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One of several arguments for the existence of God; also called "argument from design". William Paley (1743-1805) was its most famous proponent. |
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One of several arguments for the existence of God; also called "argument from design". William Paley (1743-1805) was its most famous proponent. It has been through several incarnations; one of its most recent is the so-called "argument from the fine-tuning of the cosmological constants". |
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But let?us turn to the inevitable criticisms of the argument. The first criticism should not take long to state, just because it should be familiar to almost all of you. Namely, that there was this guy named Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution, which explains the appearance of design in the universe, but the theory of evolution does not require a designer. In other words, in showing how the biological world might have, or has, evolved from lower life forms, Darwin (and of course almost all biologists after him) showed why there appears to be design in the world; and at the same time he showed that there is no need to suppose that there was an actual designer to explain this appearance of design. |
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But let us turn to the inevitable criticisms of the argument. The first criticism should not take long to state, just because it should be familiar to almost all of you. Namely, that there was this guy named Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution, which explains the appearance of design in the universe, but the theory of evolution does not require a designer. In other words, in showing how the biological world might have, or has, evolved from lower life forms, Darwin (and of course almost all biologists after him) showed why there appears to be design in the world; and at the same time he showed that there is no need to suppose that there was an actual designer to explain this appearance of design. |
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