Teleological Argument

The teleological arguments, or arguments from design, claim that certain features of nature are so orderly or purposeful that they suggest a designer which is argued to be God. They are inductive arguments so while they don't prove, they offer evidence to suggest.
Teleological Arguments focus on two things:
Design qua Regularity: focuses on the order and consistency in the universe. The universe’s regularity points to a designer. Like a well maintained garden has a gardener, a structured universe has a designer.
Design qua Purpose: Shows how the parts of the universe seem arranged for specific functions. The universe’s parts appear fitted together to achieve particular ends, implying intentional design.
So, Teleological Arguments argue existence of a designer because of order and telos.

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Hume's Version

Hume presented a version of the Teleological Argument, even though he does not believe in it. The reason he did this was to present the idea of the argument in its strongest form so he could then critique it.
Hume’s argument makes an analogy between human designs and nature:
Human designs resemble nature in that they both have ends they aim to achieve. They have purposes.
Similar effects have similar causes.
The causes of human designs (machines) are minds.
So, by analogy, the cause of design in nature is also a mind.
Given the ‘grandeur of the work’ of nature, this other mind is God.

Hume's Criticism of the Teleological Argument

While human made machines can be comparable to nature, we have never experienced nature being created whereas we have lots of experiences of humans making machines.
The analogy focuses on very specific aspects of nature that appear to be designed and then generalises this to the conclusion that the whole universe must be designed.
Human machines have a designer and a purpose. But there are some natural things that do not have an obvious purpose or designer, like a rock for example.
Hume calls this the result of an unconscious process of ‘generation and vegetation’.
The universe is more comparable to a biological thing rather than a machine so the universe is better explained by the unconscious processes of ‘generation and vegetation’ rather than a mind.

William Paley's Teleological Argument

Paley's argument is very similar to the structure that Hume used. It compares man-made objects, such as a watch, with certain aspects of nature, such as a stone.
If you found a stone in a field, you might assume it had just been there forever. But you would not assume that if you had found a watch in a field.
This is because a watch has many parts organised for a purpose. Which Paley says is the hallmark of design.
Things in nature are also composed of many part and these parts are organised for a purpose. The purpose of eyes are to see, for example, and their design allows for that.
Like the watch, nature has the hallmarks of design but “with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more”. The designer of the nature must be equally as impressive.
Paley says this designer is God.

Problem: Hume & Spatial Disorder

Things definitely look like they are designed perfectly and for a purpose sometimes, but there is also much “vice and misery and disorder” in the world.
If God really did design the world, Hume argues, there wouldn’t be such disorder.
For example, most of the space between stars and galaxies are almost entirely a vacuum, with very few particles per cubic centimeter. Space is almost entirely...nothing. If we look on Earth, some places have lots of natural disasters, extreme weather. Antarctica can get below −90°C, Death Valley can get above 56°C, almost uninhabitable.
This suggests that by coincidence we happen to be in a rare part of the that has spatial order. Whereas most of the universe appears undesigned.
Hume argues that if the world is designed, these chaotic features suggest that the designer isn’t very good, certainly not what a traditional God is thought to be.

Problem: Hume & Causation

We never actually experience causation but only the ‘constant conjunction’ of one event following another. When one event follows another enough times, we can then infer that those two events are connected and one will cause the other.
For example every day you witness the sun coming up after nighttime. You don’t actually experience the rotation of the Earth itself but it reasonable to expect this relationship to hold in the future because you’ve seen it hundreds of times.
But imagine that you took a drink from a glass of water and the exact same time a dog outside barked. Would you then assume that your drinking made a dog bark? Obviously not. The point is: You cannot infer causation from a single instance.
Applying this to teleological arguments, Hume argues that the creation of the universe was a unique event and we only have experience of this one universe. Like the dog example, we can’t infer a causal relationship between designer and creation based on just one instance.

Problem: Hume & Finite Matter with Infinite Time

For this criticism, we assume two things:
Time is infinite and Matter is finite.
If these two things are true, it is inevitable that matter will organise itself into combinations that appear to be designed. This is the nature of infinity, everything is inevitable. Everything will eventually happen.
When applied to the teleological argument: given enough time, it is inevitable that matter will arrange itself into combinations that appear to be designed, even though they’re not. The apparent design of our world could have happened on year 2, year 1000 or year 1 million. But our Earth came to be 4.5 billion years ago.
(It’s a bit like the monkeys and typewriters thought experiment: Given an infinite amount of time, monkeys will eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare.)

Problem: J.S. Mill

John Stuart Mill criticises the Teleological Argument in 3 ways.
1. The imperfection of the world shows that if God did design the world, he cannot be omnibenevolent. The world contains too much suffering and cruelty.
2. Inductive arguments can only offer probability, but not necessity or certainty.
3. The Teleological Argument's inductive analogies fail as the universe is not sufficiently like human things (eg: watches). The presence of randomness and suffering makes these analogies fail.

Problem: Darwin & Natural Selection

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution explains how complex organisms can come to be from nature and not a designer.
For example, it may seem that God designed giraffes to have long necks so they could reach leaves in high trees. But the long necks of giraffes can be explained without a designer:
Animals that can’t get enough food die before reproducing.
A random mutation giving an animal a slightly longer neck lets it reach food others can’t. This advantage makes it more likely to survive and reproduce, passing the longer-neck gene to its offspring.
Over time, long-necked animals become more common, increasing competition again. In this new environment, an animal with an even longer neck gains the next advantage.
Repeating this process over millions of years leads to the long necks of modern giraffes.
The key idea is that given enough time and genetic mutations, it is inevitable that animals and plants will adapt to their environment, creating the appearance of design. It's adaptation, not design.
Therefore Paley is incorrect that anything that has parts organised to serve a purpose must be designed.

Swinburne: The Argument from Design

Swinburne's version of the Design Argument distinguishes spatial order (order in things, like the eye) from temporal order (the orderly laws of nature).
In other words, spatial order is how things operate and temporal order is why the laws of nature are the way they are.
He concedes that science can explain spatial order, so Paley’s argument fails there.
But the laws of nature themselves, for example, a gravity being so perfectly balanced that galaxies, planets, and life can form, cannot be explained in the same way. Science can use these laws, but it cannot explain why they are as they are.
Since there is no scientific explanation for this temporal order, Swinburne claims the best explanation is a personal one: the laws of nature were designed by God.

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Problem: Multiple Universes

Hume’s earlier argument (finite matter, infinite time) can be adapted to argue that the number of universes is infinite.
This idea of multiple universes is popular among some physicists, as it explains various phenomena in quantum mechanics. This universe seems so perfectly tuned, but if there are vast numbers of universes with different constants, it’s not surprising that at least one of them has life-friendly values.
Similarly, it explains apparent randomness in quantum measurements by suggesting that all possible outcomes actually occur, each in its own branching universe. So, again, this life was inevitable.
With infinite universes (or even just very many), some will have laws of nature that support life, while many others will not. Our universe is just one of the lucky ones.

Problem: Is the Designer a God?

Even if the Teleological Argument proves the existence of a designer, it does not show that the designer is God.
The designer could be multiple beings rather than a single entity.
The universe’s “design” might result from gradual improvements by many creators, not a single perfect mind.
Unlike God, a designer could die or cease to exist, even if their creation continues.
Therefore, the argument at best points to a designer, not an eternal, omnipotent, or uniquely divine being.

"The multitude of interwoven adaptations by which the world is constituted a theatre of life, intelligence, and morality, cannot reasonably be regarded as an outcome of mechanism, or of blind formative power, or aught but purposive intelligence."

The Anthropic Principle

F.R. Tennant developed the Anthropic Principle in Philosophical Theology (1930), arguing that life is part of God’s plan.
He identified three types of natural evidence pointing to a designer:
The rational order of the world.
The way the inorganic world provides for life’s necessities.
The progress of evolution leading to intelligent human life.
Tennant noted that while a chaotic, lawless universe is imaginable, ours is evidently ordered.
Evolution has produced conditions suitable for intelligent life, which Tennant concluded is either the culmination of God’s plan or at least a stage in it.
Tennant is an advocate of theistic evolution. The quality of evolution is such that it must be the result of God.