Teleological Argument

The next argument I would like to address in my continuing quest to figure out why Lee believes in God, is the Teleological arguemnt, a subargument of the cosomological argument. In short, the argument goes something like this:

1. All things designed have a designer.
2. The universe (from galaxies to single cells) evendence design.
3. Therefore, the universe has a designer (and that is God).

Today the argument is most often accociated with the English theologian William Paley, who presented the argument in his 1802 book Natural Theology. Paley suggests that the analogy—watch is to watchmaker what universe is to God—pooves that there is a designer, because the universe, the planet, our eyes, even the very cells of our bodies exhibit positive signs of being designed. They are so dazzlingly complicated that they must have been intentionally created. Even if one had no real idea what the purpose of a particular part of the world, we reconginze the difference between an erroded stone and the complex mechinism of watch. In short, as A. C. Ewing demonstrates in the following passage, we are allowed to attribute design when we see complexity:

Suppose we saw pebbles on the shore arranged in such a way as to make an elaborater machine. It is theoretically possible to they might have come to occupy such positions by mere chance, but it is fantastically unlikely , and we should feel no heistation in jumping to the conclusion that they had been thus depositinted not by the tide by some intellegent agent. Yet the body of the simplest living creature is a more complex machine than the most complext ever devised by a human engineer.

Systems in nature, it is argued, appear to be not unlike machines built by human beings. Therefore, there is a Great Designer.

To avoid the weaknesses of an analogy (analogies always seem to break down, don’t they?), two supporting theories have gained groundin recent years: irreducible complexity and fine-tuning.

Since the mid-1990’s the teleological argument has been repackaged by supporters of Intelligent Design into what is known as irreducible complexity. First fully articulated by Michael J. Behe, irreducable complexity is

a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic funtion, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complext system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuosly improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precusor to an irreducibly complext system that is missing a part is by definition nonfuctional.

Even in the highly unlikely event that a complex system (say an eye or bacterial phygelum) came into existance by random, grandual and undesigned means, as complexity increases the less likely that it came to be without the benefit of a designer. Specifically, Behe is speaking about biological systems, but as early as the mid-1960’s larger systems, including the universe itself has been looked at in a similar light.

The other modern extension of the teleological argument has come from astronomy and astrobiology, namely the idea that the universe is finely tuned to support life and, for some, human life in particular. Astronomers had now identified more than 150 finely tuned characteristics. In the 1960s the odds that any given planet in the universe would possess the necessary conditions to support intelligent physical life were shown to be less than one in ten thousand. By 2001 those odds dramatically shrank to less than one in a number so large it might as well be infinity (10 to the 173th power). In other words, if the universe were actually different in any of those 150 ways, we wouldn’t be here at all.

For many observers, this would only be possible if the universe was indeed created to support life. And the creator of the universe is none other than God.

1. Anthropic Principle
2. Fine Tuning for Life on Earth