Argument from Design

1. Argument from Design

2. Review: Leibniz and PSR • Something “created” is something contingent on its creator—i.e. the created thing depends on a creator for its existence. • A contingent thing cannot be its own cause—i.e. something cannot create itself. • A contingent thing may or may not exist—i.e. it is finite, destructible, and not necessary. • All the things in the world and the world itself are contingent—i.e. we can imagine an alternative world in which conditions are different and exclude the existence of any individual thing that exists in our world. • A necessary thing does not depend on anything outside of itself for its existence and nothing can prevent it from existing.

3. PSR/Cosmological Argument Cont’d… • A necessary thing is uncaused, indestructible, self-sufficient, and independent—i.e. it is necessary in the sense that there is no way for it to not exist. • The idea of God is the idea of a perfect being that has always been, that will always be, that is omnipotent and omnipresent, and that is the source of all things. • There can be only one necessary thing in the universe. • The world is contingent on a necessary thing. • God is the necessary thing/being on which the existence of the world depends.

4. Teleological Argument/Argument from Design • The universe exhibits an apparent design—that is, an ordering of complex parts that function in a machine-like or organism-like universe. • The individual parts serve a function as a means to the fulfillment of intelligible goals, ends, or purposes. • A purposive, intelligent will is the cause of similar design and order in things we discover in the world. • Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that the universe and the complex interdependencies of its individual elements were caused by a purposive, intelligent will.

5. Watch and Watchmaker • What is the thrust of Paley’s argument? • What is the purpose of supposing even a watch that reproduces? • On what does the success of Paley’s argument depend?

6. Watch and Universe

7. Pushing the Analogy • Does the watch have to function perfectly in order for us to deduce a watchmaker? Does this account for evil? • Do we need understand how all the parts of the watch function in order to deduce a watchmaker? • Do we have to see a watch made and/or meet a watchmaker to deduce the existence of a watchmaker?

8. Assessing Paley’s Argument • Is it valid? • Does it get stronger or weaker as we observe more about the phenomena of the world? • Is the argument supported by theology?

9. Hume’s Critique: Similar? • “The exact similarity of the cases gives us a perfect assurance of a similar event; and a stronger evidence is never desired nor sought after. But whenever you depart, in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionally the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty.” (3)

10. Hume’s Critique: Finite Creation=Infinite Being? • “As the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect, and the effect, so far as it falls under our cognisance, is not infinite: what pretensions have we, upon your suppositions, to ascribe that attribute to the Divine Being?” (4)

11. Hume’s Critique: Can We Really Be Good Judges of the Design/Order of the Universe? • “Could a peasant, if the Aeneidwere read to him, pronounce that poem to be absolutely faultless, or even assign to it its proper rank among the productions of human wit, he, who had never seen any other production?” (4)

12. Hume’s Critique: Why One God? • “Why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world?”