The
Design Argument is one of the most well-known arguments for the existence of
God. It is what philosophers call an a posteriori argument because
it is based on experience of observable features of the world using our senses.
Essentially we can see the Design Argument as an attempt to scientifically
prove the existence of God through measurable empirical data. We cannot see
gravity, or atoms, or black holes, but we have very good reasons to believe
they exist because they are the best explanation for many of the things we see
in the world. Similarly, the Design Argument attempts to show that even though
we cannot see God we can still be sure of his existence through seeing his
effects on the world.
The
essential question behind the Design Argument is ‘why is there order instead of chaos?’ It is argued that only an intelligent being can bring about
order and therefore without a powerful and intelligent being (i.e. God) there
would be no life, instead there would only be a mess of randomly arranged
matter without rhyme or reason. A good example here is a jigsaw puzzle – if you
threw it up in the air the chances of it landing completed are almost
negligible. If you walked into a room and discovered a completed jigsaw puzzle
on the floor you would instantly conclude that an intelligent being had pieced
it together. The Design Argument claims that the same is true of the complex
and organised things in our world such as biological life-forms and the
ecosystems they inhabit.
The
Design Argument is also known as the Teleological Argument, from the
Greek word ‘telos’ which
means ‘goal’ or ‘purpose.’ This is because if we look at the world it is
arguable that we can see purpose behind existence: nature exists in harmony and
balance in order to sustain life, and this indicates the existence of something
which has given the world its purpose, namely God. The Design Argument is quite
easy to understand in its simplest form, but it actually works on three
different levels, which are as follows:
- The Design Argument as an analogy.
- The Design Argument as an argument from probability.
- The Design Argument as inductive causal reasoning.
This
discussion will begin with analogy as it is the simplest and most easily
criticised version. It will go on to discuss the most serious challenge to
design in the modern age: evolution.
William Paley’s
Watch Analogy
There
have been many versions of the Design Argument put forward, some even as far
back as in the classical world, but the most famous version of the Design
Argument was put forward by William
Paley (1743–1805) whose watch analogy is particularly well known:
“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 enquired 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… 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 time of the day; that, if the several parts had been differently
shaped from what they are, or 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 that use… The inference, we think, is
inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker.”[1]
Paley has asked us to imagine coming
across rocks in an uninhabited place and then coming across a watch. He thinks
that it would be perfectly possible to imagine that the rocks had always been
there since they are such simple and elemental things. The watch, however, is
complex and has many hundreds of parts which all work together in just the
right way to perform a task, so Paley argues that it cannot have just been
around forever – it must have been designed and made by an artificer: a watch
needs a watchmaker.
Paley’s
conclusion is that since the world is similar to a watch they must have the
same kind of cause, namely design. To put it in simple terms, if a watch needs a watchmaker then the world
needs a world maker. Furthermore, Paley argues that since the complexity of
the world and all its living beings is almost infinitely more complex than a
mere watch, it should also follow that the designer of our world is greatly
powerful and intelligent beyond measure:
“For
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.”[2]
Thus
Paley arrives at the conclusion that God must exist because if he did not then
there would be no life on Earth – there would only be chaos instead of life,
order, and purpose.
Paley
also uses a second example alongside that of the watch in which he compared the
human eye to a telescope. In modern times we could redraft this argument in
terms of the human eye and a camera.
A
camera cannot just fall out of the sky, it must be designed and manufactured. If
we look at the human eye we can see that it is a complex arrangement of
different tissues ordered in just the right way for it to serve the purpose of
providing sight, similar to the complex arrangement of a camera. Just as a
camera cannot simply drop out of the sky, so too the eye could not simply drop
out of the sky. A camera needs a designer, and so surely the eye needs a
designer too. There must be someone or something who made the first animals and
gave them eyes, and surely only God could possibly do such a thing, and thus he
must be real.
Criticisms of The Design Argument (Part
1)
These
criticisms of the Design Argument are largely aimed at the fact that it is an
analogy. Many of them come from David Hume’s work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
1) It is an argument by analogy, and
these do not prove anything.
The
argument from design seems to depend on an analogy, which means that it depends
on a similarity or comparison between two things: the world is very much like a
watch, and the eye is very much like a camera, therefore, they must have
similar origins such as design and artifice. However, analogies are weak as a
form of evidence.
Logically
speaking, what is being said in the Design Argument goes something like this:
Object
1 has properties A, B, and C.
Object
2 also has properties A, B, and C.Object 1 has property D.
Therefore, Object 2 will also have property D.
To
put this in the context of the watch analogy:
A
watch has order, complexity, and purpose.
A
human body has order, complexity, and purpose.A watch has a designer.
Therefore, a human body will also have a designer.
However,
an analogy proves nothing, as we can see by the following example:
A
watch has order, complexity, and purpose.
A
human body has order, complexity, and purpose.A watch has cogs.
Therefore, a human body will also have cogs.
We
can see quite clearly that the form of an argument by analogy is logically
invalid; just because two objects have several properties in common it does not
mean that they will also share other properties, or indeed a similar cause, as
these other examples help to show:
Simon
has a nose, two ears, two eyes, a mouth, two hands, two feet, and freckles.
Anne
has a nose, two ears, two eyes, a mouth, two hands, two feet, and freckles.Simon has a penis.
Therefore, Anne will also have a penis.
Paper
is white, soft, and contains carbon.
Chalk
is white, soft, and contains carbon.Paper is manufactured from wood.
Therefore, chalk will also be manufactured from wood.
Analogies
work by pointing to similarities between two items and then claiming that since
they are similar in a variety of ways they must also be similar in other. As we
can see, this is all based on false assumptions.
2) The world is full of design flaws
This
criticism again comes from David Hume
(1711-76). Hume actually penned his criticisms of the Design Argument before Paley even wrote his particular
version of the argument, but Paley was unaware of Hume’s work. Hume argued that
the world is full of flaws and therefore that if there is a designer of the
world then he is a flawed being who created a flawed world and does not deserve
much praise. Theists typically argue that God must be perfect and all-powerful
and good, but Hume mocks this view in the following passage:
“This
world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior
standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who
afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only
of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his
superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated
deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first
impulse and active force which it received from him.”[3]
Here
Hume is lampooning the Design Argument by saying that if there is a designer
then he has produced a shoddy world which is far short of perfection – our
world is “faulty and imperfect compared to a superior standard.” Hume then goes
on to suggest that our world might be the work of a child deity who built Earth
as a bad first attempt and then abandoned it in embarrassment, or perhaps that
Earth was made by an old and decrepit deity who should be pensioned off. To use
a simple example, if God designed the human eye then why are there so many
people with bad eyesight or who are blind?
Hume’s
point is strongly connected to The
Problem of Evil: why would God, when he designed the world, fill it full of
nasty things such as cancer, viruses, and earthquakes that kill people? There
are many strong responses to Problem of Evil which try to explain why God would
allow evil, or even purposefully cause it to happen – that is a discussion for
another time. The most important counter argument to note presently is that even
if the designer did a bad job by allowing flaws such as disease it would still
follow that the designer existed. Hume, however, does give us reason to pause
and wonder whether the world’s designer is truly benevolent or not.
3) The Design Argument is highly
selective in comparing the world to a machine
David
Hume argued that it is highly selective to make a comparison between the
complexity of planet Earth and machines. Why not compare the world to a plant
and imagine that it grew? Why not compare the world to an animal and imagine
that it was born from sexual reproduction? Surely comparing Earth to a human
designed and created machine is effectively cheating.
Of
course, those in favour of the Design Argument are able to reply to this by
saying that such a comparison with birth or germination would not explain
anything. When it comes to an animal such as a cow saying that it came from its
parents is not a final explanation because then we can ask where its parents
came from, where its grandparents came from, and so on. Paley actually thought
of this criticism himself and argued that if someone found a watch that was
capable of reproducing then this would not diminish the need for the first
watch to have a designer, instead it should actually increase our amazement at
the skill of the designer. We have no idea where plants and animals first came
from, how they first grew and first were born, and the Design Argument is
trying to give us the answer to that issue.
However,
lying behind Hume’s criticism is an even stronger point: we know how things
like watches come about because we have observed it, but we have never observed
the beginnings of plant and animal species, nor indeed have we observed the
beginnings of worlds and their ecosystems, thus, how can we really claim to
know anything about their origins? Saying that they must have been designed is
nothing but guesswork.
4) Even if there was a designer, must
it necessarily be the God of Classical Theism?
Hume
argued that even if there is a designer who manufactured the living organisms
of our world we should not assume that this is the god worshipped by Jews,
Christians, and Muslims. There is no more reason to suppose that the world was
designed by the god of Christianity than there is to suppose that the world was
designed by the Egyptian god Ra or the Greek god Uranus.
It
would be fair to infer that the designer of the world’s life-forms would need
to be very intelligent and very powerful, but it would not necessarily have to
be all-knowing, all-powerful, good, and so on. The designer would not even
necessarily need to be eternal, it could have created the world and then later
died and left its creation to carry on without it. Moreover, there is no
particular reason to suppose that the world was designed by a single god at
all, it could have been designed and created by a team of gods (a pantheon). The
most complex things, such as ships, power stations, or aeroplanes, have to be
designed and manufactured by teams, so arguably it makes a lot of sense to say
that there are many gods who worked together to make the world and its life-forms.
Perhaps there are no ‘gods’ at all and the world was manufactured by a gigantic
team of angels?
In
modern times this point has been made in a satirical way by American teacher Bobby Henderson who argued that if
there had to be an intelligent designer of the universe then there was no
reason why it could not be an omnipotent ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ who created
the world through the use of ‘His Noodly Appendage.’
In
short, the Design Argument, if it works, can show that there is ‘something’
which designed the world, but it is incapable of showing what that something
is. It cannot prove that any specific god is responsible for the world, nor
that there is only one, nor that it still exists now.
The Design
Argument as Causal Reasoning and Probability
Those
in favour of the Design Argument have the ability to rescue the argument from the
criticism that it is just an analogy by framing the argument in terms of causal
reasoning and probability. They may also employ The Anthropic
Principle to strengthen their case. Arguably this is where the true force
of the argument lies, and the analogy is merely a means of bringing these ideas
to the surface.
The
Design Argument in terms of probability:
Suppose
that you were to find a jigsaw puzzle completed on the floor of a shop. Now
there are two possible options as to how it could have got there, either, (A) the
puzzle just happened by chance to fall off the shelf and land on the floor
completed in exactly the right way, or, (B) someone took the puzzle out of its
box, laid the pieces on the floor, and put them together in the right order. Reason
dictates that option (A) is so massively improbable as to be laughable, and any
person who genuinely believed the puzzle came to be completed by chance would
be rightly considered foolish, hence we embrace (B) as the accepted option.
If
we now think back to the watch analogy we can read it in a new way. Rather than
thinking that the human body must be designed simply because it has a few
similarities to a watch, we can see that the analogy simply serves to explain a
mathematical argument concerned with probability. Suppose you are walking on
the beach of a volcanic island and you see a rock; you will be able to work out
that it probably erupted out of the volcano, however, could you say the same
when you came across a watch? Surely not! With the watch we have two options,
either (A) a bunch of superheated atoms erupted from the volcano and crashed
into each other, forming cogs and bars and coils, which all just happened to
smash together in such a way that they formed a watch which then landed on the
beach, or (B) an intelligent being gathered the materials, considered the best
way to use them, then shaped them and organised them into a watch before
somehow losing it on the beach. Evidently anyone who believed (A) would be seen
as a fool for it is so unlikely as to be negligible.
Now
we can apply this probability based argument to the Design Argument. It seems
that we have two possibilities when it comes to the complex things of the world
such as animal and plant organism, either (A) the organisms of the world just
dropped out of the sky by random chance, or, (B) someone took the matter of the
world and arranged it into ordered, complex, and purposeful systems such as
organisms. The idea that lots of atoms could just randomly crash into each
other and happen to form entire human beings, entire cows, entire lobsters,
entire fir trees, and so on, is nonsense. Furthermore, the idea that these
randomly created animals and plants would just happen to find themselves placed
into balanced and sustainable eco-systems seems to be double nonsense, even
more improbable, indeed, virtually impossible.
The
idea that life-forms dropped out of the sky, or were somehow thrown together by
elemental forces, seems absurd. If we reject option (A) – random chance – then
it seems the only remaining option for how complex life came into being is
option (B) – design. To use another famous analogy, the idea that life-forms
such as ourselves could come about by pure chance is equivalent to thinking
that a hurricane passing through a junk yard could somehow cause the existence
of a fully functional Boeing 747. Therefore, the only option is to see the
world as having been ordered and arranged by a supreme intelligence.
The
argument in terms of causal reasoning:
Scientists
use a process called induction all
the time, which is where you extrapolate the results from a sample of cases and
apply them to unknown and untested cases. Suppose that you see a flock of
flamingos and you notice that all of the birds in the flock are pink. You then
see another flock of flamingos and this is pink also. Over many years you see
thousands and thousands of flocks of flamingos and each time you notice that
all of them are pink. Now you may not have seen every flamingo in the world,
but surely you are entitled to conclude that “the next flock of flamingos I see
will also be pink” and also to make the general conclusions that “all flamingos
are pink”? This logical process is called induction.
Now
let’s apply this to the Design Argument: initially we can say that we have not
seen the cause of complex things such as plants and animals, however, arguably we
can still come to conclusions about their origins by observing other complex
things and using inductive logic:
Axes
are complex and are caused by design…
Ploughs
are complex and are caused by design…
Watches
are complex and are caused by design…
Steam
trains are complex and are caused by design…
Cars
are complex and are caused by design…
Houses
are complex and are caused by design…
Pyramids
are complex and are caused by design…
Spider
webs are complex and are caused by design (by spiders)…
Bird
nests are complex and are caused by design (by birds)…
…and
so on.
We
could easily make the list millions of items long and we can include on it not
just things which are products of human design, but also those which are
manufactured by other species such as spider webs, bird nests, beaver dams, and
fox sets. Those who support the Design Argument would say that we can use
induction and extrapolate our findings about the known causes of complex items
such as watches, cars, and houses to identify the cause of things such as
animal and plant species – they too must have been designed.
The
Anthropic Principle
The
Design Argument is often backed up by the Anthropic Principle, an argument that
it is far too much of a coincidence for a planet to exist which is just right
for human life. Planet Earth is in what we call ‘the Goldilocks Zone’ around
the Sun, which means that it is neither too close nor too far away from the Sun
for life to exist. Earth is on average 149.6 million KM away from the Sun,
getting closer and further away from the Sun on its elliptical yearly journey. Estimates
vary, but it is thought that if Earth was 25% closer to the Sun then it would
be too hot for life, and if it was 25% further away then it would be too hot
for life. Earth also has an atmosphere rich with oxygen to allow for animal
life and carbon dioxide to allow for plant life, and this atmosphere also
allows for heat from the Sun to be retained which provides stability. There is
also the ozone layer which protects life on Earth from dangerous radiation from
the Sun, and Earth has water and carbon all of the other chemicals necessary
for life to exist. The argument goes that it is so unlikely that a planet would
exist that is fit for human existence that this calls for an explanation and
the best explanation is design, not chance.
As
you should hopefully be able to see, recasting the argument in terms of
probability and scientific causal reasoning makes it a much stronger argument
than when it was viewed simply as an analogy. However, does this new stronger
argument still stand up to criticism?
5) Who designed God?
Richard Dawkins argues that God, as an all-powerful and omnipotent being, would have to be a very complex entity indeed. If complex things require a designer, then we have to ask, who designed God?
“Design is a workable explanation for organized
complexity only in the short term. It is not an ultimate explanation, because
designers themselves demand an explanation.”[4]
In
the opinion of Dawkins the whole idea of a designer seems ridiculous. The
Design Argument bases itself on the idea that our world is complex and so needs
to be designed by a god, but then surely this god itself would also be complex
and so would also require a cause and explanation. Dawkins argues that the
concept of God put forwards by most religions is far more complex than the
universe itself; God is a conscious being with infinite intelligence, who is
present everywhere, who has the power to perform every action possible, and who
knows the location and status of every last particle of matter in the universe,
is outside of time, and so on; Dawkins says that God is a far more complex idea
than the universe itself.
The
Design Argument shares this problem with the First Cause Argument: if we need a
god (god1) to explain the universe, then surely we would also need a second god
(god2) in order to explain the existence of god1, and then we would need a
third god (god 3) to explain where god2 came from, and so on ad infinitum.
Dawkins argues that traditional theist arguments tend to start out by saying
that the world needs an explanation or cause, and then saying that God is the
cause, and then saying that this god will somehow not require any cause or
explanation itself. He finds this to be illogical.
6) The Epicurean Hypothesis – chance
is still possible, even if unlikely
The
Design Argument puts forward that chance cannot cause the complexity of our
world, yet this is not strictly true: just because something is extremely improbable it does not mean it is impossible. However unlikely it is that
complex organisms such as human beings and plants just appeared by chance, it
is still possible.
The
example of throwing a jigsaw puzzle in the air was used earlier to demonstrate
the sheer unlikeliness of something complex and ordered coming about by chance,
however, just because something is unlikely it does not mean it is impossible
– it is possible for a jigsaw to land
completed, even the first time you throw it in the air, it is just very
unlikely. Moreover, with repeated attempts the chances of an event occurring
increases – if you threw the puzzle into the air billions of times then surely
the chances are that it will land completed sooner or later. If you were to
throw ten dice at once the chances of getting ten ‘ones’ would be quite low,
however, it is possible, and if you kept on throwing them eventually it would
probably happen. The same is true if you were throwing a billion dice or even a
trillion.
Scientists
now believe that there are trillions of trillions of stars in our universe, and
that many of these stars have planets. Moreover, they believe the current
universe is around 13 billion years old. Given the sheer amount of planets that
exist, the chances that there are many planets in the universe which are ‘just
right’ for life is actually quite good – there are probably billions of planets
in the Goldilocks Zones of their stars, with the right chemicals to allow for
life, with protective atmospheres, water, and so forth. Given enough time the
chances of some kind of life forming on these billions of life-capable planets
are arguably quite favourable.
This
view is effectively what Epicurus
(341 – 270 BCE) argued for in ancient Greece. Epicurus put forward that the
world did come about through random chance because time might be infinite.
Suppose there is a finite amount of matter in the universe and it is in a
disordered mess, but it is in motion, which means it is constantly rearranging
itself. Generally the universe would move from one lifeless and chaotic state
to another, from one garbled mess of matter to another garbled mess of matter; given
enough time the universe will progress through a great many different
arrangements, and given infinite time it could even progress through every
possible organisation of matter. Eventually this disorganised and chaotic
matter would find itself arranged, through random chance, into a complex,
well-ordered, state, and once in that state it would remain that way, at least
for some period of time. In this way a world such as Earth, with all of its
life-forms and ecosystems, could have chanced to arise and once it came to be
it has sustained its own existence until the present. In the view of Epicurus
life is inevitable sooner or later, and it does not require a designer god, it merely
requires time and for matter to be in motion.
These
ideas from Epicurus together with modern science’s estimation of the size and
timespan of the universe help to massively reduce the improbability of
organised and complex life, as it seems highly likely that there will be many
planets around the universe which are in the Goldilocks Zone, with the right
atmosphere, the presence of water, and so forth, and we must of course remember
that most of the universe is lifeless.
7) The Anthropic Principle is
illogical
The
author Douglas Adams (1952-2001) argued
that the Anthropic Principle was deeply flawed and backwards in its thinking.
We may think it is extremely strange that a planet exists which is just right
for human life, but this is getting things the wrong way round – Earth is not
“just right” for humans, rather, humans are “just right” for Earth. It is not
as if humans existed, and then an environment just right for them was put
together for us to use, rather, surely the planet came first and we have
adapted to it. Adams said that the Anthropic Principle is very much like a
puddle of water thinking to itself “how curious it is that this hole in the
ground is just the right shape to house me” when in reality the puddle fits the
hole, not vice-versa.
If
Earth were a different then the life-forms on Earth would also be different, or
else they might not exist at all. If Earth were a few million kilometres further
away from the Sun then perhaps we would all be excessively hairy to keep warm.
If Earth was larger, thus making its gravity stronger, then it would be
inhabited by different life-forms, or perhaps none at all. If there was less
oxygen then there might only be plant life. We may think it is strange that the
universe is just right for us, but actually, it is only because the universe
happens by chance to be the way that it is that we happen to be here at all,
and that we are formed the way we are.
8) Evolution: ‘The Blind Watchmaker’
By
far the most serious problem raised against the Design Argument is evolution,
which purports to explain the complexity of life through natural means which do
not require the intervention of a supernatural designer god. In the views of
many atheistic or sceptical philosophers it is evolution which truly blows the
Design Argument out of the water. 
For centuries people found different
versions of the Design Argument extremely compelling, after all, complex
organisms like plants and animals do require an explanation, and since chance
did not seem a good explanation, supernatural design seemed to be the only
option. However, this all changed when Charles
Darwin (1809-82) and Alfred Russell
Wallace (1823-1913) developed the theory of evolution, a theory which
explains how complex life-forms could develop over hundreds of millions of
years thanks to mutation and natural selection, or “survival of the fittest” as
Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) called
it.
According
to evolutionary theory the first life-forms were very simple, consisting of
little more than self-replicating organic chemicals. These would have been
created by random chance, much as Epicurus hypothesised. The creation of
organic life from complex non-organic chemicals is known as abiogenesis, and scientists have not
yet managed to explain how it can happen, however, it is a serious field of
study with encouraging results to date.
Once
these first, simple life-forms existed they were able to reproduce and change,
adapting over millions of successive generations into new forms which were more
varied and complex. This is all thanks to two key mechanisms: mutation and
‘natural selection.’ Natural selection can be contrasted with ‘artificial
selection’ – something humans have been doing to plants and animals for
thousands of years. Through selectively breeding animals we have been able to
turn wolves into a variety of breeds of dogs, and create new species of plant
with better crop yields. Darwin’s investigations were able to discover how
nature could change species and generate new forms of organism by itself,
without any form of intelligent guidance or planning.
All
life-forms contain a genetic code which is passed on to their offspring.
Sometimes this code is copied inaccurately which means that the offspring have
slightly different genes. This can lead to the rise of new traits in the
population, such as a different tone of skin, a longer neck, sharper claws, and
so on. Natural selection ensures that beneficial mutations which help an
organism to survive in its environment are passed on whilst non-beneficial
mutations are extinguished from the gene pool. As an example, suppose that an
antelope had several offspring; most of these would have the same genes as its
parents, but suppose that two had mutations. One has a mutation which allows it
to run much faster, whereas the other has a mutation which makes it slower at
running than the average antelope. The effect will be that the faster offspring
will be able to run away from predators more effectively, so it will survive
longer and have more offspring, and so pass on its genes, whereas the slower
antelope will surely be killed early in its life and have few offspring. Over
time the more successful gene which makes those born with it fast would spread
around the population until all of them were faster. Given thousands of
generations these thousands of tiny mutations could compound until new species
existed.
The
evidence for evolution is mountainous and comes from a variety of sources
including the study of fossil records, analysis of genetics, embryology,
medicine, virology, comparative biology, Malthusian mathematics, and numerous
other sources. An interesting example is through the study of molluscs, which
shows us the stages in the evolution of eyes.
Some
molluscs have light sensitive cells on their epidermis and this allows them to
tell the difference between light and dark. Others have these light sensitive
cells collected together into small pits, which would only require a minor
mutation for it to occur. This mutation turns out to be useful as it allows for
the direction of the light or darkness to be detected, making the creature
better able to detect threats such as predators. Through various mutations over
hundreds of thousands of generations, more complex eyes emerged, and those with
them survived and reproduced better than those with the more basic versions. In
this way evolution produced complex eyes without the need for a designer. The
various pieces of evidence for evolution could fill an entire library, such as
the vestigial leg bones found in whales, or the rapid evolution of the flu
virus – the reason why you need a new flu jab each year. Today there are
virtually no credible scientists who deny it. Scientists may argue over certain
details, but Natural Science now exists within a distinctly Darwinian paradigm.
Evolution
deals a severe blow to the Design Argument by giving us a naturalistic
explanation of how complex and ordered beings could come about through natural
processes without the need for a designer. Before Darwinism it seemed that
there were only two options available to explain complex organisms: (A) living
organisms simply fell out of the sky by chance, or, (B) living organisms were
designed and constructed. By dismissing random chance as ridiculously unlikely
it left (B), design by some kind of god, as the only sensible option. However,
the theory of evolution gives us a third option to consider: (C) simple organisms
came about by chance, and then developed into complex organisms over millions
of generations thanks to mutation and natural selection. The addition of this
third option means that even if we dismiss the pure chance of option (A), we
are still left with two options: (B) design by God and (C) evolution. With two
options available we can no longer be sure which is true, and so we can no
longer be sure that God’s existence has been proven – perhaps God does exist
and did design us, but since another option is available we cannot be sure of
this. Moreover, since there is so much evidence for evolution many take it as a
good reason to conclude that we were definitely not designed.
However,
it is important to note that evolution and the existence of a God are not
mutually exclusive. If evolution is true then it means that creations stories
such as the Judaeo-Christian Genesis cannot be seen as literally true, but this
does not in itself disprove God. As an example, Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church say that belief in
evolution is compatible with belief in God. He accepts the Big Bang and
evolution, but sees God as responsible for both, and involved in guiding both
towards the creation of ourselves.
Conclusion
Ultimately
it is your decision whether you think the Design Argument works or not,
however, the counter-arguments seem to be compelling. Perhaps there is a God
who designed us, however, if God did design us he has done so in such a way
that we do not appear to be designed at all – he has hidden his craftsmanship
well. It seems far more likely that we are products of Epicurean chance and
Darwinian evolution, and even if there is some kind of designer we have no
guarantee that it is the single God of Judaeo-Christian theism.
Selected
Bibliography:
Brian
Davies, An Introduction To Philosophy of
Religion (3rd edition), OUP, 2003.
Richard
Dawkins, The God Delusion, Black
Swan, 2006.
Kenneth
Himma, Design Arguments for The Existence
of God, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009: http://www.iep.utm.edu/design/
David
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, published 1779.
William
Paley, Natural Theology, 1802.
David
Quammen, Was Darwin Wrong? The
National Geographic, November 2004.
Peter
Vardy, The Puzzle of God, Fount,
1999.
Horizon,
A War On Science, BBC documentary,
2006.
Did Darwin Kill God?,
BBC documentary, 2013.
[1] William Paley, Natural Theology or Evidences of The
Existence and Attributes of The Deity, pp.9-10.
[2] Ibid, p.20.
[3] David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p.63.
[4] Richard Dawkins, Why There Almost Certainly Is No God,
The Huffington Post, 23rd October 2006: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dawkins/why-there-almost-certainl_b_32164.html
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