Arguments of the Existence of God
There are many arguments that have been raised for the existence of God and this piece of work focuses on teleological argument for the existence of God. The essay critically discuss the Paley’s version of the design argument and the views of Darwin and Hume’s will also be included as well as the merits and demerits of the teleological argument of the existence of God.First and for most, Paley derives his argument of the existence of God from the apparent design or purpose in the universe .Paley uses an argument comparing an eye and a telescope .The resemblance between the two is that both the parts of the eye and the parts of the telescope are set up perfectly for a certain purpose and the purpose is vision .Paley suggest that, many things in nature, like eyes, show the marks of design. These things must either have been created by an intelligent designer or produced by random natural processes. Random natural processes never produce things with the marks of design .Things in nature that show the marks of design must have been created by an intelligent designer .He suggest that the eye and the telescope are works of design .Paley believes that any design have got a designer and the designer of the eye and the telescope is an intelligent and powerful designer .Therefore, the designer is God.More so, the order of the universe as a whole and the uniqueness of things in it act as the basis of the design argument .The universe have got a lot of order, for instance there is light from the sun during the day and at night there is sun from the moon and stars .Paley further allude that, ‘’ because of the order in the inverse, there must be an intelligent being responsible for it and that is God’’. Halt (2010) argues that it is more plausible and far more probable that the universe is the way it is because it was created by God with life in mind .Hence, God exists because of the order in the inverse.
However, Paley‘s version was opposed by was opposed by Charles Darwin. Darwin allude that when one understood the world little, they sometimes suggest, it was plausible to think that the appearance of design in nature was a good reason to believe in God. Darwin’s theory of evolution suggest that Complex organisms evolved over time, and the universe was not designed to fit life, but rather life evolved to fit the universe .Therefore ,Darwin contradicts Paley’s version for the existence of God as he states that the inverse is there by chance not by design as stated by Paley.More so ,Hume opposes the Paley’s argument of the existence of God .Hume dismisses the example of the analogy raised by Paley .He suggest that the analogy between the works of nature and human artefacts is not particularly strong .The inverse is not similar to artefacts .For instance, unlike watches ,there is only one universe and there is no other inverse to compare it with .Hume’s other idea is that , ’’ we cannot infer an infinite designer from a finite world as this will imply that the designer turns out to something less than God ’’ . The intelligent and powerful being does not have qualities to design a finite inverse; therefore the teleological argument is weak to prove the existence of God.