Summary - H573/01 Philosophy of Religion - Teleological Argument
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H573/01 Philosophy of Religion
Institution
OCR
Notes covering the H573/01 Philosophy of Religion topic of the Teleological Argument, with explanation and notes covering all the necessary content for the exams.
Basic argument – when you look at the world, everything in it and see how complex and
“designed” it is, it surely cannot have happened by chance, there must be an intelligent
designer behind it.
Comes from Greek word “telos”, meaning purpose, or design.
Also known as the design argument.
Design shown through a bench – it had been designed to fit a specific purpose, which is to sit
a group of people, and give them a space to eat off. If it were missing a certain bolt or plank
of wood, it would be reasonable to assume that the bench is now not safe for use.
Complex Design – It states that we can see complex designs with a purpose, order,
regularity, and all sorts of other evidence in the world that suggests an intelligent infinitely
great designer who created it all: God.
Aquinas: discusses the evidence of Design in Creation. In the 5 th of his 5 ways, he says that
“everything operates as to a design. This design is from God.”
Aristotle: Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle and his theory of the Four Causes. Aquinas
links Aristotle’s idea of a Final Cause to God.
Thomas Aquinas’ 5th way:
1. When you look at the natural world you can see that everything in it follows natural laws,
even things that are not conscious.
2. However, if a thing cannot think for itself, it does not have any goal or purpose unless it is
directed by something that thinks. For example, an arrow only reaches its goal and is used
for its purpose because of the archer.
3. Everything in the natural world that does not think for itself heads towards its goal or
purpose because it is directed by something which does think. That something we call God.
Aquinas’ argument is in favour of Regularity of Succession.
William Paley (1711-1776):
He puts forward the most famous form of the argument in his book Natural Theology
(1802).
1st part of his argument is design qua purpose he puts forward using the analogy of the
watch.
o If we come across a watch and opened it up to see the mechanism and how complex
it is, we would conclude intelligently that it had a designer and that it didn’t come
about by chance.
o In the same way when we look at the world, we can infer a design because of the
way in which things fit together for a purpose. Paley thought that a similar
conclusion might be drawn from the human body.
nd
The 2 part of his argument is design qua regularity.
o He used evidence from astronomy and Newton’s laws of motion and gravity to
prove design in the universe. He pointed to the rotation in the solar system and how
they stay the same.
o Universal laws hold their orbits due to gravity. He believed that this could not come
about by chance.
o He concluded an external agent had imposed order on the universe as a whole and
on its many parts, and this agent must be God.
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