The Teleological Argument

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.

The Israelites out of Egypt

Thousands of years ago the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They had been slaves for several generations, but they were eventually let go. I am not going to talk about the plagues or the parting of the red sea, but rather the beginning of the Jewish Religion.

The Jewish Law that was written by the Israelites while they were in the desert is one of the most complex religions in history. More importantly, it was one of the first monotheistic religions. It also became the most important and influential belief system in history.

How do those facts work as evidence for God? As I said before, the Israelites were slaves for generations. This means that they were uneducated and living in a very polytheistic country. When they left Egypt, it would have made sense if they began following a religion that was similar to Egypt’s, but they created an entire new one that was totally different from Egypt. The complexity of the religion, and the benefits of following many of the laws in that time, would have been impossible for a small and uneducated society to put together and then follow. But they did, and than their religion survived for thousands of years and changed the world.

The fact that such a small and uneducated society was responsible for the most influential and revolutionary religion in history, a religion that was completely different from that of the Egyptians, suggests that there was probably a divine influence guiding them. For this reason, I think it is rational to believe in God.

Prophecy

The Bible is often referred to as God’s Word. To some, this is a fact that they build their entire lives around. To others, the whole thing seems bogus. But, there are some things about the Bible that seem to be good evidence for having some level of Divine Authorship. Whether you think it is the inerrant word of God or not, it can still be said that if any pieces of it required a divine influence, then God must exist.

Before I get into the main argument, I would like to point something out that is often overlooked. The Bible is an amazing work of literature. It has everything: great poetry, strange and unique stories, incredible use of foreshadowing, very original characters, great ideas about love, and so much more. I think this, in itself, is evidence for God’s existence. The fact that a large number of educated and uneducated people combined to create such an incredible work of literature is worth noting. Simple fishermen wrote the best selling book of all time. It is sometimes hard for me to think they made it all up.

But the main reason I think divine influence can be seen in the Bible is prophecies. There are hundreds of prophecies in the Bible. Many have come true, and some are supposed to happen in the future. Many of these prophecies (around 300) deal with Jesus. Some are quite specific, and some broader, but all of them came true in the person of Jesus. Now, you may argue that much of that is due to chance or a few have been twisted to fit. So let us account for those. Since I am feeling generous, we will suppose that only 8 of those prophecies about Jesus were about him and actually came true. But through modern science of probability, it has been determined that the odds of making 8 prophecies or predictions about a person and all of them coming true is 1 in 10^17 power. Those odds are pretty slim. The following illustration presents a good way of understanding how ridiculous those odds are. If you were to cover the state of Texas with 10^17 silver dollars, they would cover the state and be two feet deep. One of these silver dollars has been painted red, and you get one shot at picking it out with your eyes closed. I doubt that you will find it.

The Prophecies in the Bible often came true. It must be asked, how did someone know what one person would be like 500-1000 years into the future? The only reasonable answer is that God must have been writing through them, because only God would know. We cannot say the texts were changed later, because we have manuscripts of the Old Testament that predate the life of Jesus. If we were to say that the writers of the New Testament made a story up to fit all the prophecies together, we would have to admit that uneducated fishermen were some of the most intelligent men in history and tricked their own nation and the entire Roman Empire. Since this seems extremely unlikely to me, I am left with the conclusion that God helped write the Bible and must, therefore, exist.

Good examples of prophesies in the Bible:

In Isaiah 44 and 45, a prophecy is made that a King named Cyrus (yes, it actually gives his name) will conquer the World and will return the Israelites to their home. Years later, Cyrus of the Persian Empire took over the world and sent the Israelites back to Jerusalem.

Read Psalms 22. You will be very surprised to see how much of it relates and foreshadows Jesus’s crucifixion.

A prediction that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem: "But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity" (Micah 5:2).

A prophecy about Jesus being crucified and his nature during the event: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth“ (Isaiah 53:7).

A prophecy about the Triumphal Entry: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

The Ontological Argument

The Ontological Argument was first put forth by St. Anselm in the 11th century. At first glance this argument may seem like it goes in a circle or is self-defining. But after thinking about it in depth, it becomes harder and harder to figure out what is actually wrong with it. The argument has been around for almost 1,000 years and has appeared in various forms. It is still discussed by many modern philosophers, and for some people it just makes sense. Because of this, I think it is worth noting. Sometimes I read it and something clicks and it makes perfect sense, other times I read it and I don’t really get it. Hopefully it will make sense for you.

There are various versions of the argument, but here is the way I best understand it:
Any thing that exists in reality is greater than things that exist only in the mind. For instance, we can imagine a unicorn. Unicorns are pretty cool, but they only exist in the mind or on paper. They do not exist in reality. But if they did, we would say that the real unicorn is a greater being than the unicorn in my coloring book.

We can apply similar logic to God’s existence. If God exists in our minds, he is pretty cool. He is powerful, created the world, and has lived forever. But, a God existing only in our minds is not nearly as great as a God that exists in reality. The following is where the major difference between the unicorn and God examples arises. God is said to be the greatest being we can conceive. He is a being “than which none greater can be conceived.” A unicorn is just a cool combination of animals, but nothing can be greater than God. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and the list goes on.

Since God is a being whom we cannot conceive of anyone greater, we must say he exists. Why? Because if he only exists only in the mind, than he is not the greatest being we can conceive of. All we would have to do is conceive of a God that exists, and He would be greater than the God that exists only in the mind.

We cannot apply the same logic to the unicorn here, because we could easily conceive of something greater than a unicorn. But we cannot conceive of something greater than God, because He is the greatest of all things. Part of our conception of God is that He created the universe. Since He is above all things and the originator of all things, we can safely say that He is the greatest being we can conceive of. And since the greatest being we can conceive of must exist, then God (the greatest being we can conceive) must exist.