“Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence …
… Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.”
This succinct statement of the argument from design for the existence of God is put into the mouth of its advocate Cleanthes by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. Hume’s purpose is to set up the argument in order to knock it down again—and most consider that he did a very effective demolition job. It is a testament, however, to the argument’s great stamina and intuitive appeal that it not only survived Hume’s broadside but that it continues to resurface in modified guises to this day. While the argument was perhaps at the peak of its influence in the 18th century, its origins can be traced back to antiquity and it has never really fallen out of fashion since.
The argument from design is also known as the “teleological argument.” This is derived from the Greek word telos, meaning “end” or “purpose,” because the basic idea underlying the argument is that the purpose we (apparently) detect in the workings of the natural world is evidence that there is a purposeful agent responsible for it.
How the argument works The abiding strength of the design argument rests on the powerful and widely held intuition that the beauty, order, complexity and apparent purpose seen in the world around us cannot simply be the products of random and mindless natural processes. There must, it is felt, be some agent with the inconceivably vast intellect and skill needed to plan and bring into being all the wonderful things of nature, so exquisitely designed and fashioned to fill their various roles. Take the human eye, for instance: it is so intricately crafted and astonishingly well fitted to its purpose, it must have been designed to be so.
Starting from some favored list of examples of such remarkable (apparent) contrivance in nature, the argument usually proceeds by way of analogy with human artifacts that clearly demonstrate the mark of their makers. So, just as a watch, for instance, is artfully designed and constructed for a particular purpose and leads us to infer the existence of a watchmaker, so the countless tokens of apparent intention and purpose in the natural world lead us to conclude that here, too, there is a designer at work: an architect equal to the task of designing the wonders of the universe. And the only designer with powers equal to such a task is God.
In his Natural Theology of 1802 the theologian William Paley set forth one of the most famous expositions of the design argument. If you happened to find a watch on a heath, you would inevitably infer from the complexity and precision of its construction that it must have been the work of a watchmaker; in the same way, when you observe the wondrous contrivances of nature, you are obliged to conclude that they, too, must have a maker—God. Alluding to Paley’s image, the British biologist Richard Dawkins describes the process of natural selection as the “blind watchmaker,” precisely because it blindly fashions the complex structures of nature, without any foresight, purpose or directedness.
Cracks in design In spite of its perennial appeal, some very serious objections have been raised against the design argument, by Hume and others. The following are among the more damaging.
Some modern variants of the design argument are based on the staggering improbability that all the conditions in the universe were exactly as they had to be in order that life could develop and flourish. If any of the many variables, such as the strength of gravity and the initial heat of the expanding universe, had been just slightly different, life would not have got going in the first place. In short, there seems to be evidence of fine-tuning of the cosmos, so precise that we must suppose that it was the work of an immensely powerful fine-tuner. But improbable things do happen. It is incredibly unlikely that you will win a major lottery, but it is possible; and if you did, you wouldn’t presume that someone had rigged the result in your favor—you would put it down to extraordinary luck. It may well be unlikely that life evolved, but it is only because it did that we are here to remark on how unlikely it was—and to draw erroneous conclusions from the improbability of its doing so!
the condensed idea
The divine watchmaker
| Timeline | |
|---|---|
| c.375BC | The argument from design |
| c.300BC | The problem of evil |
| AD1078 | The ontological argument |
| c.1260 | The cosmological argument |
| 1670 | Faith and reason |