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The Design Argument Essay

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The Design Argument

The name teleological is derived from the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘purpose’. Thus nature is viewed as directed in order that something beneficial may result. More popularly it is referred to as the ‘argument from design’, but this wording assumes the very thing that has to be proved. A better description would be the ‘argument for design’.

This argument is by far the most popular and most often expressed by people. This is mainly due to the fact that people would like to re-affirm their belief in their God. As, if everyone around them were trying to prove that God didn’t existed, then them believing in a God would probably seem …show more content…

Over the centuries there have been many people attempting to answer this question. One of these was Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was born near Naples, in Italy in the year 1225-1274. He later entered the Dominican Order. So we can see that he was quite a religious figure. Over the years he has greatly influenced teleological thinking, he has written a book called ‘The Five Ways’ which is arguing for the existence of God. Basically his main argument is that non-intelligent material things produce beneficial order. For this to happen there must be an intelligent being maneuvering these actions. And this being is God. As in his book he says,

‘We see that things that lack knowledge such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.’

What Aquinas means by this is that objects like trees, stars and other non-intelligent bodies do the same thing day in day out. But if we look at their functions in great depth we can see that without them doing their own concise job it would be hard for man and animals to exist. Let’s look at the acorn tree for example, if it didn’t drop its acorns in the autumn then animals such as squirrels would die over the winter as they would not have any food to take with them

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