Teleological Argument Undermined

The Teleological Argument for the existence of God is made by inferring that since the universe shows signs of purpose and intelligent design, it couldn’t possibly be the product of random chance. An offshoot of this argument focusing on the actual purpose is the Anthropic Principle, one reading of which suggests that since Earth is so perfectly suited for life among humankind that purpose must have been to create humans. The purpose of this paper isn’t to disprove the possibility of a divine planner at work in creating the cosmos, something that would be impossible to do. Rather, my purpose is to show that the attempt to prove the existence of God from the argument from-or to-design, and that part of that design was to create human beings, fails when held up to the evidence of how large a part chance has played in the evolution of Earth and her species.

A key foundation for defenders of the Teleological Argument is that the universe shows signs of design. But perhaps what they really mean isn’t actually design, but rather mere order. Design presupposes a purpose, whereas order is simply a case of regularity, of identifiable patterns. Our solar system clearly is quite ordered, but so far we haven’t been capable of detecting any purpose to it (Dennett 64). Everything created by nature bases its purpose upon circumstance. No man has a preconceived purpose, his goal is transitory and dependent upon what else is happening in the world at that moment. So it is with clouds. Clouds “are constantly varying in size, color, formation, moisture, and electrical content and in many other respects and each moment of their existence is determined by the special conditions and circumstances of the moment” (Brill 37). Gravity is dependent upon circumstances, upon chance if you will. It is certainly a good thing that the Earth is constructed in such a way that the force of gravity is strong enough to keep us from floating away, but not strong enough to crush us. No evidence suggests that this is any way done purposefully, however. As Bergson writes, “Nature sets living beings at discord with one another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside order, retrogression alongside progress” (40). Simply stated, it is a fallacy to even assume that the universe does shows signs of intelligent design with purpose, for what could be the purpose of paradox? From order, however, if you mix in enough time, evolution can provide design with no pretensions toward purpose (Dennett 65).

“Natural selection accounts for the ‘design’ of organisms, because adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less adaptive, variations” (Ayala 27). One of the crucial misunderstandings of evolution by its critics is that everything is accomplished by blind chance. Chance, by means of genetic mutations, does of course play a tremendously important part in evolution, but chance alone would result in chaos and clearly there is order in evolution. The randomness of mutation is offset by the role of natural selection “which preserves what is useful and eliminates the harmful” (Ayala 27). All of this is accomplished, of course, by giving the mutation and natural selection enough time to take transform the species. The design of an evolved species is related, therefore, to both chance and law, but it by no means requires an original planner, so the concept of design in nature does not necessarily mean there had to be a God.

“Almost universallyâÂ?¦design theologiansâÂ?¦are in opposition toâÂ?¦the view that the ultimate origin and structure of the world could have come about by chance” (Hurlbutt 217). This is a very disturbing view, to say the least. Hoimar Ditfurth argues convincingly for the need for chance in the cosmos to provide meaning. According to Ditfurth, if there were no possibility for chance in the world, then everything would be subjected to rigid laws and the universe would be nothing but a “gigantic clocklike mechanism.” Adhering merely to unbreakable laws, then, the future and past would be closed-ended with everything determined beforehand. This would extend to make all moral laws illusory since it ethical considerations wouldn’t really make any difference to a pre-determined outcome (74).

John Brill comments on the role of chance in the universe by pointing out that “Contact of electrical charges is an accidental phenomenon and is the cause and explanation for everything that happens in the universe” (36). Unfortunately, Brill takes his point too far in reaching an atheistic conclusion that I don’t believe is warranted by the facts. Brill states that the universe either was planned and controlled by a central power, or else it is all based on mere random chance and so therefore “there can never be a compromise between the theory of evolution and the theory of creation by a Divine Power” (102). I doubt that statement, but I agree that randomness, chance and evolutionary process play a role in developing the universe and those facts undercut severely the argument for a purposeful design.

William Paley’s argument for design is famous for the watchmaker analogy. This analogy doesn’t really seem to fit, however. A watch is an intricately designed mechanism with a specific purpose, but there is nothing superfluous about it. Every part of the watch is there for a single purpose, to help one tell time. The Earth is clearly not so single-minded. “Millions of species of living forms have lived and perished and this temporary condition applies to inanimate forms as well as to living forms” (Brill 102). Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for millions of years without seeming to have any specific purpose. (Unless we suppose that their purpose was to one day supply human beings with a source for oil). If it was an asteroid impact 65 million years ago that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct, this event can only be couched in terms of incredibly fortunate chance. It was extraordinarily good luck for humans that this asteroid struck the Earth because it “gave our miniature primate ancestors space and time to proliferate and evolve” (Gingerich 129). It the end it may only have been through the blind chance of a huge piece of rock striking the Earth millions of years ago that created conditions conducive to the evolution of species resulting in human beings. If so, this event is certainly devastating to the concept that human beings represent the true purpose of the design of the universe. Of course, one might also take into account the following thought expressed by Gerald Schroeder. “Divine intelligent design is not necessarily perfect design” (12).

Evolution is not built on blind chance, but rather on the marriage of chance and the laws of natural selection. Evolution does not present any end goal or purpose, and evolution represents the best theory available on how life grew on Earth. Evolution in itself doesn’t pre-suppose the non-existence of a Divine Creator, but as an answer to how we got here it severely undermines any argument to prove that a Divine Creator exists simply because there has to be purpose and design in the universe.