Overview of the Teleological Argument
William Lane Craig
Perhaps the oldest and most popular of all the arguments for the existence of God
is the teleological argument. It is the famous argument from design, inferring an
intelligent designer of the universe just as we infer an intelligent designer for any
product in which we discern evidence of purposeful adaptation of means to some
end (telos).
Plato and Aristotle
The ancient Greek philosophers were impressed with the order that pervades the
cosmos, and many of them ascribed that order to the work of an intelligent mind
who fashioned the universe. The heavens in constant revolution across the sky
were especially awesome to the ancients. Plato’s Academy lavished extensive
time and thought on the study of astronomy because, Plato believed, it was the
science that would awaken man to his divine destiny. According to Plato, there are
two things that “lead men to believe in the Gods”: the argument based on the
soul, and the argument “from the order of the motion of the stars, and of all things
under the dominion of the mind which ordered the universe.”1
What a lovely statement of the divine design evide4nt throughout the universe!
Plato employed both of these arguments to refute atheism and concluded that
there must be a “best soul” who is the “maker and father of all,” the “King” who
ordered the primordial chaos into the rational cosmos we observe today. 2
An even more magnificent statement of divine teleology is to be found in a
fragment from a lost work of Aristotle’s entitled On Philosophy. Aristotle, too, was
struck with wonder by the majestic sweep of the glittering host across the night
sky of ancient Greece. Philosophy, he said, begins with this sense of wonder about
the world:
For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to
philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced
little by little and stated difficulties about greater matters, e.g. about the
phenomena of the moon and those of the sun, and bout the stars and about the
genesis of the universe. 3
Anyone who has himself studied the heavens must lend a sympathetic ear to these
men of antiquity who gazed up into the night sky, as yet undimmed by pollution
and the glare of city lights, and watched the slow but irresistable turn of the
cosmos, replete with its planets, stars, and familiar constellations, across their view
and wondered–what is the cause of all this? Aristotle concluded that the cause
was divine intelligence. He imagined the impact that the sight of the world would
have on a race of men who had lived underground and never beheld the sky:
When thus they would suddenly gain sight of the earth, seas, and the sky;
when they should come to know the grandeur of the clouds and the might
of the winds; when they should behold the sun and should learn its grandeur
and beauty as well as its power to cause the day by shedding light over the
sky; and again, when the night had darkened the lands and they should
behold the whole of the sky spangled and adorned with stars; and when
they should see the changing lights of the moon as it waxes and wanes, and
the risings and settings of all these celestial bodies, their courses fixed and
changeless throughout all eternity–when they should behold all these things,
most certainly they would have judged both that there exist gods and that
all these marvelous works are the handiwork of the gods. 4
In his Metaphysics Aristotle proceeded to argue that there must be a First
Unmoved Mover which is God, a living, intelligent, incorporeal, eternal, and most
good being who is the source of order in the cosmos. Hence, from earliest times
men, wholly removed from the biblical revelation, have concluded to the existence
of divine mind on the basis of design in the universe
Thomas Aquinas
We have already seen that Thomas Aquinas in his first three Ways argues for the
existence of God via the cosmological argument. His Fifth Way, however,
represents the teleological argument. He notes that we observe in nature that all
things operate toward some end, even when those things lack consciousness. For
their operation hardly ever varies and practically always turns out well, which
shows that they really do tend toward a goal and do not hit upon it merely by
accident. Thomas is here expressing the conviction of Aristotelian physics that
everything has not only a productive cause but also a final cause, or goal toward
which it is drawn. To use an example of our own, poppy seeds always grow into
poppies and acorns into oaks. Now nothing, Aquinas reasons, that lacks
consciousness tends toward a goal, unless it is under the direction of someone
with consciousness and intelligence. For example, the arrow does not tend toward
the bull’s eye unless it is aimed by the archer. Therefore, everything in nature must
be directed toward its goal by someone with intelligence, and this we call “God.”
William Paley
Undoubtedly, the high point in development of the teleological argument came with
William Paley’s brilliant formulation in his Natural Theology in 1804. Paley combed
the sciences of his time for evidences of design in nature and produced a
staggering catalogue of such evidences, based, for example, on the order evident
in bones, muscles, blood vessels, comparative anatomy, and particular organs
throughout the animal and plant kingdoms. So conclusive was Paley’s evidence
that Leslie Stephen in his History of English Though in Eighteenth Century wryly
remarked that “if there were no hidden flaw in the reasoning, it would be impossible
to understand, not only how any should resist, but how anyone should ever have
overlooked the demonstration.”5 Although most philosophers–who have
undoubtedly never read Paley–believe that his sort of argument was dealt a
crushing and fatal blow by David Hume’s critique of the teleological argument,
Paley’s argument, which was written nearly thirty years after the publication of
Hume’s critique, is in fact not vulnerable to most of Hume’s objections, as
Frederick Ferre’ has pointed out. 6 Paley opens with a statement of the famous
“watch-maker argument”:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were
asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that , for
anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it
perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I
had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch
happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had
before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been
there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the
stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in th4e first? For
this reason, and for no other, viz. That, when we come to inspect the
watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its
several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are
so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated
as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been
differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they
are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in
which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in
the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now
served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their
offices, all tending to one result: We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled
elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax itself, turns round the box. We
next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure)
communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then
find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to each other,
conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance
to the pointer; and at the same time, by the size and shape of those
wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an
equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given
time. We must take notice that the wheels are made of brass in order to
keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic;
that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed
in no other part of the work; but in the room of which, if there had been any
other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without the
opening the case. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an
examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of
the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said,
observed and understood,) the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the
watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at sometime,
and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the
purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its
construction, and designed its use. 7
This conclusion, Paley continues, would not be weakened if I had never actually
seen a watch being made nor knew how to make one. For we recognize4 the
remains of ancient art as the products of intelligent design without having even
seen such things made, and we know the products of modern manufacture are the
result of intelligence even though we may have no inkling how they are produced.
Nor would our conclusion be invalidated if the watch sometimes went wrong. The
purpose of the mechanism would be evident even if the machine did not function
perfectly. Nor would the argument become uncertain if we were to discover some
parts in the mechanism that did not seem to have any purpose, for this would not
negate the purposeful design in the other parts. Nor would anyone in his right mind
think that the existence of the watch was accounted for by the consideration that
it was one of many possible configurations of matter and that some possible
configuration had to exist in the place where the watch was found. Nor would it
help to say that there exists in things a principle of order, which yielded the watch.
For one never knows a watch to be so formed, and the notion of such a principle
of order that it is not intelligent seems to have little meaning. Nor is it enough to
say the watch was produced form another watch before it and that one from yet a
prior watch, and so forth to infinity. For the design is still unaccounted for. Each
machine in the infinite series evidences the same design, and it is irrelevant wher |