Essay
Essay Arguments for the existence of God
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God; Christianity AQA Alevel religious studies; God as personal exemplar essay
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Examine how Paley’s design argument provides proof of God [10]Paley’s design argument is ‘a posteriori’ and inductive. This means that his argument
depends on sense experience in order to provide strong evidence for a probable
conclusion (not dissimilar to a scientific hypothesis) that God is the designer of our
universe. Moreover, the simplicity of this argument links to Occam’s razor: the most
obvious argument is the most likely to be true. Since our universe is so perfectly
designed for intelligent life, the most obvious argument is that the universe had to have
been designed. Paley suggests that the only entity capable of designing the world had
to be God, therefore God exists.
Paley bases his argument on three sets of observations: complexity, regularity, and
purpose. This involves the complexity of the biological world, such as the structure of
organs such as the eye, or the balance of nature within our ecosystems generally. The
regularity of seasons to the regularity of orbits in our solar system also provide
evidence for purposeful design. As a result, the complexity and regularity of some
objects imply they have a purpose, one from the mind of a designer.
This is further explored through the analogy of the properties of a watch in comparison
to a rock. This involves the watch, with many specific components placed in a certain
order, requiring it to have been designed to fulfil a purpose. A rock, on the other hand, is
basic, and therefore is in no need of a designer. Similarly, the universe has many
complex parts which function together for a purpose. The anthropic principle supports
this theory (due to the almost impossible probability of over 30 boundary conditions
being correct for our universe to exist), so the universe must have had a designer in
order to create such exact conditions. Moreover, the design of the universe is far more
intricate than the design of a watch, so the designer could not be a simple
‘watchmaker’, but God.
Our limited understanding of how the universe works does not undermine the inference
that it must have been designed. Paley therefore concludes that the designer must be
metaphysical and transcendent. All of the complexity in our world points to the fact that
the universe didn’t appear by chance but was carefully designed and created by God,
supporting the statement that God must exist.
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