R.P.E - The Teleological Argument
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- William Paley
- How come I'm still in the same place? I thought I carried on walking!
- Dear Mr Paley, I have a few criticisms of your argument that I think you should be aware of, one by Charles Darwin and one by a random guy called David Humes. Thanks for reading!
- Dear Mr Paley, I have a few criticisms of your argument that I think you should be aware of, one by Charles Darwin and one by a random guy called David Humes. Thanks for reading!
- William Paley wrote the Teleological Argument and here it is simply. Imagine you are walking through a field and you come across a watch. The watch shows order, complexity, design and purpose - so much so that you would have to say that it was specifically designed by a designer. This designer is man, or the watch maker that made it.
- Imagine you continued walking and came across a cabbage. It has the same purpose, order and design so much so that you would think it had a designer. Paley believed that this meant that someone designed it; the only person capable of designing the world is God, because God is eternal and omnipotent, therefore God must exist otherwise who created nature? Try thinking of the Fibonacci sequence found in snail shells, sunflowers, pin cones, some fingerprints, hurricanes, whirlpools, galaxies, eggs and more yet still Mathematical in design.
- There are some criticisms for his argument though, I'll explain two quickly here and the other two in more detail later. Firstly, presence of natural evil in the world implies a flawed design by a flawed designer or no design at all says John Stuart Mill because the fact there is evil, especially in form of natural disasters causes people to question if it was a good design and the notion of 'design' and whether or not there is more 'chaos' than 'design'. See more in 'The Problem of Evil'. Secondly, like in Darwin's argument, Richard Dawkins argues that random mutations in DNA alone give rise to variation in the world and illusion of design.
- The End
- Charles Darwin commented, not as a direct attack on Paley's argument, just because he believed that natural selection happened and developed, creating survival of the fittest. This means that if God was omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent then why would he create a system of survival of the fittest? This is very true as it would be a big change in the system of the argument, unless God isn't one of the "all" things, like not all loving (which would make sense with this criticism but not in general). It doesn't exactly argue against God creating and designing nature, just the theory of it and how it works. It scientifically makes sense, more than Paley's.
- David Humes, who was writing before William Paley wrote a book called 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' which is on the same topic but giving a different idea, in fact showing how the world was not designed through multiple theories, one of which I will explain now. This theory is asking if it is possible that the Universe could be a product of chance. Hume thought that if you put monkeys in a room with type-writers over infinite time they would eventually write the Bible. This is possible because we don't actually know how the Universe came into existence and maybe no God was involved, we just don't know! This would dramatically change the argument because if there was no God and it was all chance how would the Fibonacci sequence exist and how would all of Nature be connected? It does have some flaws but also ideas against Paley's argument.
- I don't think there's anything else to say about the Teleological Argument by William Paley but I'll try to explain a simple diagram of how it works in words. A design has a purpose, a purpose gets made into a design by a designer, making it a man-made object. A natural object that also has design and purpose must have a designer then so God is the only powerful enough being to be able to have created Nature so He must exist.
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