Aquinas’ Fifth Way and the Teleological Arguments for the Existence of God
a) Explain the teleological arguments for the existence of God, with reference to Aquinas, Paley and Tennant. [20]
b) “Scientific evidence proves beyond doubt, that there is no designer God.” Evaluate this view. [30]
a)
The teleological argument, commonly known as the ‘argument from design’ or the ‘argument from fine-tuning’ is an argument typically in favour of a personal God used by theists to prove so. It originated from the Fifth Way of St Thomas Aquinas, and was developed through history. One of the most famous developments of the idea was an analogy by William Paley, named ‘The Watchmaker Analogy’, which was followed by an idea by F.R. Tennant named the ‘Anthropic Principle’.
Aquinas was a theologian whose main works were published in the late 13th century, the most prominent being ‘Summa Theologica’. Of this book lasting approximately 3,500 pages, the most famously known by far are Aquinas’ ‘Five Ways’, which span over just 2 pages. The teleological argument is the Fifth Way of Aquinas, and is laid out like this:
P1. The Universe has order, purpose and regularity;
P2. The complexity of the Universe shows evidence of design;
P3. Such design implies a designer;
C. Therefore, this designer must be God.
From this we can see that the argument is inductive, meaning the premises support the conclusion, but do not make it indisputable. It uses information that is inferred by the world around us, which we understand usually using our senses. It is also a posteriori, meaning it is based primarily upon experience rather than reasoning. Aquinas uses an analogy that makes reference of an archer shooting an arrow in order to demonstrate the argument qua regularity. He shows that an arrow flying through the sky is nothing more than that without its purpose, given by the archer who fires it. The archer fired the arrow with the purpose of hitting the target, so this is its telos, or end purpose. In the same way, God created the Universe with a telos in mind, that was for it to be beneficial in complexity and suited to our needs and the needs of those present within it.
Paley was a philosopher whose main works were published in the early 19th century, his main work being ‘Natural Theology’. He was the author of the most well-known analogy for the design argument. His analogy developed Aquinas’ Fifth Way, stating his idea qua purpose rather than qua regularity. This means that his analogy proved that things seem to fit together in the Universe with a telos in mind. His analogy suggests that if one was wandering in the desert, and came across a watch, they would know that it did not just come to be, but was instead designed by a creator. This is because they would see that the watch is complex, and has many parts, that seem to fit together with a teleology in mind which is to display the time. In the same way, he claims that everything in the world seems to fit together, and so the world must have a creator, continuing that the creator must be God. He also uses examples from nature, such as ‘the hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennae, are as highly wrought as if the Creator had nothing else to finish.’
F.R. Tennant is a philosopher who published a book called ‘Philosophical Theology’ in the early-mid 20th century. Tennant was the creator of an idea called the ‘Anthropic Principle’ that was the first to use the fundamental life-affording characteristics of the Universe to give another form of teleological argument. In his book, he stated that ‘the outcome of intelligent design lies…in the conspiration of innumerable causes to produced…and maintain a general order of nature.’ He believed in three types of natural evidence in the world that suggested the existence of a designer God. The first was the fact that the world can be analysed in a rational way, which maintains that intelligent beings are able to detect the workings of an intelligent mind. The second was the way in which the inorganic world has provided the basic necessities required to sustain life, such as trees producing oxygen. Lastly, the progress of evolution towards the emergence of intelligent human life. From this, we can see that Tennant was just expanding upon the empirical study of the world in order to favour and develop previous design arguments. He further developed his ‘Anthropic Principle’ into two separate parts: strong and weak versions. The strong version suggests that since the circumstances in our Universe are such that the emergence of life is inevitable, God intended to create a universe suited to produce human life. The weak version suggests that God enabled life, without defining that God actually created the Universe, with the emergence of humanity in mind.
In conclusion, the teleological argument is one of the most prominent of Aquinas’ arguments for a personal God. It has been developed by numerous intellects over the years while still maintaining the same initial ideology. It has limitations due to its nature, such as the fact that it’s inductive, meaning we can never be 100% certain of its correctness. However, the validity of the argument is fair, only the soundness is questionable.
b)
Various versions of the design argument, initially formulated as Aquinas’ Fifth Way in his most famous work ‘Summa Theologica’, have increasingly succumbed to criticism as further discoveries of modern science have emerged. Prominently, the theory of evolution discovered by Charles Darwin and advocated in the modern-day by Richard Dawkins, who is also a leading critic of the teleological argument. The argument suggests that the complexity and fitting perfection of the Universe is evidence of an all-intelligent creator, who must be God. The argument is a posteriori, meaning the most efficient way to invalidate the argument is to analyse the observations that it makes and consider them in regards to modern science.
One of the main features of the design argument is the idea of complex structures in the Universe. As of yet, all complex structures and intricacies of the Universe have been shown to have occurred through natural laws over the inconceivable period of time that the Earth has existed, however proponents of the design argument insist that such complexity cannot just have come into existence incidentally. According to modern science, they can. Examples that are often referenced in regards to this argument are naturally occurring complex structures such as oceans, which provide huge bodies of water that humans need to survive. Modern science has helped us understand how water was formed due to oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere that condensed into rain, filling basins in the Earth and, over time, forming oceans. The early stages of life on Earth adapted to gain the energy to asexually reproduce from naturally occurring substances, which advanced as life adapted in favour of the Earth’s atmosphere.
This leads nicely to the next point, that organisms being well-suited to their function isn’t proof of a designer God. Some who believe in the teleological argument may say that the regularly occurring pattern of nature being suited to a specific role in a specific place is ample evidence that the Earth is designed by an all-intelligent being. This is easily rebuked by Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has seen so much supporting evidence from modern science that its veracity is arguably beyond doubt. It is common sense nowadays that species that are well-adapted to their environment, such that they are able to reproduce effectively, will live for as long as their environment is unchanged. However, those that are adapted poorly, resultantly being unable to effectively reproduce (due to pre-propagation mortality of the surviving generation), will become extinct. There is no known explanation by believers of the design argument as to why species, such as dinosaurs, had to become extinct. Their argument makes no sense of why dinosaurs had to exist in the first place, if only to become obsolete. A modern version of the design argument proposed by Swinburne is that the Earth was created with the eventual existence of human beings in mind, which is inferred in his idea that ‘humans see the comprehensibility of the world as evidence of a comprehending creator’. However, this doesn’t seem to suffice for the extinction of so many species prior to the development of humankind, purely for our sake. In a way, this is quite self-centred of Swinburne, as he is suggesting that humans are the ultimate conceivable being as intended by God. According to this argument, it is plausible that humankind may one day become extinct ‘for the sake’ of another more superior species that a designer God intended to come into being. Could we just be another stepping stone towards God’s goal of an ultimate species? If so, is it not by definition that God is the perfect being himself? How could he exist if his kind are yet to be evident in the Universe?
A modern 20th century theistic philosopher named Michael Behe suggested that certain things in nature can be said to have ‘irreducible complexity’, and such things were evidence that a designer God is a necessary fact of the Universe. Something could be said to have irreducible complexity if ‘composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively stop functioning.’ An example of this is the human eye, whereby each part is contingent on the others in the sense that they are all required in order to work collectively. Due to this, it cannot be seen that the eye evolved since it couldn’t be reduced in the development of evolution. However, the idea is scientifically invalid. Every cited example of an irreducible complexity to date has been refuted by evidence from nature. The eye, for example, can’t have evolved through natural selection, but instead through thousands of years of minor ocular mutations, as summed up by Darwin in ‘On the Origin of Species’:
“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree…If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.”
It is said by some that it is an inconceivable impossibility that humans could arise from natural evolution. Due to this, there is a far stronger probability that a God ensured the rise of humankind through the process of evolution than humans simply coming into being through natural selection and other evolutionary processes. An analogy given by Henry Morris is of an automobile junkyard with all kinds of parts strewn around. He asks what the possibility is that, by natural means (such as being hit by a tornado), all of the parts could assemble reassemble themselves into a complete automobile, which sheds its rust and emerges “showroom clean” ready to drive away? A basic disanalogy to this is that humankind as a whole is not perfect nor completely incomparable to previous species from which we have evolved. Like many of the arguments in favour of a designer God, an assumption is made than humankind is intrinsically perfect and beyond improvement. Furthermore, laws of science show that forces act between particles greatly increasing the likelihood of parts getting together to form stable structures of greater complexity. In other words, the idea does not align with even the most basic of early modern laws of science, such as Newton’s discovery of gravity and the push and pull of forces, favouring certain outcomes, perhaps of a higher complexity.
In conclusion, modern science disproves any and all current suggestions made in favour of and in extension to any form of the teleological argument, originating with Aquinas’ Fifth Way and developed as the design argument. The scope of what classifies as a ‘teleological’ argument by definition is arguable, but the rebuke in favour of modern science of all arguments extending on the initial teleological argument, Aquinas’ Fifth Way, appears to show that theological teleology as a concept seems insufficient in reasoning for the existence of God as a creator of the Universe.
