A School Boy's Analysis of the Teleological Argument

The teleological argument works on basic logic that compares the design of the universe to something of smaller proportions that is existent on earth. This is usually simplified by analogy's such as Cleanthes complexity of the world or Paley's analogy of the watch: if you were to come across a rock in a heath you wouldn't question it, but to come across a watch you would have to assume it had a designer with all the cogs giving a purpose to tell the time, therefore coming across our universe from nothing can't be by chance, and the only being that could possibly create something to the complex proportions of the universe is God. Instantly this argument is easy to use because the logic is simple and can be referred to other scientific ideas such as the complexity of the eye or artificial intelligence.

The flaw in the analogy argument comes from the references between human artifacts and the nature of the world. Hume stated that comparing nature with something that is not physically living is not completely sufficient and that the universe is more related to a living organism than to a man-made machine. Hume stated that since the object reflects the designer (e.g. a poor quality watch would be made by someone who didn't know what they were doing) the universe is very flawed in its design, which would lead to the assumption that the designer is also flawed in some way; this does not reflect the Judeo-Christian concept of God.

What's more the teleological argument for analogy automatically assumes that the penultimate designer for the universe has to be God when there is no precise information that God created the universe, and yet we all know that watches are designed by people because we have seen people design them and know how a watch works; the universe however is beyond our full knowledge and there are some things about the universe that we do not know; so how do we know that God is the one designer?

What's more the logic of the teleological argument can very easily be reversed in favour of proving that God doesn't exist using scientific logic, such as:

1. We do not know how nothing reacts because everywhere in the universe there is something.
2. Newton's 3^rd law of motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
3. Therefore if nothing were to react with nothing it would create the opposite: Something.
4. The universe is something.
5. Therefore the universe could be created out of nothing.

This logic is just as valid as the teleological argument because it takes ideas that we know to be true and converges them upwards to the design of the universe. But as much as logic can be proven there is just as much chance the universe was truly made by mathematical chance. Chaos can easily be ordered; take the lottery for example, numbers are constantly taken out in random orders to which the chance of anyone winning is just as equal as the next; but that's how it is ordered. If the numbers were to be deliberately chosen however then there would be absolutely no difference, the game would still function whether the numbers were chosen randomly or hand picked; the bias does not mean the game would not function. The teleological argument is completely null and void if the world is not ordered as that would ensue that the designer could not control what they have just created.

Richard Swinburne however takes the idea that the world could be either ordered or chaotic and that the existence must be based on probabilities. And that the universe couldn't possibly just be created with all these natural laws through absolutely nothing and do not account for the "ordered" way that the universe apparently operates. Swinburne argues that the amount of order the universe demonstrates must be due to God. This order can also be shown by the natural selection of evolution, at which there is an order to the survival of the species based on choosing the best mate so that your species will survive; the earth is spinning on an exact and precise orbit that is so ordered that if it was altered even slightly; all life could be completely wiped out, these pieces of evidence show evidence of god; how can all this be done by chance? The earth happens to be at an exact point where it is perfect for human life and a moon at the perfect distance for the tides, can that truly be made by chaos? The answer to this is yes. Although the chances may seem slim there is always a slight chance that the earth just happened to be at the point it was; although if it were so coincidentally chaotic, could God not also be chaotic? Why must a perfect being be entirely ordered? There is no evidence to state that an ordered being is a perfect one.

Overall the teleological argument works well because it has simplistic logic. It explains God well in the sense that everything must have a designer and nothing is "just there" as it is based on order and tries to ignore the idea of a chaotic universe. However, philosophers such as Hume show how the logic of design does not work the same with the universe in comparison to God unless God was imperfect themselves. The analogy of the universe being compared to a vegetable (as shown by Hume and Philo) works a lot better but still has the same flaws. The universe has the potential to be chaotic and as long as it follows the laws (that according to Swinburne were made by God) there is always the chance that the world will be chaotic and disordered. But if the chaotic potential of the world was based on the designer, then we could come to the conclusion that god is also chaotic. So this is effective within the logic that it creates, there are a lot of a priori factors that you need to accept before to fully accept the argument as entirely true; if you have any doubt in how coincidental the world is this argument can not fully convince you that chaos is non-existent.