The idea that there is a need to appeal to such a being to explain the Universe has been presented many times before, in the form of the Teleological Argument. ... The argument, as the name suggests, focuses upon the ways by which seemingly inanimate objects achieve said end, and comes to the conclusion that this necessitates either purpose, or regularity, and, either way,
there must be something to navigate this –
the present state of the universe, they think, cannot simply be maintained by chance . ...
However, one of the earliest and most developed forms of this argument comes from the all-encompassing mind of Saint Thomas Aquinas (and, just in case you suspect me of irony here, I intend none: a person who could write so many extensive volumes of complete codswallop would be vastly impressive to me, not least someone capable of filling them with coherent and advanced arguments on almost every philosophical subject). The fifth of his ‘Five Ways’ (by which the existence of God can be demonstrated) constitutes a basic form of the argument qua regularity, (as opposed to that qua purpose, which will be duly interrogated later):
‘The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. ... ’
AQUINAS – SUMMA THEOLOGICA
The argument was neither as compelling, nor as eloquently expressed as his versions of the Ontological or Cosmological Argument, and it regrettably lay dormant until resurrected by one Archdeacon William Paley of Carlisle (1743 – 1805), in his most famous apologetic work Natural Theology, or, more satisfyingly, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802). Anything with such a pompous title must be worth reading, and, sure enough, there can be found a surprisingly convincing version of the Teleological Argument by means of much rhetoric and an interesting analogy involving a watch:
‘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 be the contrary, it had lain there for ever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. ... Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever . ... He knows enough for his argument, he knows the utility of the end: he knows the subserviency and adaptation of the means to the end . ...
APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT
Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. ... ’
In this qua purpose version of the argument, Paley is careful to provide a response to almost any possible reason that an ‘unbeliever’ could put forward; he systematically rejects, through the watch analogy, that the Universe could exist by chance, the existence of a ‘principle of order’ by which the universe could have occurred, and the concept that the Universes complexity is only ‘a motive’ that induces our mind to suspect ‘contrivance’ through conditioning. ...
At any rate, David Hume (in the guise of the incorrigible Philo) had already devastatingly criticised Paley’s argument twenty-three years earlier, in a lamentable instance of the lack of communication between philosophers and theologians:
‘But to show you still more inconveniences, continued Philo, in your anthropomorphism, please to take a new survey of your principles. ... This is the experimental argument; and this, you say too, is the sole theological argument. Now it is certain that the liker the effects are which are seen and the liker the causes which are inferred, the stronger is the argument. ... And this I call an argument from experience. But how this argument can have place, where the objects, as in the present case, are single, individual, without parallel, or specific resemblance, may be difficult to explain. ... ’
Indeed, in what Flew praises as the ‘killing blow’ of the design argument, Hume brings our attention to the fact that both the Universe and God are necessarily unique – that is, by definition:
‘The Deity is known to us only by his productions, and is a single being in the universe, not comprehended under any species or genus, from whose experienced attributes or qualities, we can, by analogy, infer any attribute or quality to him . ... ’
ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
This does rather reveal the Teleological argument as an illogical and unfounded one; however, he isn’t done yet, by any means. In Dialogues, he reduces the idea to almost comical proportions:
‘And what shadow of argument, continued Philo, can you produce from your hypothesis to prove the unity of the Deity? ... And this argument, which is deservedly so much ridiculed by Cicero, becomes, according to you, solid and philosophical. ... ’
So: the ‘order’ and ‘contrivance’ that leads us to suspect the existence of God, could just as easily be the result of a lack of intelligence; simply random collisions between particles, as suggested by Epicurus of Samos, a Greek Philosopher (341 – 270 BC), to whom we doff our hat here for providing Philo with an alternative argument to present, in an entirely facetious manner, it must be said. ... Although Epicurus’ theory does seem laughable to anyone in their right mind, the design argument cannot be chosen over it, because that would be committing the dreaded fallacy – no, the watch did not simply appear through ‘a blind, unguided force’, or, mechanical interactions between particles, but that is not to say that the Universe didn’t. The Teleological Argument is hence exposed as no more believable or valid than such undemonstrable theories as that of an infinite universe, that simply ‘happens’ by dint of the various jostlings and collisions between ‘indivisible’ particles.
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