Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Teleological Argument Summary
- The Teleological Argument
- Thomas Aquinas
- Way 5 is a design argument
- Aquinas argued that everything in the natural work is directed to some goal, &
follows natural laws set up by something which thinks (i.e. God)
- Regularity of succession argument-
Aquinas' archer example
- Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle's theory
of 4 Causes; links Final Cause to God
- Weaknesses in his argument
- Does everything follow a general law
set down by a designer
- Anthony Flew suggests that Aquinas' claim that
things in nature are directed to some purpose
goes against the available evidence
- Swinburne claims that Aquinas assumes what is
at issue- whether God imposes regularity & laws
on the universe
- William Paley
- Presents a purpose argument
- Compares a rock and a watch:
- The watch demonstrates fitness for a purpose;
parts work together/ fit for a purpose/ the parts
are ordered
- Part 2 of arg: imagination function of the watch= producing other watches
- Watch like this suggests the existence of something conscious and intelligent
- Argues by analogy that nature requires a much greater designer than the watch
- The complexity of nature is illustrated by the human eye
- Challenges to Design Arguments
- J. S. Mill
- Questioned the goodness of nature given the
apparent cruelty to be found within nature
(e.g. the behaviour of a digger wasp)
- David Hume
- Nothing to which a universe can be satisfactorily compared
- Paley- lack of knowledge increases our sense of wonder
- Swinburne- reasonable to say more about
the cause of the event other than just it
causes the event
- Analogy of the house builder and an architect;
challenges about the design's quality (the problem of
evil)
- Paley- rejects this; considered the issue to be
whether the universe exhibited signs of designs
- Other possible explanations than God for
apparent design in the universe (e.g. DNA today)
- Is there evidence the world has a single designer? (The analogy of a great ship)
- Random activity can lead to orderliness rather than
disorder (supported by the discovery of natural
selection)
- Natural Selection
- Darwin's discovery was influenced by:
- Discoveries during the voyage of the Beagle
- Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology
- Thomas Malthus' idea that food supplies
increase arithmetically and populations
grow exponentially
- Natural selection can explain the emergence of complex
living organisms without any need to refer to design, a
designer, or purpose