This understanding of nature,
and Aristotle's arguments against materialist understandings of nature,
were very influential in the Middle Ages in Europe. The idea of fixed
species remained dominant in biology until Darwin, and a focus upon
biology is still common today in teleological criticisms of modern
science.
Roman era
It was the Stoics who "developed the battery of creationist arguments broadly known under the label 'The Argument from Design'". Cicero (c. 106 – c. 43 BC) reported the teleological argument of the Stoics in De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods)
Book II, which includes an early version of the watchmaker analogy,
which was later developed by William Paley. He has one of the characters
in the dialogue say:
When you see a sundial or a
water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance.
How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of
purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these
artifacts themselves and their artificers?
— Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.34
Another very important classical supporter of the teleological argument was Galen,
whose compendious works were one of the major sources of medical
knowledge until modern times, both in Europe and the medieval Islamic
world. He was not a Stoic, but like them he looked back to the Socratics
and was constantly engaged in arguing against atomists such as the
Epicureans. Unlike Aristotle (who was however a major influence upon
him), and unlike the Neoplatonists, he believed there was really
evidence for something literally like the "demiurge" found in Plato's Timaeus, which worked physical upon nature. In works such as his On the Usefulness of Parts
he explained evidence for it in the complexity of animal construction.
His work shows "early signs of contact and contrast between the pagan
and the Judaeo-Christian tradition of creation", criticizing the account
found in the Bible. "Moses, he suggests, would have contented himself
with saying that God ordered the eyelashes not to grow and that they
obeyed. In contrast to this, the Platonic tradition's Demiurge is above
all else a technician." Surprisingly, neither Aristotle nor Plato, but
Xenophon are considered by Galen, as the best writer on this subject.
Galen shared with Xenophon a scepticism of the value of books about most
speculative philosophy, except for inquiries such as whether there is
"something in the world superior in power and wisdom to man". This he
saw as having an everyday importance, a usefulness for living well. He
also asserted that Xenophon was the author who reported the real
position of Socrates, including his aloofness from many types of
speculative science and philosophy.
Galen's connection of the teleological argument to discussions
about the complexity of living things, and his insistence that this is
possible for a practical scientist, foreshadows some aspects of modern
uses of the teleological argument.
Medieval philosophy and theology
Late classical Christian writers
As an appeal to general revelation, Paul the Apostle (AD 5–67), argues in Romans 1:18–20, that because it has been made plain to all from what has been created in the world, it is obvious that there is a God.
Marcus Minucius Felix
(c. late 2nd to 3rd century), an Early Christian writer, argued for the
existence of God based on the analogy of an ordered house in his The Orders of Minucius Felix:
"Supposing you went into a house and found everything neat, orderly and
well-kept, surely you would assume it had a master, and one
much better than the good things, his belongings; so in this house of
the universe, when throughout
heaven and earth you see the marks of foresight, order and law, may you
not assume that the lord and
author of the universe is fairer than the stars themselves or than any
portions of the entire world ?"
Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) in The City of God
mentioned the idea that the world's "well-ordered changes and
movements", and "the fair appearance of all visible things" was evidence
for the world being created, and "that it could not have been created
save by God".
Islamic philosophy
Early
Islamic philosophy played an important role in developing the
philosophical understandings of God among Jewish and Christian thinkers
in the Middle Ages, but concerning the teleological argument one of the
lasting effects of this tradition came from its discussions of the
difficulties which this type of proof has. Various forms of the argument
from design have been used by Islamic theologians and philosophers from
the time of the early Mutakallimun
theologians in the 9th century, although it is rejected by
fundamentalist or literalist schools, for whom the mention of God in the
Qu'ran
should be sufficient evidence. The argument from design was also seen as
an unconvincing sophism by the early Islamic philosopher Al-Farabi, who instead took the "emanationist" approach of the Neoplatonists
such as Plotinus, whereby nature is rationally ordered, but God is not
like a craftsman who literally manages the world. Later, Avicenna was also convinced of this, and proposed instead a cosmological argument for the existence of God.
The argument was however later accepted by both the Aristotelian philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and his great anti-philosophy opponent Al-Ghazali. Averroes' term for the argument was Dalīl al-ˁināya, which can be translated as "argument from providence". Both of them however accepted the argument because they believed it is explicitly mentioned in the Quran.
Despite this, like Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and Al-Farabi,
Averroes proposed that order and continual motion in the world is caused
by God's intellect. Whether Averroes was an "emanationist" like his
predecessors has been a subject of disagreement and uncertainty. But it
is generally agreed that what he adapted from those traditions, agreed
with them about the fact that God does not create in the same way as a
craftsman.
In fact then, Averroes treated the teleological argument as one
of two "religious" arguments for the existence of God. The principal
demonstrative proof is, according to Averroes, Aristotle's proof from
motion in the universe that there must be a first mover which causes
everything else to move.
Averroes' position that the most logically valid proof should be
physical rather than metaphysical (because then metaphysics would be
proving itself) was in conscious opposition to the position of Avicenna.
Later Jewish and Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas were aware of this debate, and generally took a position closer to Avicenna.
Jewish philosophy
An example of the teleological argument in Jewish philosophy appears when the medieval Aristotelian philosopher Maimonides cites the passage in Isaiah
40:26, where the "Holy One" says: "Lift up your eyes on high, and
behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by
number:"
However, Barry Holtz calls this "a crude form of the argument from
design", and that this "is only one possible way of reading the text".
He asserts that "Generally, in the biblical texts the existence of God
is taken for granted."
Maimonides also recalled that Abraham (in the midrash, or explanatory text, of Genesis Rabbah
39:1) recognized the existence of "one transcendent deity from the fact
that the world around him exhibits an order and design". The midrash
makes an analogy between the obviousness that a building has an owner,
and that the world is looked after by God. Abraham says "Is it
conceivable that the world is without a guide?" Because of these examples, the 19th century philosopher Nachman Krochmal called the argument from design "a cardinal principle of the Jewish faith".
The American orthodox rabbi, Aryeh Kaplan, retells a legend about the 2nd century AD Rabbi Meir.
When told by a philosopher that he did not believe that the world was
created by God, the rabbi produced a beautiful poem that he claimed had
come into being when a cat accidentally knocked over a pot of ink,
"spilling ink all over the document. This poem was the result." The
philosopher exclaims that would be impossible: "There must be an author.
There must be a scribe." The rabbi concludes, "How could the universe
... come into being by itself? There must be an Author. There must be a
Creator."
Thomas Aquinas
The fifth of Thomas Aquinas' proofs of God's existence was based on teleology
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), whose writings became widely accepted
within Catholic western Europe, was heavily influenced by Aristotle,
Averroes, and other Islamic and Jewish philosophers. He presented a
teleological argument in his Summa Theologica. In the work, Aquinas presented five ways in which he attempted to prove the existence of God: the quinque viae. These arguments feature only a posteriori arguments, rather than literal reading of holy texts. He sums up his teleological argument as follows:
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.
— St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Article 3, Question 2)
Aquinas notes that the existence of final causes,
by which a cause is directed toward an effect, can only be explained by
an appeal to intelligence. However, as natural bodies aside from humans
do not possess intelligence, there must, he reasons, exist a being that
directs final causes at every moment. That being is what we call God.
Modernity
Newton and Leibniz
Isaac Newton
affirmed his belief in the truth of the argument when, in 1713, he
wrote these words in an appendix to the second edition of his Principia:
This
most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have
arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful
being.
This view, that "God is known from his works", was supported and popularized by Newton's friends Richard Bentley, Samuel Clarke and William Whiston in the Boyle lectures, which Newton supervised. Newton wrote to Bentley, just before Bentley delivered the first lecture, that:
when
I wrote my treatise about our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles
as might work with considering men for the beliefe [sic] of a Deity,
and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.
The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz disagreed with Newton's view of design in the teleological argument. In the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence,
Samuel Clarke argued Newton's case that God constantly intervenes in
the world to keep His design adjusted, while Leibniz thought that the
universe was created in such a way that God would not need to intervene
at all. As quoted by Ayval Leshem, Leibniz wrote:
According
to [Newton's] doctrine, God Almighty wants [i.e. needs] to wind up his
watch from time to time; otherwise it would cease to move. He had not it
seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.
Leibniz considered the argument from design to have "only moral certainty" unless it was supported by his own idea of pre-established harmony expounded in his Monadology. Bertrand Russell
wrote that "The proof from the pre-established harmony is a particular
form of the so-called physico-theological proof, otherwise known as the
argument from design." According to Leibniz, the universe is completely
made from individual substances known as monads, programmed to act in a predetermined way. Russell wrote:
In
Leibniz's form, the argument states that the harmony of all the monads
can only have arisen from a common cause. That they should all exactly
synchronize, can only be explained by a Creator who pre-determined their
synchronism.
British empiricists
The 17th-century Dutch writers Lessius and Grotius argued that the intricate structure of the world, like that of a house, was unlikely to have arisen by chance. The empiricist John Locke,
writing in the late 17th century, developed the Aristotelian idea that,
excluding geometry, all science must attain its knowledge a posteriori - through sensual experience. In response to Locke, Anglican Irish Bishop George Berkeley advanced a form of idealism in which things only continue to exist when they are perceived.
When humans do not perceive objects, they continue to exist because God
is perceiving them. Therefore, in order for objects to remain in
existence, God must exist omnipresently.
David Hume, in the mid-18th century, referred to the teleological argument in his A Treatise of Human Nature.
Here, he appears to give his support to the argument from design. John
Wright notes that "Indeed, he claims that the whole thrust of his
analysis of causality in the Treatise supports the Design argument", and
that, according to Hume, "we are obliged 'to infer an infinitely
perfect Architect.'"
However, later he was more critical of the argument in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
This was presented as a dialogue between Hume and "a friend who loves
sceptical paradoxes", where the friend gives a version of the argument
by saying of its proponents, they "paint in the most magnificent colours
the order, beauty, and wise arrangement of the universe; and then ask
if such a glorious display of intelligence could come from a random
coming together of atoms, or if chance could produce something that the
greatest genius can never sufficiently admire".
Hume also presented arguments both for and against the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
The character Cleanthes, summarizing the teleological argument, likens
the universe to a man-made machine, and concludes by the principle of
similar effects and similar causes that it must have a designing
intelligence:
Look round 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,
which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses
and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and
even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an
accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever
contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all
nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of
human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.
Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by
all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the
Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though
possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the
work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
On the other hand, Hume's sceptic, Philo, is not satisfied with the
argument from design. He attempts a number of refutations, including one
that arguably foreshadows Darwin's theory, and makes the point that if
God resembles a human designer, then assuming divine characteristics
such as omnipotence and omniscience is not justified. He goes on to joke
that far from being the perfect creation of a perfect designer, this
universe may be "only the first rude essay of some infant deity... the
object of derision to his superiors".
Derham's natural theology
Starting in 1696 with his Artificial Clockmaker, William Derham published a stream of teleological books. The best known of these are Physico-Theology (1713); Astro-Theology (1714); and Christo-Theology (1730). Physico-Theology, for example, was explicitly subtitled "A demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation". A natural theologian,
Derham listed scientific observations of the many variations in nature,
and proposed that these proved "the unreasonableness of infidelity". At
the end of the section on Gravity for instance, he writes: "What else
can be concluded, but that all was made with manifest Design, and that
all the whole Structure is the Work of some intelligent Being; some
Artist, of Power and Skill equivalent to such a Work?" Also, of the "sense of sound" he writes:
For who but an intelligent Being, what less than an omnipotent and
infinitely wise God could contrive, and make such a fine Body, such a
Medium, so susceptible of every Impression, that the Sense of Hearing
hath occasion for, to empower all Animals to express their Sense and
Meaning to others.
Derham concludes: "For it is a Sign a Man is a wilful, perverse
Atheist, that will impute so glorious a Work, as the Creation is, to any
Thing, yea, a mere Nothing (as Chance is) rather than to God. Weber (2000) writes that Derham's Physico-Theology "directly influenced" William Paley's later work.
The power, and yet the limitations, of this kind of reasoning is illustrated in microcosm by the history of La Fontaine's fable of The Acorn and the Pumpkin,
which first appeared in France in 1679. The light-hearted anecdote of
how a doubting peasant is finally convinced of the wisdom behind
creation arguably undermines this approach. However, beginning with Anne Finch's
conversion of the story into a polemic against atheism, it has been
taken up by a succession of moral writers as presenting a valid argument
for the proposition that "The wisdom of God is displayed in creation."
Watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy,
framing the teleological argument with reference to a timepiece, dates
at least back to the Stoics, who were reported by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum (II.88), using such an argument against Epicureans, whom, they taunt, would "think more highly of the achievement of Archimedes
in making a model of the revolutions of the firmament than of that of
nature in creating them, although the perfection of the original shows a
craftsmanship many times as great as does the counterfeit". It was also used by Robert Hooke and Voltaire, the latter of whom remarked:
L'univers m'embarrasse, et je ne puis songer
Que cette horloge existe, et n'ait point d'horloger
|
The Universe troubles me, and much less can I think
That this clock exists and should have no clockmaker.
|
William Paley presented his version of the watchmaker analogy at the start of his Natural Theology (1802).
[S]uppose
I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the
watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think...that, for
anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should
not this answer serve for the watch as well as for [a] stone [that
happened to be lying on the ground]?... For this reason, and for no
other; namely, that, if the different parts had been differently shaped
from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed
after any other manner, or in any order than that in which they are
placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the
machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by
it.
According to Alister McGrath,
Paley argued that "The same complexity and utility evident in the
design and functioning of a watch can also be discerned in the natural
world. Each feature of a biological organism, like that of a watch,
showed evidence of being designed in such a way as to adapt the organism
to survival within its environment. Complexity and utility are
observed; the conclusion that they were designed and constructed by God,
Paley holds, is as natural as it is correct."
Natural theology strongly influenced British science, with the expectation as expressed by Adam Sedgwick in 1831 that truths revealed by science could not conflict with the moral truths of religion.
These natural philosophers saw God as the first cause, and sought
secondary causes to explain design in nature: the leading figure Sir John Herschel wrote in 1836 that by analogy with other intermediate causes
"the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our
cognizance, would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a
miraculous process".
As a theology student, Charles Darwin found Paley's arguments compelling. However, he later developed his theory of evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species,
which offers an alternate explanation of biological order. In his
autobiography, Darwin wrote that "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 has been discovered". Darwin struggled with the problem of evil and of suffering in nature, but remained inclined to believe that nature depended upon "designed laws" and commended Asa Gray's
statement about "Darwin's great service to Natural Science in bringing
back to it Teleology: so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology,
we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology."
Darwin owned he was "bewildered" on the subject, but was
"inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with
the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may
call chance:"
But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do,
& as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all
sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot
persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have
designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their
feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should
play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief
that the eye was expressly designed.
Recent proponents
Probabilistic arguments
In 1928 and 1930, F. R. Tennant published his Philosophical Theology, which was a "bold endeavour to combine scientific and theological thinking". He proposed a version of the teleological argument based on the accumulation of the probabilities of each individual biological adaptation.
"Tennant concedes that naturalistic accounts such as evolutionary
theory may explain each of the individual adaptations he cites, but he
insists that in this case the whole exceeds the sum of its parts:
naturalism can explain each adaptation but not their totality." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
notes that "Critics have insisted on focusing on the cogency of each
piece of theistic evidence – reminding us that, in the end, ten leaky
buckets hold no more water than one." Also, "Some critics, such as John Hick
and D.H. Mellor, have objected to Tennant's particular use of
probability theory and have challenged the relevance of any kind of
probabilistic reasoning to theistic belief."
Richard Swinburne's
"contributions to philosophical theology have sought to apply more
sophisticated versions of probability theory to the question of God's
existence, a methodological improvement on Tennant's work but squarely
in the same spirit". He uses Bayesian probability
"taking account not only of the order and functioning of nature but
also of the 'fit' between human intelligence and the universe, whereby
one can understand its workings, as well as human aesthetic, moral, and
religious experience". Swinburne writes:
[T]he
existence of order in the world confirms the existence of God if and
only if the existence of this order in the world is more probable if
there is a God than if there is not. ... the probability of order of the
right kind is very much greater if there is a God, and so that the
existence of such order adds greatly to the probability that there is a
God.
Swinburne acknowledges that his argument by
itself may not give a reason to believe in the existence of God, but in
combination with other arguments such as cosmological arguments and evidence from mystical experience, he thinks it can.
While discussing Hume's arguments, Alvin Plantinga offered a probability version of the teleological argument in his book God and Other Minds:
Every contingent object such that we know whether or not it was the
product of intelligent design, was the product of intelligent design.
The universe is a contingent object.
So probably the universe is designed.
Following Plantinga, Georges Dicker produced a slightly different version in his book about Bishop Berkeley:
A. The world ... shows amazing teleological order.
B. All Objects exhibiting such order ... are products of intelligent design.
C. Probably the world is a result of intelligent design.
D. Probably, God exists and created the world.
The Encyclopædia Britannica has the following criticism of such arguments:
It can of course be said that any form in which the universe might be
is statistically enormously improbable as it is only one of a virtual
infinity of possible forms. But its actual form is no more improbable,
in this sense, than innumerable others. It is only the fact that humans
are part of it that makes it seem so special, requiring a transcendent
explanation.
Fine-tuned universe
A modern variation of the teleological argument is built upon the concept of the fine-tuned universe: According to the website Biologos:
Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature's physical
constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the
present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require
that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the
Universe have extremely precise values.
Also, the fine-tuning of the Universe is the apparent delicate balance
of conditions necessary for human life. In this view, speculation about a
vast range of possible conditions in which life cannot exist is used to
explore the probability of conditions in which life can and does exist.
For example, it can be argued that if the force of the Big Bang explosion had been different by 1/10 to the sixtieth power or the strong interaction force was only 5% different, life would be impossible. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking
estimates that "if the rate of the universe's expansion one second
after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred
thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed into a
hot fireball due to gravitational attraction".
In terms of a teleological argument, the intuition in relation to a
fine-tuned universe would be that God must have been responsible, if
achieving such perfect conditions is so improbable. However, in regard to fine-tuning, Kenneth Einar Himma
writes: "The mere fact that it is enormously improbable that an event
occurred... by itself, gives us no reason to think that it occurred by
design ... As intuitively tempting as it may be..." Himma attributes the "Argument from Suspicious Improbabilities", a formalization of "the fine-tuning intuition" to George N. Schlesinger:
To
understand Schlesinger's argument, consider your reaction to two
different events. If John wins a 1-in-1,000,000,000 lottery game, you
would not immediately be tempted to think that John (or someone acting
on his behalf) cheated. If, however, John won three consecutive
1-in-1,000 lotteries, you would immediately be tempted to think that
John (or someone acting on his behalf) cheated. Schlesinger believes
that the intuitive reaction to these two scenarios is epistemically
justified. The structure of the latter event is such that it… justifies a
belief that intelligent design is the cause… Despite the fact that the
probability of winning three consecutive 1-in-1,000 games is exactly the
same as the probability of winning one 1-in-1,000,000,000 game, the
former event… warrants an inference of intelligent design.
Himma considers Schlesinger's argument to be subject to the same
vulnerabilities he noted in other versions of the design argument:
While
Schlesinger is undoubtedly correct in thinking that we are justified in
suspecting design in the case [of winning] three consecutive lotteries,
it is because—and only because—we know two related empirical facts
about such events. First, we already know that there exist intelligent
agents who have the right motivations and causal abilities to
deliberately bring about such events. Second, we know from past
experience with such events that they are usually explained by the
deliberate agency of one or more of these agents. Without at least one
of these two pieces of information, we are not obviously justified in
seeing design in such cases… [T]he problem for the fine-tuning argument
is that we lack both of the pieces that are needed to justify an
inference of design. First, the very point of the argument is to
establish the fact that there exists an intelligent agency that has the
right causal abilities and motivations to bring the existence of a
universe capable of sustaining life. Second, and more obviously, we do
not have any past experience with the genesis of worlds and are hence
not in a position to know whether the existence of fine-tuned universes
are usually explained by the deliberate agency of some intelligent
agency. Because we lack this essential background information, we are
not justified in inferring that there exists an intelligent Deity who
deliberately created a universe capable of sustaining life.
Antony Flew, who spent most of his life as an atheist, converted to deism
late in life, and postulated "an intelligent being as involved in some
way in the design of conditions that would allow life to arise and
evolve".
He concluded that the fine-tuning of the universe was too precise to be
the result of chance, so accepted the existence of God. He said that
his commitment to "go where the evidence leads" meant that he ended up
accepting the existence of God. Flew proposed the view, held earlier by Fred Hoyle,
that the universe is too young for life to have developed purely by
chance and that, therefore, an intelligent being must exist which was
involved in designing the conditions required for life to evolve.
Would you not say to yourself,
"Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of
the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through
the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule." Of course you
would ... A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a
superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in
nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so
overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.
— Fred Hoyle, Engineering and Science, The Universe: Past and Present Reflections
Creation science and intelligent design
A version of the argument from design is central to both creation science and Intelligent design, but unlike Paley's openness to deistic
design through God-given laws, proponents seek scientific confirmation
of repeated miraculous interventions in the history of life, and argue
that their theistic science should be taught in science classrooms.
The teaching of evolution was effectively barred from United States public school curricula by the outcome of the 1925 Scopes Trial, but in the 1960s the National Defense Education Act led to the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study reintroducing the teaching of evolution. In response, there was a resurgence of creationism,
now presented as "creation science", based on biblical literalism but
with Bible quotes optional. ("Explicit references to the Bible were
optional: Morris's 1974 book Scientific Creationism came in two versions, one with Bible quotes, and one without.")
A 1989 survey found that virtually all literature promoting creation science presented the design argument, with John D. Morris
saying "any living thing gives such strong evidence for design by an
intelligent designer that only a willful ignorance of the data (II Peter
3:5) could lead one to assign such intricacy to chance". Such
publications introduced concepts central to intelligent design,
including irreducible complexity (a variant of the watchmaker analogy) and specified complexity (closely resembling a fine-tuning argument). The United States Supreme Court ruling on Edwards v. Aguillard barred the teaching of "Creation Science" in public schools because it breached the separation of church and state,
and a group of creationists rebranded Creation Science as "intelligent
design" which was presented as a scientific theory rather than as a
religious argument.
Scientists disagreed with the assertion that intelligent design
is scientific, and its introduction into the science curriculum of a Pennsylvania school district led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which ruled that the "intelligent design" arguments are essentially religious in nature and not science. The court took evidence from theologian John F. Haught, and ruled that "ID is not a new scientific argument,
but is rather an old religious argument for the existence of God. He
traced this argument back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the 13th
century, who framed the argument as a syllogism: Wherever complex design
exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore
nature must have had an intelligent designer." "This argument for the
existence of God was advanced early in the 19th century by Reverend
Paley": "The only apparent difference between the argument made by Paley
and the argument for ID, as expressed by defense expert witnesses Behe
and Minnich, is that ID's 'official position' does not acknowledge that
the designer is God."
Proponents of the intelligent design movement such as Cornelius G. Hunter, have asserted that the methodological naturalism upon which science is based is religious in nature.
They commonly refer to it as 'scientific materialism' or as
'methodological materialism' and conflate it with 'metaphysical
naturalism'.
They use this assertion to support their claim that modern science is
atheistic, and contrast it with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports theistic science.
This ignores the distinction between science and religion, established
in Ancient Greece, in which science can not use supernatural
explanations.
Intelligent design advocate and biochemist Michael Behe
proposed a development of Paley's watch analogy in which he argued in
favour of intelligent design. Unlike Paley, Behe only attempts to prove
the existence of an intelligent designer, rather than the God of
classical theism. Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap to propose irreducible complexity:
he argues that if a mousetrap loses just one of its parts, it can no
longer function as a mousetrap. He argues that irreducible complexity in
an object guarantees the presence of intelligent design. Behe claims
that there are instances of irreducible complexity in the natural world
and that parts of the world must have been designed. This negative argument against step by step evolution ignores longstanding evidence that evolution proceeds through changes of function from preceding systems. The specific examples Behe proposes have been shown to have simpler homologues
which could act as precursors with different functions. His arguments
have been rebutted, both in general and in specific cases by numerous
scientific papers.
In response, Behe and others, "ironically, given the absence of any
detail in their own explanation, complain that the proffered
explanations lack sufficient detail to be empirically tested".
Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
William Lane Craig has proposed an nominalist argument influenced by the philosophy of mathematics.
This argument revolves around the fact that, by using mathematical
concepts, we can discover much about the natural world. For example,
Craig writes, Peter Higgs, and any similar scientist, 'can sit down at his desk and, by pouring [sic]
over mathematical equations, predict the existence of a fundamental
particle which, thirty years later, after investing millions of dollars
and thousands of man-hours, experimentalists are finally able to
detect.' He names mathematics as the 'language of nature', and refutes
two possible explanations for this. Firstly, he suggests, the idea that
they are abstract entities brings about the question of their
application. Secondly, he responds to the problem of whether they are
merely useful fictions by suggesting that this asks why these fictions
are so useful. Citing Eugene Wigner as an influence on his thought, he summarizes his argument as follows:
1. If God did not exist, the applicability of mathematics would be just a happy coincidence.
2. The applicability of mathematics is not just a happy coincidence.
3. Therefore, God exists.
"Third way" proposal
University of Chicago geneticist James A. Shapiro, writing in the Boston Review,
states that advancements in genetics and molecular biology, and "the
growing realization that cells have molecular computing networks which
process information about internal operations and about the external
environment to make decisions controlling growth, movement, and
differentiation", have implications for the teleological argument.
Shapiro states that these "natural genetic engineering" systems, can produce radical reorganizations of the "genetic apparatus within a single cell generation". Shapiro suggests what he calls a 'Third Way'; a non-creationist, non-Darwinian type of evolution:
What significance does an emerging
interface between biology and information science hold for thinking
about evolution? It opens up the possibility of addressing
scientifically rather than ideologically the central issue so hotly
contested by fundamentalists on both sides of the Creationist-Darwinist
debate: Is there any guiding intelligence at work in the origin of
species displaying exquisite adaptations ...
In his book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century,
Shapiro refers to this concept of "natural genetic engineering", which
he says, has proved troublesome, because many scientists feel that it
supports the intelligent design argument. He suggests that
"function-oriented capacities [can] be attributed to cells", even though
this is "the kind of teleological thinking that scientists have been
taught to avoid at all costs".
Interacting whole
The metaphysical theologian Norris Clarke shared an argument to his fellow professors at Fordham University that was popularised by Peter Kreeft
in his 'Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God'. The argument states
that as components are ordered universally in relation to one another,
and are defined by these connections (for example, every two hydrogen
atoms are ordered to form a compound with one oxygen atom.) Therefore,
none of the parts are self-sufficient, and cannot be explained
individually. However, the whole cannot be explained either because it
is composed of separate beings and is not a whole. From here, three
conclusions can be found: firstly, as the system cannot in any way
explain itself, it requires an efficient cause. Secondly, it must be an
intelligent mind because the unity transcends every part, and thus must
have been conceived as an idea, because, by definition, only an idea can
hold together elements without destroying or fusing their distinctness.
An idea cannot exist without a creator, so there must be an intelligent
mind. Thirdly, the creative mind must be transcendent, because if it
were not, it would rely upon the system of space and time, despite
having created it. Such an idea is absurd. As a conclusion, therefore,
the universe relies upon a transcendent creative mind.
Criticism
Classical
The
original development of the argument from design was in reaction to
atomistic, explicitly non-teleological understandings of nature.
Socrates, as reported by Plato and Xenophon, was reacting to such
natural philosophers. While less has survived from the debates of the
Hellenistic and Roman eras, it is clear from sources such as Cicero and Lucretius,
that debate continued for generations, and several of the striking
metaphors used still today, such as the unseen watchmaker, and the infinite monkey theorem,
have their roots in this period. While the Stoics became the most
well-known proponents of the argument from design, the atomistic counter
arguments were refined most famously by the Epicureans.
On the one hand, they criticized the supposed evidence for intelligent
design, and the logic of the Stoics. On the defensive side, they were
faced with the challenge of explaining how un-directed chance can cause
something which appears to be a rational order. Much of this defence
revolved around arguments such as the infinite monkey metaphor.
Democritus had already apparently used such arguments at the time of
Socrates, saying that there will be infinite planets, and only some
having an order like the planet we know. But the Epicureans refined this
argument, by proposing that the actual number of types of atoms in
nature is small, not infinite, making it less coincidental that after a
long period of time, certain orderly outcomes will result.
These were not the only positions held in classical times. A more
complex position also continued to be held by some schools, such as the
Neoplatonists, who, like Plato and Aristotle, insisted that Nature did
indeed have a rational order, but were concerned about how to describe
the way in which this rational order is caused. According to Plotinus
for example, Plato's metaphor of a craftsman should be seen only as a
metaphor, and Plato should be understood as agreeing with Aristotle that
the rational order in nature works through a form of causation unlike
everyday causation. In fact, according to this proposal each thing
already has its own nature, fitting into a rational order, whereby the
thing itself is "in need of, and directed towards, what is higher or
better".
David Hume
David Hume outlined his criticisms of the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
Louis Loeb writes that David Hume, in his Enquiry, "insists that inductive inference cannot justify belief in extended objects". Loeb also quotes Hume as writing:
It
is only when two species of objects are found to be constantly
conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other.… If experience and
observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can
reasonably follow in inference of this nature; both the effect and cause
must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and
causes…which we have found, in many instances, to be conjoined with
another.… [The proponents of the argument] always suppose the universe,
an effect quite singular and unparalleled, to be the proof of a Deity, a
cause no less singular and unparalleled.
Loeb notes that "we observe neither God nor other universes, and
hence no conjunction involving them. There is no observed conjunction to
ground an inference either to extended objects or to God, as unobserved
causes."
Hume also presented a criticism of the argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The character Philo,
a religious sceptic, voices Hume's criticisms of the argument. He
argues that the design argument is built upon a faulty analogy as,
unlike with man-made objects, we have not witnessed the design of a
universe, so do not know whether the universe was the result of design.
Moreover, the size of the universe makes the analogy problematic:
although our experience of the universe is of order, there may be chaos
in other parts of the universe. Philo argues:
A very small part of this great
system, during a very short time, is very imperfectly discovered to us;
and do we thence pronounce decisively concerning the origin of the
whole?
— David Hume, Dialogues 2
Philo also proposes that the order in nature may be due to nature
alone. If nature contains a principle of order within it, the need for a
designer is removed. Philo argues that even if the universe is indeed
designed, it is unreasonable to justify the conclusion that the designer
must be an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God – the God of
classical theism.
It is impossible, he argues, to infer the perfect nature of a creator
from the nature of its creation. Philo argues that the designer may have
been defective or otherwise imperfect, suggesting that the universe may
have been a poor first attempt at design.
Hume also pointed out that the argument does not necessarily lead to
the existence of one God: “why may not several deities combine in
contriving and framing the world?” (p. 108).
Wesley C. Salmon
developed Hume's insights, arguing that all things in the universe
which exhibit order are, to our knowledge, created by material,
imperfect, finite beings or forces. He also argued that there are no
known instances of an immaterial, perfect, infinite being creating
anything. Using the probability calculus of Bayes Theorem, Salmon concludes that it is very improbable that the universe was created by the type of intelligent being theists argue for.
Nancy Cartwright accuses Salmon of begging the question.
One piece of evidence he uses in his probabilistic argument – that
atoms and molecules are not caused by design – is equivalent to the
conclusion he draws, that the universe is probably not caused by design.
The atoms and molecules are what the universe is made up of and whose
origins are at issue. Therefore, they cannot be used as evidence against
the theistic conclusion.
Immanuel Kant
Referring to it as the physico-theological proof, Immanuel Kant discussed the teleological argument in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Even though he referred to it as "the oldest, clearest and most
appropriate to human reason", he nevertheless rejected it, heading
section VI with the words, "On the impossibility of a
physico-theological proof."
In accepting some of Hume's criticisms, Kant wrote that the argument
"proves at most intelligence only in the arrangement of the 'matter' of
the universe, and hence the existence not of a 'Supreme Being', but of
an 'Architect'". Using the argument to try to prove the existence of God
required "a concealed appeal to the Ontological argument".
Does not prove the existence of God
Voltaire
argued that, at best, the teleological argument could only indicate the
existence of a powerful, but not necessarily all-powerful or
all-knowing, intelligence.
In his Traité de métaphysique Voltaire
argued that, even if the argument from design could prove the existence
of a powerful intelligent designer, it would not prove that this
designer is God.
... from this sole argument I
cannot conclude anything further than that it is probable that an
intelligent and superior being has skillfully prepared and fashioned the
matter. I cannot conclude from that alone that this being has made
matter out of nothing and that he is infinite in every sense.
— Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique
Søren Kierkegaard
questioned the existence of God, rejecting all rational arguments for
God's existence (including the teleological argument) on the grounds
that reason is inevitably accompanied by doubt.
He proposed that the argument from design does not take into
consideration future events which may serve to undermine the proof of
God's existence: the argument would never finish proving God's
existence. In the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard writes:
The works of God are such that only
God can perform them. Just so, but where then are the works of the God?
The works from which I would deduce his existence are not directly and
immediately given. The wisdom in nature, the goodness, the wisdom in the
governance of the world – are all these manifest, perhaps, upon the
very face of things? Are we not here confronted with the most terrible
temptations to doubt, and is it not impossible finally to dispose of all
these doubts? But from such an order of things I will surely not
attempt to prove God's existence; and even if I began I would never
finish, and would in addition have to live constantly in suspense, lest
something so terrible should suddenly happen that my bit of proof would
be demolished.
— Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments
Argument from improbability
Richard Dawkins is harshly critical of intelligent design in his book The God Delusion. In this book, he contends that an appeal to intelligent design can provide no explanation for biology because it not only begs the question
of the designer's own origin but raises additional questions: an
intelligent designer must itself be far more complex and difficult to
explain than anything it is capable of designing.
He believes the chances of life arising on a planet like the Earth are
many orders of magnitude less probable than most people would think, but
the anthropic principle effectively counters skepticism with regard to improbability. For example Astronomer Fred Hoyle suggested that potential for life on Earth was no more probable than a Boeing 747
being assembled by a hurricane from the scrapyard. Dawkins argues that a
one-time event is indeed subject to improbability but once under way,
natural selection itself is nothing like random chance. Furthermore, he
refers to his counter argument to the argument from improbability by
that same name:
The argument from improbability is
the big one. In the traditional guise of the argument from design, it is
easily today's most popular argument offered in favour of the existence
of God and it is seen, by an amazingly large number of theists, as
completely and utterly convincing. It is indeed a very strong and, I
suspect, unanswerable argument—but in precisely the opposite direction
from the theist's intention. The argument from improbability, properly
deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist. My name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit.
The creationist misappropriation of the argument from
improbability always takes the same general form, and it doesn't make
any difference ... [if called] 'intelligent design' (ID). Some observed
phenomenon—often a living creature or one of its more complex organs,
but it could be anything from a molecule up to the universe itself—is
correctly extolled as statistically improbable. Sometimes the language
of information theory is used: the Darwinian is challenged to explain
the source all the information in living matter, in the technical sense
of information content as a measure of improbability or 'surprise
value'… However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain
by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as
improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.
... The whole argument turns on the familiar question 'Who made God?'...
A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because
any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to
demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an
infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. This
argument... demonstrates that God, though not technically disprovable,
is very very improbable indeed.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Dawkins considered the argument from improbability to be "much more
powerful" than the teleological argument, or argument from design,
although he sometimes implies the terms are used interchangeably. He
paraphrases St. Thomas' teleological argument as follows: "Things in the
world, especially living things, look as though they have been
designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed.
Therefore there must have been a designer, and we call him God."
Philosopher Edward Feser has accused Dawkins of misunderstanding the teleological argument, particularly Aquinas' version.
A flawed argument
George H. Smith, in his book Atheism: The Case Against God, points out what he considers to be a flaw in the argument from design:
Now consider the idea that nature itself is the product
of design. How could this be demonstrated? Nature... provides the basis
of comparison by which we distinguish between designed objects and
natural objects. We are able to infer the presence of design only to the
extent that the characteristics of an object differ from natural
characteristics. Therefore, to claim that nature as a whole was designed
is to destroy the basis by which we differentiate between artifacts and
natural objects.
Perception of purpose in biology
The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse
has argued that Darwin treated the structure of organisms as if they
had a purpose: "the organism-as-if-it-were-designed-by God picture was
absolutely central to Darwin's thinking in 1862, as it always had been".
He refers to this as "the metaphor of design ... Organisms give the
appearance of being designed, and thanks to Charles Darwin's discovery
of natural selection we know why this is true." In his review of Ruse's
book, R.J. Richards writes, "Biologists quite routinely refer to the
design of organisms and their traits, but properly speaking it's apparent design to which they refer – an 'as if' design." Robert Foley
refers to this as "the illusion of purpose, design, and progress". He
adds, "there is no purpose in a fundamentally causative manner in
evolution but that the processes of selection and adaptation give the
illusion of purpose through the utter functionality and designed nature
of the biological world".
Richard Dawkins suggests that while biology can at first seem to
be purposeful and ordered, upon closer inspection its true function
becomes questionable. Dawkins rejects the claim that biology serves any
designed function, claiming rather that biology only mimics such
purpose. In his book The Blind Watchmaker,
Dawkins states that animals are the most complex things in the known
universe: "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the
appearance of having been designed for a purpose." He argues that
natural selection should suffice as an explanation of biological
complexity without recourse to divine providence.
However, theologian Alister McGrath has pointed out that the fine-tuning of carbon is even responsible for nature's ability to tune itself to any degree.
[The
entire biological] evolutionary process depends upon the unusual
chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as well as other
elements, creating highly complex molecules that are stable over
prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of conveying
genetic information (especially DNA). ... Whereas it might be argued
that nature creates its own fine-tuning, this can only be done if the
primordial constituents of the universe are such that an evolutionary
process can be initiated. The unique chemistry of carbon is the ultimate
foundation of the capacity of nature to tune itself.
Proponents of intelligent design creationism, such as William A. Dembski
question the philosophical assumptions made by critics with regard to
what a designer would or would not do. Dembski claims that such
arguments are not merely beyond the purview of science: often they are
tacitly or overtly theological while failing to provide a serious
analysis of the hypothetical objective's relative merit. Some critics,
such as Stephen Jay Gould
suggest that any purported 'cosmic' designer would only produce optimal
designs, while there are numerous biological criticisms to demonstrate
that such an ideal is manifestly untenable. Against these ideas, Dembski
characterizes both Dawkins' and Gould's argument as a rhetorical straw man. He suggests a principle of constrained optimization more realistically describes the best any designer could hope to achieve:
Not knowing the objectives of the
designer, Gould was in no position to say whether the designer proposed a
faulty compromise among those objectives… In criticizing design,
biologists tend to place a premium on functionalities of individual
organisms and see design as optimal to the degree that those individual
functionalities are maximized. But higher-order designs of entire
ecosystems might require lower-order designs of individual organisms to
fall short of maximal function.
Other criticisms
The
teleological argument assumes that one can infer the existence of
intelligent design merely by examination, and because life is
reminiscent of something a human might design, it too must have been
designed. However, considering "snowflakes and crystals of certain
salts", "[i]n no case do we find intelligence". "There are other ways
that order and design can come about" such as by "purely physical
forces."
The design claim can be challenged as an argument from analogy.
Supporters of design suggest that natural objects and man-made objects
have many similar properties, and man-made objects have a designer.
Therefore, it is probable that natural objects must be designed as well.
However, proponents must demonstrate that all the available evidence
has been taken into account.
Eric Rust argues that, when speaking of familiar objects such as
watches, "we have a basis to make an inference from such an object to
its designer". However, the "universe is a unique and isolated case" and
we have nothing to compare it with, so "we have no basis for making an
inference such as we can with individual objects. ... We have no basis
for applying to the whole universe what may hold of constituent elements
in the universe."
Most professional biologists support the modern evolutionary synthesis, not merely as an alternative explanation for the complexity of life but a better explanation with more supporting evidence. Living organisms obey the same physical laws as inanimate objects. Over very long periods of time self-replicating structures arose and later formed DNA.
Similar discussions in other civilizations
Hinduism
Nyaya,
the Hindu school of logic, had a version of the argument from design.
P.G. Patil writes that, in this view, it is not the complexity of the
world from which one can infer the existence of a creator, but the fact
that "the world is made up of parts". In this context, it is the Supreme
Soul, Ishvara, who created all the world.
The argument is in five parts:
- The ... world ... has been constructed by an intelligent agent.
- On account of being an effect.
- Each and every effect has been constructed by an intelligent agent, just like a pot.
- And the world is an effect.
- Therefore, it has been constructed by an intelligent agent.
However, other Hindu schools, such as Samkhya, deny that the existence of God can ever be proved, because such a creator can never be perceived. Krishna Mohan Banerjee, in his Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy,
has the Samkhya speaker saying, "the existence of God cannot be
established because there is no proof. ... nor can it be proved by
Inference, because you cannot exhibit an analogous instance."
Buddhist criticism of Hindu Nyaya logic
Buddhism
denies the existence of a creator god, and rejects the Nyaya syllogism
for the teleological argument as being "logically flawed". Buddhists
argue that "the 'creation' of the world cannot be shown to be analogous
to the creation of a human artifact, such as a pot".
Confucianism
The 18th century German philosopher Christian Wolff once thought that Confucius
was a godless man, and that "the ancient Chinese had no natural
religion, since they did not know the creator of the world". However,
later, Wolff changed his mind to some extent. "On Wolff's reading,
Confucius's religious perspective is thus more or less the weak deistic
one of Hume's Cleanthes."
Taoism
The Taoist writings of the 6th-century-BC philosopher Laozi (also known as Lao Tzu) have similarities with modern naturalist science. B. Schwartz notes that, in Taoism, "The processes of nature are not guided by a teleological consciousness ... the tao [dao] is not consciously providential.
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