The teleological argument, which has also been called the argument from design, is one of my favorites. It was originally set forth by William Paley, a professor at Cambridge in the late eighteenth century. Rather than give the premises and conclusion of the argument, I will tell a short story that demonstrates this argument best.
If you are walking along the beach and find a beautiful golden watch that accurately tells time with an hour, minute, and second hand, where will you think the watch came from? Most likely, you will think that the watch had a maker or designer who put the watch together. Somehow, after making and potentially selling the watch, the watch was lost. Perhaps it fell out of a beach bag, or perhaps it was lost to sea in a ship wreck. Regardless of how the watch got there, it is very likely that the watch had a designer. As big as the ocean is, I doubt anyone would look out to the sea and think to themselves, "this watch must have been tossed around in the sea for years and molded into the perfectly working mechanism it is today." This watch we will call a teleological system. A teleological system is any mechanism that exhibits design.
We can apply the same story to the universe. It has many pieces that work together in incredible fashion. This can be seen on a large scale: The sun rising consistently, the stars rotating according to season, and the tides rising and falling. It can also be seen on a much more minute scale: DNA copying itself, cells joining together to create new life, and the brain sending signals to your foot to get it to move. The world is full of teleological systems, and many systems contain many smaller systems working together seamlessly. If one would assume a simple watch is made by a designer, why would one not think that all of the intricate "machines" in our universe do not also have a designer? Why would one think that a much more difficult system should have come about by random chance? It would seem, then, that there is some good reason to believe in God.
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This is an excellent opening statement. I find it hard to objectively argue christianity using biblical arguments alone. This is a purely logical argument establishing inteligent design first.
ReplyDeletePlease Read HUME! Then post a reply to him.
ReplyDeleteRandom chance and design are a false dichotomy.
ReplyDeleteI'll work on Hume. I've read him before but can't fully remember his reply to this argument. I'm not sure what you are trying to say by claiming random chance and design are a false dichotomy. If the two exist and are not opposed, then there must still be a level of design. Are you saying that Natural Selection is the designer?
ReplyDeleteIt may take me some time to respond to comments here for the next couple of weeks, I will be out of town. But thanks for posting!
Well here is the deal with random chance and designer. What about natural processes? (like the theory of evolution that you do not believe) That isn't random and it doesn't have a designer. Its a whole nother option!
ReplyDeleteIf you are taking requests for topics in this blog, I would really be interested on your take on the problem of evil.
ReplyDeleteI think natural processes tend to make things fall apart rather than build them together. The world is going from a state of order to disorder in most cases. And I am not sure how natural processes do not involve random chance. If there is no God, random chance is the only thing that could have initiated natural processes.
ReplyDeleteI have a big take on the Problem of evil, an entire paper on it in fact. I will try and post something soon.
Sorry I have not replied to these comments in so long, they were posted during my honeymoon and I never noticed them. I am a terrible blogger I guess.
-TRG.