paley and the teleological argument

The teleological argument for the existence of God

-Greek telos = end, goal, aim, function

William Paley

1743 - 1805

The argument

• • Premise 1: A watch is an elaborate mechanism whose parts serve certain ends.

  • Premise 2: We infer that the watch was made by an intelligent watchmaker.

  • Premise 3: The universe is also an elaborate mechanism whose parts serve certain ends.

  • Conclusion: Therefore, by analogy, we should infer that the universe was made by an intelligent universe-maker (God).

Paley further argues:

• 1. It would not matter to my argument that I myself do not know how to make a watch.

  2. It would not matter that the watch sometimes went wrong.

  3. It would not matter if we could not understand the functioning of every part.

  4. We could not believe that the creation of the watch was a kind of accident.

  5. Nor could we believe that the watch made itself.

  6. Nor could we believe that the watch was not a real artifact, but just the cause of a mind to think so.

  7. Nor is the existence of the watch a product of the “laws of metallic nature”.

  8. Nor could we believe that we are in fact deeply ignorant on this subject.

Paley’s example is not original:

“When you see a sundial or a waterclock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?”

-Cicero, 1st c. BCE

-same argument as Aquinas' Fifth Way.

An argument by analogy

Because two things resemble each other in one respect, they must resemble each other in other respects.

E.g.: Sarah Palin, “What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?”

Analogies do not provide us with absolute certainty, but plausibility.

But argument by analogy is also unreliable (= “fallacious”):

• • Premise 1: Leaves are complex cellulose structures.

  • Premise 2: Leaves grow on trees.

  • Premise 3: Money bills are also complex cellulose structures.

  • Conclusion: Therefore money grows on trees.

Are there any points of disanalogy between the watch and the universe?

• 1. Well… the watch has an overarching purpose, namely to tell the time. But it is not clear that the universe has an overarching purpose! We need more content.

  2. The watch on the heath could not have come to be except through the agency of an intelligent watchmaker. Could the universe have come to be except through the agency of an intelligent universe-maker? In the case of the watch, no other explanation has any plausibility. In the case of the universe, there may be other plausible explanations.

Charles Darwin

1809-1882

“The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” (Darwin 1887, 279)