It does not prove God’s existence; it argues that there must be a necessary being which created the universe. This is consistent with some views of God, however, it is far from an all-encompassing explanation. The argument is not considered to be the end-all-be-all defense for the existence of God. However, it is a good
In it, he wrote that if a pocket watch is found on the ground, it seems logical to assume that someone dropped it and that it was made by one or more watchmakers, and not by natural forces. He therefore argued just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watch-maker, so likewise the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker. Paley went on to argue that the complex structures of living things and the remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an intelligent designer. An intelligent designer, sometimes referred to as an intelligent agent is “the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life.” He believed the natural world was the creation of God and showed the nature of the creator. According to Paley, God had carefully designed "even the most humble and insignificant organisms" and all of their minute features (such as the wings and antennae of earwigs).
Similarly, William Paley, strongly believed that the observation of the intricate complexity of the universe concludes that there must be a creator. Paley believed that this creator was God. In ‘Natural Theology’, he used the analogy of the watch to his ideas. He explained that if you came across an intricately designed watch, you could conclude that watch was not made by chance and was designed with purpose and placed there. For Paley, the different parts of watch work perfectly together to fulfil a purpose.
The design argument was formulated by Paley. His watch analogy is an a posteriori argument which gives empirical evidence the structure is that it explains that the existence of God is the best explanation for the evidence available. His argument says that the world and everything in it are so intricate and complex that they must have been designed. He goes on the mention that if he found a watch lying on the ground he would take from it that there must have been a designer due to the organisation of parts put together for a purpose so even if we had no previous knowledge of watchers or makers we would look at all of the small pieces that make up a watch, arranged in a specific way meaning they fulfil the purpose of telling the time and all of those pieces could not have fallen together so therefore must have been designed. This is an analogy of things in the natural world for example, the human eye is made of small parts working together to create the purpose of sight, we infer this must be the result of design not chance.
He believes there truly is no comparison. In fact, he believes that there is nothing we can compare this world to because, as far as we know, there is not another world even similar to us. We have no standard in which we can judge our world because our world is all we know. According to Hume, we cannot assume a Christian God as the creator. He was not sure we could even assume a creator, let alone choose one religions God to be the true one.
PART A: Explain Mill’s challenge to the teleological argument. (25marks) The teleological argument claims that God designed the world with a purpose. God is often described to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. Mill criticises the idea of the teleological argument, he doesn’t believe that the world is designed by a God because within nature there are cruelty and crimes that are unpunished. Mill argues that if God designed the universe he wouldn’t have created something containing any evil at all it wouldn’t fit in with his description.
The teleological argument states that because the natural world displays some purposive order or design then there must be an intelligent designer (Evans pg 77). McCloskey goes on to state that there are no indisputable examples of design. The issue with this statement is from a theistic perspective there is plenty of evidence that state the opposite. The design of the human body in itself is an example of an intelligent design. Our bodies operate on its basic functions identical yet externally we are individuals.
An a priori argument is an argument in which all the premises are a priori propositions. The Ontological Argument for the existence of God was supposed to be an a priori argument. Argument from Design – an a posteriori argument that God exists, advanced by Aquinas and Palely, criticized by Hume. The argument claims that some feature of the world (like the simplicity of its laws or the fact that organisms are intricate and well-adapted) should be explained by postulating the existence of an intelligent designer, namely God. Argument from Evil – an argument that claims that the existence of evil shows either that there is no God, or that God can’t be all-powerful, all knowing, and all good.
However Kant challenged Descartes argument, he said that an idea of something does not make that something exist. Kant used the example of a unicorn to help demonstrate his point: we may have an idea of exactly what a unicorn is in our head; however this idea does not cause the unicorn to exist in reality. Kant then concludes that existence is something additional to the mere idea of a thing and then criticises the ontological argument by stating that existence is not a predicate of God. Kant also criticised the ontological argument in the form of drawing a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements – he said that analytic statements tell us something factual and true whereas synthetic statements tell us something about what exists in reality, and can also be untrue. Kant then argued that God’s existence in the ontological argument is based on a synthetic statements (‘God is that which than greater cannot be imagined’ and ‘existing is greater than not existing’) therefore more evidence and proof is required in addition to the ontological argument in order to verify the existence of God.
The universe is like the watch in the sense that it has complex features that work together perfectly; therefore the universe like the watch must have been designed. Teleologist’s like Paley would argue that the only one with such power to crate the universe is God. However this argument does not demonstrate empirical evidence to God’s existence, it only concludes that there is a designer, not that he designer is God. Therefore ‘God exists’ is not an empirical hypothesis as there is no known empirical method of proving God’s existence. Secondly ‘God exists’ is not an empirical hypothesis because the knowledge