Persuasive Essay : Paley 's Argument From Design

Design is defined by Webster as “to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan; to conceive and plan out in the mind; to have as a purpose; to devise for a specific function or end; to conceive or execute a plan; or to draw, lay out, or prepare a design.”

Many philosophers have posed the question: How can I prove that God exists? Thomas Aquinas attempted to prove the existence of God in a rational way through his Cosmological argument. Aquinas argued that every event as we observe it has a cause and a casual chain cannot be infinite. Therefore, a first cause is necessary and this cause is God. Aquinas’ argument is unsuccessful because it assumes that God is a necessary being, fails to prove that the world is not an infinite chain of events, and undermines the basis of his argument by saying that God is infinite.

William Paley further begs the question in stating that because of perceived complexities in an entity, it must have been designed. This perceived relation between complexity and design is an inherently

Teleological is the main argument for God’s existence. There is order and purpose for everything and these things work well together because ALL things were designed by God’s perfect order. The argument that we were all made in His image meaning we are made by design and God is our designer. As a gun is to a gunsmith; so is a human to God is a teleological example. He is our creator (designer) just as the gunsmith makes firearms.

The Teleological Argument defends the proof for the existence of a God, it is also called The Design Argument. It discusses the intelligent design in the universe. The supporting theory behind this is that the universe is so vastly complex and well balanced that only a creator could have designed it. All of the sophistication and detail could not have occurred by chance. When examining the immense universe and seeing the complexity, intricate detail, and unique order there are a variety of explanations for how it may have come to existence, however because of these complexities and order only a designer could have designed it. The basic idea of the teleological argument is that the world does have intelligent purpose, by looking at nature and seeing its order unity and designed complexity. If one is to look at all living creature, the existence of DNA shows intelligent design. Someone or something had to design the information imprinted in the DNA. There is no absolute way this could have happened by chance.Therefore, there must be an intelligent designer . There must be a God. Even if we apply scientific theory; I.e. The Big Bang theory, The teleological argument supports the existence of a big banger. This big banger has always existed; not requiring a beginning or an end.

The Design Argument is an argument that says there is a “God” who is the creator of all things. Within this argument, it is stated that things have to be designed – the main example being used is a machine. Cleanthes compares the universe to a machine. They both have many different parts that all work together, but how? The Design Argument says that “God”, or some deity, designed these different elements and pieces in a way so that they can all work together. For a machine to work, all of the pieces must fit together purposefully. When you think about the creator of a machine, for example an engineer, you would most likely think of some intelligent person who created the pieces to make them all fit and work together. Because the world is similar to a machine, by analogy, it too must be created by something intelligent – but on a much grander scale than us.

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.

He explicitly states, “It is not necessary that a machine be perfect in order to show with what design it was made; still less necessary, where the only question is whether it was made with any design at all” (Paley 60). What Paley fails to talk about is the presence of natural evil in the world and how a defective design would to indicate that the designer is neither omnipotent nor all good. This brings up the problem of evil, which becomes a significant factor while looking at the characteristics of God. If God is omnipotent and all good then it can be said the world should be free from imperfections, but it is not, raising the question of whether or not God is in fact all-powerful and all good. Additionally, we cannot compare the world we live in to anything because of its complicated design.

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.

This is the second argument about God’s existence. Perhaps the most popular variant owed to this this argument is William Paley’s argument concerning the watch. Essentially, this argument states that after observing a watch, together with its intricate parts, which function together as a unit in an accurate manner to keep time, anybody must realize that such piece of machinery has its creator, as it is too complicated to have easily come into presence through other means, like evolution (Ratzsch, 2005). The following is a skeleton of this argument:

Richard Swinburne argued that the design and precision of the universe cannot be explained by science, and can only be explained in terms of the purposes of an intelligent being: God. He argues; “Of course there is order in the world: if there were not order, humanity would not exist to discover it!”

Using the example of a flawless watch in the sand that must have come from a watchmaker it continues on to explain that there is a purpose in the world. There must be an intelligent design that created the right conditions to support life on earth. However complex the world may be though it is possible that the universe is a result of the perfect goldilocks conditions and can be explained naturalistically. The world is not so perfect because of pain and suffering. Natural disasters are a daily occurrence and if God was all of the Omni’s and created the world perfectly they wouldn’t occur. The world does not have to have a intelligent being behind it all it could be a result of just right conditions. The teleological argument cannot be proven to be true but neither can the counterargument. It cannot be known for certain if there is an intelligent being that created the universe with a purpose or if it’s just a result of the perfect goldilocks

The argument from design or the teleological argument points to the existence of order and direction in nature to a kind of purpose. The argument essentially proves the existence of God. A designer must exist because the universe and living things exhibit marks of design in their complexity. Design-type arguments are unproblematic when based upon things nature plainly could not or would not produce, like human artifacts. If designs entail a designer, and the universe shows marks of design, then the universe was created. An intelligent designer is an entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the development of life. Essentially, the claim being made is that certain aspects of the universe are too perfectly

He provides two explanations for this; that it is the result of random natural occurrences, or they are the result of design by God. Paley rejects that it is a random,

The argument of design says that in order for things to come about, there has to be a designer. It states that the world constitutes