The teleological argument offers a way we can explain God’s existence in terms of design and nature. It explains that the world is too complex and diverse for there not to be a designer, such as God, at work. This argument derives from Thomas Aquinas’ work from his Summa Theologiae. His fifth way suggests that inanimate objects cannot have ordered themselves since they lack intelligence. For example, planets could not have put themselves into orbit, yet they are in perfect order and placement so therefore there must be a designer, an intelligent being, that did so.
‘We see examples of design throughout the natural world and conclude that an intelligent designer is clearly demonstrated.’- Assess whether this argument succeeds. Because of the complex nature of the world and the ability of things to fill such a specific purpose, we can conclude that this cannot be merely coincidence. We can infer that an intelligent designer such as God has created the universes and everything in them because of this. I will seek to prove that this argument does not succeed and that there are in fact alternative explanations for what a theist would see as ‘intelligent design’. The design argument was formulated by Paley.
Also he believes that if you asked someone who doesn’t believe in God what their definition of God was, then it would also be something along the lines of this. He then later goes on to say that even if you don’t believe God to exist, then he must exist through this definition. This is because if God is the greatest being, and an atheist also defines him like this, then in order to be the greatest being he must also exist in reality, as it is greater to exist in reality than just the mind. Anselm then uses an analogy of a painter and a painting to help people understand this concept further. He says that when a painter plans his work before he starts it, then he has an idea in his head of what it will end up looking like, however because he hasn’t painted it yet it doesn’t exist.
As we see in this segment of Document 6 “Reason is in the estimation of the philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace determines the Christian's action; reason the philosopher's.” the philosophers of the Enlightenment strove to explain everything by means of logic and reason which was a mindset that was pioneered during the Scientific Revolution. Essentially, Enlightenment thinkers took the rational mindset from scientific discoveries of the Scientific Revolution and began to apply it to society. Isaac Newton's discoveries established the principles of the Enlightenment. At the time, discovery was looked at with skepticism as people had become accustomed to the bible being the only source of information about the world.
THEOLOGY ESSAY A)EXPLAIN THE KEY IDEAS OF THE DESIGN ARGUMENT AND GIVE REASONS WHY SOME PHILOSOPHERS REJECTED THIS ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. The Design argument looks at the order and purpose, or telos, in the world and states that it implies that there must be a designer who made the world ‘just right’ for human existence. Religious believers go on to state that this designer is God. The argument states that if one uses one’s senses to look at order, such as gravity and the motion of the planets, which exists in the world, it is likely that one will accept that there is a designer God who created the world and gave it this order. Thus, the argument is a posteriori, based on experience, and inductive, containing a conclusion that
The watch analogy is a teleological argument, meaning it is an a posteriori (after experience) argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe. By way of
He was an idealist in the sense that we are aware of the real world and a transcendent because he thought that ultimate reality goes beyond our sense experience. He believed that there are certain things that we couldn’t gain from sense experience alone e.g. a sense of time and space. Kant thought everything was bound by time and space. If we didn’t have intuitions of space and time there would be no experience at all so we must possess some innate knowledge in order for us to live within it.
The most famous one was written by William Paley (1743-1805). He claimed that the complexity and efficiency of natural objects such as the eye, which is very complex and has a very important function, is evidence that God must have designed it. Paley says that just by looking at a watch we already know, subconsciously, that a watchmaker designed it. So when looking at the eye, why cannot we agree a maker designed it? This argument relies on the idea that a deigned object, a watch in our case, is very similar to the eye, which is a natural object.
The design argument outlines that the world has been designed, and therefore requires a designer. This designer, has to have been God because he is the only being that has the power and will to do so. This argument is a posteriori because it bases it’s argument on observations within the Universe. It is also an inductive proof because it has more than one possible conclusion. There are a few ideas that support the idea of the world being designed, one of them being Aquinas’s Fifth Way.
1. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument on Possibility and Necessity presents God as the absolutely necessary being that ultimately explains the existence of individual contingent beings. The universe is contingent, even if it arguably is without a cause. Because of its contingency, God is the ultimate reason for the existence of the universe. 2.