Explain the Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God Essay

His second argument for design he makes a comparison between machines and humans saying that both are equally complex and it was built with a purpose in mind. If changes are made to the watch such as taking away an internal component that makes it runs, or the minute or hour hand, its purpose would suddenly change and it would no longer be a watch.

Throughout many centuries philosophers have argued over the existence of God. In today’s society many people tend to hesitate in believing in a God because of the new scientific discoveries. For example, in the mid 1990s scientists built the Hubble telescope which revealed that there were billions of galaxies in our universe, this discovery led some people to question how can one divine being create so much and yet have a personal connection with everyone in the world. Which, in result, may take some scientific explanation to strengthen one’s belief in God, but for those who believe there is a benevolent God they do not need science to show proof that he exists because of their morals and beliefs they have been raised to follow. In this paper I will prove that God does exist by explaining the ontological, cosmological, and design argument.

During the 1800th century, William Paley, an English philosopher of religion and ethics, wrote the essay The Argument from Design. In The Argument from Design, Paley tries to prove the existence of a supreme being through the development of a special kind of argument known as the teleological argument. The teleological argument is argument by analogy, an argument based on the similarities between two different subjects. This essay purposefully attempts to break down Paley’s argument and does so in the following manner: firstly, Paley’s basis for the teleological argument is introduced; secondly, Paley’s argument is derived and analyzed; thirdly, the connection between Paley’s argument and the existence of a supreme being is made; and

In his discussion of the argument from design, which he links with teleological principles, the author refers to the concept of design in a way that alludes to the conviction that there are certain divine manifestations in the world that are so perfect that they must revolve around a grand architect who conceived them to be that way. Therefore, he says that proving such an argument requires "indisputable examples of design or purpose" (McCloskey, 1968, p. 64). However, this standard of indisputability that McCloskey is holding this argument to,

William Paley found a watch on the ground and assumed that the watch was put together for a purpose. His arguments, then, lead towards the teleological argument, which starts from relatively specific observations to the crucial notion of purpose where there is an intelligent cause to the universe. Paley’s whole argument discusses how there must be a maker of the universe since there is a maker of the watch, which must be God. In contrast, a telescope has a designer, so an eye must also have a designer,

The Anthropic principle is a key feature of the Design argument and suits the theory of Design qua Regularity proposed by F.R. Tennant showing that science and religion are one in the same. He argues that human life flourishes on earth, therefore there must have been a supreme designer, that designer being God. Tennant accepts the scientific reasoning of evolution as a fine balance of ‘’fine tuning’’ and God’s chosen way to support life. Tennant also argues that ‘’the world could so easily have been chaotic’’ and that ‘’the universe is not chaotic, nature is the outcome of intelligent design.’’ Others argue that the earth runs so smoothly and everything works together therefore ‘’The world is compatible with a single throw of a dice and common sense is not foolish in suspecting the dice has been loaded’’ cited by Vardy. James Lovelock of the 20th century furthered the anthropic principle in ways of the Gaia Hypothesis, ‘’engineering on a planetary scale’’ cited by Vardy. He suggests that the oxygen content in the air, the salt content in the sea and the temperature of the earth are all precise in order for human life to flourish. If the oxygen content in the air

In this paper, I will break apart J. L. Mackie’s stern defense of the logical problem of evil, which he uses to suggest the God does not exist. I will attempt to defend the notion that both God and evil, in the form of human creation, can exist in the world by way of suggesting that freewill is the answer. Furthermore, I will strengthen the argument for freewill against Mackie’s defense, which suggests that the argument of freewill also compromises the Omni-three nature of God. In part, I will back freewill by using Mackie’s own logic against him. In its totality, I will build up a strong force against the logical problem of evil, leaving room for both the existence of human formed evil and God in this world under the

Ultimately, Paley’s argument uses an inductive argument to suggest that all things with properties of intelligence and complexity must have an intelligent designer who designs them for a specific purpose.

Although explicated on many occasions and by many different authors, the teleological argument for the existence of God provides the best springboard from which to launch contemporary convictions of faith. In the revised edition of his earlier The Existence of God, Richard Swinburne constructs a solid outline that reveals the exact structure of the teleological argument. He presents both forms of the teleological argument , holds each under the light of skeptical review and then provides insight and defense that allows for careful philosophical review.

As a teleological argument, Paley’s argument for the existence of God can be distilled as: (1) everything has a purpose, (2) creators define a thing’s purpose, so (3) therefore everything has a creator. After making his argument, Paley refutes eight common objections to his argument including the objections that not witnessing an object’s creation means it was not created and that imperfection of creation means that there was not a creator.

The Design Argument, or teleological argument, focuses on Thomas Aquinas’ fifth proof for God’s existence. This proof states that if an event does not occur by coincidence or chance, then the aforementioned events are purposefully orchestrated or of a certain design. The teleological argument essentially implicates God as the ultimate designer and creator of all events and matters on earth; however, there has been much criticism of whether or not God is truly the

A design argument is more commonly know as a Teleological one, which is an argument for the existence of a creator or god “based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural or physical world”.The argument has been discussed all the way back to the time of Socrates and Plato. In my essay I will be evaluating one argument put forward by a famous philosopher, in this case William Paley, an English clergyman born in 1743, in which he tries to show similarities in the design of nature and the design of man made artefacts.

There is no doubt that one of the most debated and misunderstood topics is the creation of the universe and furthermore the existence of God. In natural theology, a theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason, a cosmological argument is an argument in which the existence of a unique being such as God is deduced from facts or alleged facts concerning causation, change, motion, or contingency in respect of the universe as a whole or processes within it. Like all cosmological arguments, the Kalām cosmological argument is an argument from the existence of the universe to the existence of God. A defender of this argument is William Lane Craig, an American theologian, Christian apologist, and analytic philosopher. In this paper, I will describe Craig’s argument for the existence of God and oppose Craig’s argument.

Through all of time there has been a fight against God. Man has constanly rejected his Creator and denied the existance of not only their God, but also as a domino effect, the existance of themselves. Research proves, by proofs from the Bible and nature itself, that all of this universe is simply a work of the Master Builder.

Firstly, we shall focus on the Design (or to use its philosophically technical term, the teleological argument). There are numerous variants of the Design argument, however we shall be focusing on Paley’s version (reference 1) of this theory. Paley’s version of the Design argument is based upon the idea that by looking around at certain features of the world (for example an inanimate object like a rock or say a living creature like dolphin or a person like myself) and theorising that they are too complex and intricate to randomly just manifest. They must have been created by a higher, more intelligent power and thus, if this is accepted as being so, then this proves beyond doubt that God exists.