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Arguments for the Existence of God

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Design arguments for the existence of God (Judeo-Christian) Part 2: Evidence and critiques

Information: Part 2 of an article critically examining several popular Judeo-Christian arguments for the existence of God, based on the appearance of design in the world. Click here to read Design arguments for the existence of God (Judeo-Christian) Part 1: Introduction, the Bible, Aquinas and Paley. A version of this article was originally published on the website www.faithnet.org.uk.

Introduction: Order and purpose

Design arguments typically fall into two groups. First, there are those which attempt to show that the world has been designed, because of the way things appear to be ordered (or fit-together). The most well-known of this type of design argument, is William Paley's watch analogy. However, a second approach is to look for things which have no reason to be as they are, unless some higher intelligence had been involved. In other words, this is the idea that things are the way they are for a particular purpose, and that this presumes some intelligence behind the world. A good example of this is Thomas Aquinas' fifth way, who wrote that the planets are perfectly arranged in order for the seasons to come and go, and that this could not have been achieved without the involvement of God (for more on Aquinas and Paley see Design arguments for the existence of God (Judeo-Christian) Part 1: Introduction, the Bible, Aquinas and Paley).

Modern design arguments tend to follow the latter approach. This is largely because the notion that the world and the universe operate as one giant machine, has been challenged due to the rise of quantum theory. In fact, Paley's watch analogy was largely grounded in scientific principles set out by Isaac Newton in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), a view of things now overturned by Einstein's theory of relativity.

Evidence of design

An eyeThere are many things in the world which theologians have used as evidence of design. For example, the eye is so complex that it could not have been the product of 'chance', but must be the result of intelligent design. As William Paley argued, to suggest that something complex has been formed by 'the accidental outworking of natural forces', rather than being designed and 'made', is too much to accept (well, for him anyway).

Something to do: Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. Label the first column 'Order', and list as many examples of things you think someone might suggest have been designed, because they are complex (or ordered) things. [Help?]

Evidence for design

Nature is meaningless and valueless, without God behind it and man in front. (F. R. Tennant)

A graphical representation of the expansion of the universeModern design arguments tend to avoid any analogy with the world as a machine (for reasons stated earlier). Instead, theologians have presented evidence for design, such as those things which have led to life appearing and flourishing. For example, the conditions which allowed the formation of the world and the universe to occur, must have been fine-tuned do so. Theists who hold this view, believe that God is the 'fine-tuner'.

A different set of initial inequalities would have resulted in a very different detailed galactic distribution. (John Polkinghorne)

Theologians who believe God worked through natural processes to allow life to develop, often argue that if the forces which led to this world and universe coming into existence had been even slightly different at the time of the 'the big bang', then our universe would most likely be devoid of intelligent life, or certainly the forms of life we currently have in the universe. Many Christians who are scientists believe that without God's specific intervention, the chances of life developing in the universe as we know it were millions to one.

The idea that the world and the universe was 'set up' in order to 'create' human (intelligent) life, is known as the Anthropic Principle. In theology, this was popularly introduced and explored by F. R. Tennant, in his book Philosophical Theology (1930).

Something to do: Label the second column you drew earlier 'Purpose'. Now list as many examples of things you think someone might point to as evidence that the world and universe were purposely 'designed', to bring forth intelligent (human ) life [Help?]. After completing these two lists, discuss what you have written with a friend to see if they agree with you or not.

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Some issues

Darwin's drawings of variant heads and beaks among Galapagos finchesEver since Darwin's theory of evolution, the idea that life has been designed by God has come under increasing attack. Although some theists combine the theory of evolution with the Christian teaching that God created the universe (often known as Intelligent Design - ID), the God-hypothesis is not actually required to support naturalistic theories of the origins of life. Evolution is a self-contained process. The fact that the world displays order, does not require us to posit the existence of God but simply shows us that evolution is an ordered (and structured) process.

It is a common mistake to think of evolution as something to do with chance, when in fact it is actually a description of the specific process of how life developed. Rather than chance, 'evolution' says that our world and everything in it exists today, because the right conditions for it to evolve were present in our universe. Therefore, rather than it being a chance thing that we are here, biological evolution says that it was inevitable, given the conditions that existed before we did!

Design arguments are typically based on analogies between human and Divine activities. However, these analogies break down in a number of ways:

  • Firstly, can we say that the universe exhibits design, order and regularity in the same way a watch does (as Paley argues)? We have already noted that such a 'mechanistic' view of the world has been largely rejected by modern science today.
  • Secondly, if design arguments are to be proved true then we need to be able to compare our world with another one. In other words, to know for sure that our world has been created by God, we would need to compare it to one which has definitely been created by God, or one that has not. Of course, this is clearly not possible, and as such we have no certain way to test whether our world was created by God, or not.
  • Thirdly, design arguments assume that order and purpose are key features of any world created by God, but this may not be the case. A significant challenge to the notion of order, is the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In terms of what the purpose of our world might be, this could be many things. It could be to bring forth varieties of life, or to evolve conscious beings, or to act as a place to test one's commitment to God, or to find salvation, all of these or none of them? That fact that we do not know for sure what the purpose of our world is, means we cannot know for sure if the world has been designed to fulfill this.
  • Finally, design arguments treat the natural realm as a whole, and assume that small things exhibiting evidence for design prove that everything else has been designed as well. However, it does not take too much to see that such a leap in logic is question-begging. For despite what some people might like to think, we really have no way of knowing that the rest of the universe operates the same way as it does in our small part of it. So even if an eye has been designed, this is no proof for saying that everything else in the world and the universe has also been as well.

Robin Ince on Creationism

Conclusion

One of the biggest problems for any design argument seems to be that unless one first assumes that the world has been created by God, then there is no way such arguments can really prove beyond question that the world definitely was created by God.

In philosophy, any argument based on premises which have to be assumed to be true in order for any conclusion based on them to be shown to be true, is called circular logic (or circular reasoning).

Furthermore, even if design arguments proved a God existed, they do not tell us which God (from amongst the world's religions) created the world, and how did God did it? Of course, this matter does not prove design arguments to be false, but questions such as these do raise many more issues, such that they may never be able to act as a sound basis for justifying God's existence (whoever, or whatever God is).

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