Evaluation of the Teleological Argument

Look round the world; contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. ~David Hume

I honestly don’t know how anyone can not stand in awe of the natural world, our bodies, our cells, the very particles that make up . . . well, everything. I am continually blown away by the natural world, both in it’s beauty and complexity. (The other night I caught The History Channel’s exploration of the brain--“the most complex machine in the known universe”--and was completely dumbfounded; well, my brain thinking about my brain is dumbfounded!) Indeed, the brain makes even the most complicated human invention look like a randomly tumbled stone. But does this complexity, this wonderfully amazing “machinery” we call life, compel us to believe in a creator? Does the “design” we see in nature require a Designer?

As with the other arguments for God's existence, there are some problems. First, the basic premise of the argument seems to require us to believe that bodies, organs, solar systems, ecosystems and planets behave as if they were machines. Paley (and others) want to say that our eyes, our cells, the very planet we live on is analogous to a machine (a watch in this case). This analogy has never seemed necessarily credible as it seems to break down rather quickly. Watches have makers; that much is clear. They are not made by themselves, but animals, plants, even planets and solar systems are self-replicating or self-organizing through the laws of physics. (It might be argued that the physical laws implies a creator, but that only says that God created a set of rules not the universe itself.) It breaks down because we are comparing non-living with living, self-sustaining with non-self-sustaining. Watches do not reproduce. Animals do, cells do. All of the systems we see today that appear to evidence design were formed through the use of preexisting materials; God, at least the God of the Bible, is said to have made the universe without that benefit. Without a doubt, the universe is a wondrous and complex thing, but an analogous argument never entirely convincing.

Next, while I am completely amazed by nature and how it appears that the universe evidences design, I am also aware at how wasteful and, dare I use the word, evil it can be. For all the carefully designed elements of life, there are also many maladaptions that seem to defy the notion of a thoughtful, entirely moral Designer. The abject waste of young life is an observable fact; it's pretty clear that for every "fit" individual in nature, there is massive majority of "unfit" individuals die before they can reproduce. Such waste must be addressed if I am to make claims about the perfect design of the natural world.

By way of a partial rebuttal to this objection: Sin may be a powerful explanation, but, if so, then we might not be able to have our cake and eat it too, perhaps, forcing us to make the rather weak claim that God only designed the good parts of nature. I personally think evil can be explained sufficiently to at least address this issue enough to set it aside.

There may be an "unconscious purpose" that has produced the appearance of design in the world. I can imagine, given some vast stretch of time, that the standard evolutionary story could become plausible. If a thousand monkeys hammered on a thousand keyboards for a hundred million years, something approaching the genius of Shakespeare could appear on the page through pure chance. But chance is not the only active force in nature: there is gravity, there are chemical interactions, there is natural selection (known most commonly by the tautological slogan: "survival of the fittest"). To my way of thinking, the all-to-common example of the human eye may have plausibly evolved gradually from a simple light-sensitive organelle through successive modifications, down to the variety of eyes we see today in the animal world. This doesn't mean that something has purposed to create an eye. Rather, it could be that my eyes are more adaptive than my ancestors and their eyes were more adaptive than their ancestors, etc., until we reach back in time to find a mildly photosensitive skin cell on some sort of primitive and completely unknown creature.

Finally, I think it is quite possible that we may be fooled into thinking that there is actual design, when there really isn't. Our brains, being, as I say, pattern--whether there really is a pattern or not--recognition machines, may be attempting to overlay meaning and cohesion onto the complexity we see. We see the amazing fine-tuning required for life on this planet (well, perhaps, life anywhere in the vastness of space), and we are required to interpret this data. Our limited perspectives and psychology may trick us into a false apprehension of purpose where there really is no purpose at all.

As probably the strongest line of reasoning for God’s existence, the teleological argument leaves some interesting questions even if I find the counter-arguments lacking. Even if this complexity leads me to the acceptance of a Grand Designer, what kind of God does the argument imply?

If I take the teleological argument at face value, I think I may be justified in saying that God likes death, suffering and meaninglessness as much as He likes life, pleasure and meaningfulness. God simply sets out the plans and hopes that things will turn out for the best. If you believe that God is the grand and wonderful designer of the universe, then how does one explain Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague) or cancer? How does one explain why all animals (including, under normal conditions, humans) have far more offspring than usually don't survive until maturity? How does one explain earthquakes and famines? To me, this is not particularly good system design. (I could be wrong, of course, and I do think, as I've said, that a good argument can be constructed to tell us why evil is a necessary thing, but that’s for another time.)

I have studied evolution and I’ve studied creationism (in all their various permutations) and I find that either explanation is equally plausible. Both, though, have problems, crippling problems if you ask me. These problems require some kind of leap of faith to overcome. For some, the problems associated with the teleological argument are insurmountable, but for myself they do not hold me back from a belief in God. Indeed, while this argument does not come close, in my mind, of proving God's existence, it certainly makes for a plausible case. It seems likely that if there was a God, we could see some sort of design in the world and I think we see just enough of that to make it likely that God exists.