Teleological Argument Analysis

The question of God’s existence has been pondered by humans for centuries. There are an infinite number of different opinions, arguments, and ideas favoring for or against the idea of God. Personally, I strongly believe in God not only due to my religious affiliation, but also because of my own opinions, ideas, and experience. To begin with, the complexity of Earth and the life that has formed upon it cannot be based just on luck or chance. I believe that ultimately God, as a power, rather than a mystical being is the one created and controls the universe. Although the God and his authority are not entirely comprehensible by humans, it’s our faith as worshiper that eventually lead us to a greater understanding.

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

William Paley's argument for the existence of God is an important aspect of the Design argument, which argues that the universe is being directed towards an end purpose due to the a posteriori (subject to experience) evidence of an intelligent designer, who is God. This is because it is perhaps arguably the most famous version, and the theory which modern-day theories for the Design argument are built upon.

Paley’s made his argument using an analogy to prove the existence of god, using a watchmaker analogy and to image if we found a watch on the ground and could it have been possible for the watch to simply appear randomly, spontaneously on its own. Paley was arguing that the teleology demonstrated by a watch would conclude that it was designed by an intelligent creator with a particular end in mind. While Aquinas has a design argument of his own ,the Teleological argument focuses on the condition that allows for life in the universe to only occur when certain fundamental physical constants are within a very narrow range if one of many fundamental constant are off slightly, then the universe would be unfit for the development of matter and life. Since these things are so finely tuned it appears an intelligent designer may have been involved in making sure these things happened so life could occur that designer Aquinas believes to be

1. The cosmos as we know it demands that there be an intelligent designer behind it.

William Paley’s teleological argument (also known as the argument from design) is an attempt to prove the existence of god. This argument succeeds in proving that while existence was created by an aggregation of forces, to define these forces, as a conscious, rational, and ultimately godlike is dubious. Although the conclusions are valid, the argument makes several logical errors. The teleological argument relies on inductive reasoning, rendering the argument itself valid, but unsound. The argument fails to apply its own line of reasoning to itself, resulting in infinite regression. Beyond the scope of its logical flaws, the arguments content lacks accurate comparisons. The argument hinges on a

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.

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.

Sir Thomas Aquinas and William Paley present two arguments for the existence of God. Aquinas defines God as omnibenevolent (all good) for his argument, and he continues in “The Five Ways” to present arguments to prove God’s existence (Rosen et al. 11). Paley, on the other hand, primarily defines God as a designer worthy of our admiration for his work (Rosen et al. 27). During class discussion, defining God involved three major qualities: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Both Aquinas and Paley are attempting to prove the existence of the (Christian) God associated with these qualities. Although Aquinas’s “Cosmological Argument” and Paley’s “Argument from Design” have different premises, both have a similar logical gap in their

The teleological argument is based around the idea that the universe in some way demands the existence of an intelligent being that designed the universe to

The teleological arguments talk about the existence of the universe, which is based from telos which means purpose or end. There is a great chance that the universe was created by a smart, brilliant trying to accomplish a purpose. In our readings, and our classes discussion we have read a lot about the teleological argument for the existence of god, our readings mentioned about William Paley, and it said that William Paley compared the universe to a watch, which has many parts that can work together that can create a purpose of the universe. Aside from the universe, and the design there is another intelligent being and that person us called God. This argument, is a form of an

I would like to argue against the teleological argument. “Should the outcome affect your opinion of the process” When we look at the argument from fine-tuning, it is easy to say a watch had to be created by a creator because we have direct evidence of it being created. But if everything was created by a creator then a sand particle on a beach must be equally as fine-tuned. We know the watch was finely tuned to work the way it does because we have direct evidence of humans creating it to have a function.

The philosophical arguments presented in this document are not of religious text, nor scientific observation or established fact. Rather the premise of this God proof is bring together and share the various theories on which other God proofs have established foundations. I have heard it quoted that “Philosophy goes where hard science can 't, or won 't. Philosophers have a license to.” Therefore, with this in mind, I attest that it is more than problematic to construct an argument authenticating the unequivocal proof of the existence God. If nothing else this may be food for thought.

I believe that that the Cosmological argument gives good reason to believe in the existence of God. The Cosmological argument focuses on everything having a cause except one thing that started it all, this starter is known as the “Prime Mover”. The Prime Mover is the one that starts everything without anything having a previous effect on it. With that people have assumed that the logical answer to who the prime mover is, is God. This to me seems the most logical of arguments because although there is the idea of eternity and an eternal cycle there has to be a starting point. I do not believe the argument is successful.

The most prominent of these arguments for/against the existence of god can be separated into four types. Firstly, the ‘cosmological arguments’ which explain the existence of the universe in reference to a being on whom all else depends for it’s existence (Routledge, 2000, p.758). Secondly, there are the ‘teleological arguments’ also known as the ‘arguments from design’, that posit an intelligent creator/designer of the physical world. Third, the ‘ontological arguments’ which concentrate on the idea of a perfect being that it is illogical to deny that such a being exists (Routledge, 2000, p.758). Last are ‘moral arguments’ for the existence of god, which argue that- if God does not exist, objective moral values don’t