Teleological argument

Socrates and the pre-Socratics , depicted here in The School of Athens, both developed philosophical arguments addressing the universe's apparent order (logos). The argument from intelligent design appears to have begun with Socrates, although the concept of a cosmic intelligence is older and David Sedley has argued that Socrates was developing an older idea, citing Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about 500 BC, as a possible earlier proponent. Amongst Pre-Socratic philosophers before Anaxagoras, other philosophers had proposed a similar intelligent ordering principle causing life and the rotation of the heavens. For example Empedocles, like Hesiod much earlier, described cosmic order and living things as caused by a cosmic version of love, and Pythagoras and Heraclitus attributed the cosmos with "reason" (logos). In his Philebus 28c Plato has Socrates speak of this as a tradition, saying that "all philosophers agree—whereby they really exalt themselves—that mind (nous) is king of heaven and earth. Perhaps they are right." He later states that the ensuing discussion "confirms the utterances of those who declared of old that mind (nous) always rules the universe." Xenophon's report in his Memorabilia might be the earliest clear account of an argument that there is evidence in nature of intelligent design. The word traditionally translated and discussed as "design" is gnōmē and Socrates is reported by Xenophon to have pressed doubting young men to look at things in the market, and consider whether they could tell which things showed evidence of gnōmē, and which seemed more to be by blind chance, and then to compare this to nature and consider whether it could be by blind chance. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates is made to say just before dying that his discovery of Anaxagoras' concept of a cosmic nous as the cause of the order of things, was an important turning point for him. But he also expressed disagreement with Anaxagoras' understanding of the implications of his own doctrine, because of Anaxagoras' materialist understanding of causation. Socrates complained that Anaxagoras restricted the work of the cosmic nous to the beginning, as if it were uninterested and all events since then just happened because of causes like air and water. Socrates, on the other hand, apparently insisted that the demiurge must be "loving," particularly concerning humanity. In this desire to go beyond Anaxagoras and make the cosmic nous a more active manager, Socrates was apparently preceded by Diogenes of Apollonia. Plato and Aristotle Plato's Timaeus is presented as a description of someone who is explaining a "likely story" in the form of a myth, and so throughout history commentators have disagreed about which elements of the myth can be seen as the position of Plato. Aristotle, Plato's student and friend (c. 384 – 322 BC), continued the Socratic tradition of criticising natural scientists such as Democritus who sought (as in modern science) to explain everything in terms of matter and chance motion. He was very influential in the future development of classical creationism, but was not a straightforward "creationist" because he required no creation interventions in nature, meaning he "insulated god from any requirement to intervene in nature, either as creator or as administrator." Therefore the most complete explanation in regard to the natural, as well as the artificial, is for the most part teleological. In fact, proposals that species had changed by chance survival of the fittest, similar to what is now called "natural selection," were already known to Aristotle, and he rejected these with the same logic. He conceded that monstrosities (new forms of life) could come about by chance, but he disagreed with those who ascribed all nature purely to chance because he believed science can only provide a general account of that which is normal, "always, or for the most part." The distinction between what is normal, or by nature, and what is "accidental," or not by nature, is important in Aristotle's understanding of nature. As pointed out by Sedley, "Aristotle is happy to say (Physics II 8, 199a33-b4) without the slightest fear of blasphemy, crafts make occasional mistakes; therefore, by analogy, so can nature." Galen's connection of the teleological argument to discussions about the complexity of living things, and his insistence that this is possible for a practical scientist, foreshadows some aspects of modern uses of the teleological argument. ==Medieval philosophy and theology==

Late classical Christian writers As an appeal to general revelation, Paul the Apostle (AD 5–67) argues in Romans 1:18–20 that because it has been made plain to all from what has been created in the world, it is obvious that there is a God. Marcus Minucius Felix (c. late 2nd to 3rd century), an Early Christian writer, argued for the existence of God based on the analogy of an ordered house in his The Orders of Minucius Felix: "Supposing you went into a house and found everything neat, orderly and well-kept, surely you would assume it had a master, and one much better than the good things, his belongings; so in this house of the universe, when throughout heaven and earth you see the marks of foresight, order and law, may you not assume that the lord and author of the universe is fairer than the stars themselves or than any portions of the entire world?" Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) in The City of God mentioned the idea that the world's "well-ordered changes and movements", and "the fair appearance of all visible things" was evidence for the world being created, and "that it could not have been created save by God". Islamic philosophy Early Islamic philosophy played an important role in developing the philosophical understandings of God among Jewish and Christian thinkers in the Middle Ages, but concerning the teleological argument one of the lasting effects of this tradition came from its discussions of the difficulties which this type of proof has. Various forms of the argument from design have been used by Islamic theologians and philosophers from the time of the early Mutakallimun theologians in the 9th century, although it is rejected by fundamentalist or literalist schools, for whom the mention of God in the Qu'ran should be sufficient evidence. The argument from design was also seen as an unconvincing sophism by the early Islamic philosopher Al-Farabi, who instead took the "emanationist" approach of the Neoplatonists such as Plotinus, whereby nature is rationally ordered, but God is not like a craftsman who literally manages the world. Later, Avicenna was also convinced of this, and proposed instead a cosmological argument for the existence of God. The argument was however later accepted by both the Aristotelian philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and his great anti-philosophy opponent Al-Ghazali. Averroes' term for the argument was Dalīl al-ˁināya, which can be translated as "argument from providence". Both of them however accepted the argument because they believed it is explicitly mentioned in the Quran. Despite this, like Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and Al-Farabi, Averroes proposed that order and continual motion in the world is caused by God's intellect. Whether Averroes was an "emanationist" like his predecessors has been a subject of disagreement and uncertainty. But it is generally agreed that what he adapted from those traditions, agreed with them about the fact that God does not create in the same way as a craftsman. In fact then, Averroes treated the teleological argument as one of two "religious" arguments for the existence of God. The principal demonstrative proof is, according to Averroes, Aristotle's proof from motion in the universe that there must be a first mover which causes everything else to move. Averroes' position that the most logically valid proof should be physical rather than metaphysical (because then metaphysics would be proving itself) was in conscious opposition to the position of Avicenna. Later Jewish and Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas were aware of this debate, and generally took a position closer to Avicenna. Jewish philosophy An example of the teleological argument in Jewish philosophy appears when the medieval Aristotelian philosopher Maimonides cites the passage in Isaiah 40:26, where the "Holy One" says: "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number:" However, Barry Holtz calls this "a crude form of the argument from design", and that this "is only one possible way of reading the text". He asserts that "Generally, in the biblical texts the existence of God is taken for granted." Maimonides also recalled that Abraham (in the midrash, or explanatory text, of Genesis Rabbah 39:1) recognized the existence of "one transcendent deity from the fact that the world around him exhibits an order and design". Because of these examples, the 19th century philosopher Nachman Krochmal called the argument from design "a cardinal principle of the Jewish faith". The American orthodox rabbi, Aryeh Kaplan, retells a legend about the 2nd century AD Rabbi Meir. When told by a philosopher that he did not believe that the world was created by God, the rabbi produced a beautiful poem that he claimed had come into being when a cat accidentally knocked over a pot of ink, "spilling ink all over the document. This poem was the result." The philosopher exclaims that would be impossible: "There must be an author. There must be a scribe." The rabbi concludes, "How could the universe ... come into being by itself? There must be an Author. There must be a Creator." Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), whose writings became widely accepted within Catholic western Europe, was heavily influenced by Aristotle, Averroes, and other Islamic and Jewish philosophers. He presented a teleological argument in his Summa Theologica. In the work, Aquinas presented five ways in which he attempted to prove the existence of God: the quinque viae. These arguments feature only a posteriori arguments, rather than literal reading of holy texts. He sums up his teleological argument as follows: Aquinas notes that the existence of final causes, by which a cause is directed toward an effect, can only be explained by an appeal to intelligence. However, as natural bodies aside from humans do not possess intelligence, there must, he reasons, exist a being that directs final causes at every moment. That being is what we call God. ==Modernity==

Newton and Leibniz Isaac Newton affirmed his belief in the truth of the argument when, in 1713, he wrote these words in an appendix to the second edition of his Principia: This view, that "God is known from his works", was supported and popularized by Newton's friends Richard Bentley, Samuel Clarke and William Whiston in the Boyle lectures, which Newton supervised. Newton wrote to Bentley, just before Bentley delivered the first lecture, that: The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz disagreed with Newton's view of design in the teleological argument. In the Leibniz–Clarke correspondence, Samuel Clarke argued Newton's case that God constantly intervenes in the world to keep His design adjusted, while Leibniz thought that the universe was created in such a way that God would not need to intervene at all. As quoted by Ayval Leshem, Leibniz wrote: Leibniz considered the argument from design to have "only moral certainty" unless it was supported by his own idea of pre-established harmony expounded in his Monadology. Bertrand Russell wrote that "The proof from the pre-established harmony is a particular form of the so-called physico-theological proof, otherwise known as the argument from design." According to Leibniz, the universe is completely made from individual substances known as monads, programmed to act in a predetermined way. Russell wrote: Natural-law argument The natural-law argument for the existence of God states that the observation of governing laws and existing order in the universe indicates the existence of a superior being who enacted these laws. The argument was popularised by Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle. The argument of natural laws as a basis for God was changed by Christian figures such as Thomas Aquinas, in order to fit biblical scripture and establish a Judeo-Christian teleological law. Bertrand Russell criticized the argument, arguing that many of the things considered to be laws of nature, in fact, are human conventions. The teleological argument assumes that one can infer the existence of intelligent design merely by examination, and because life is reminiscent of something a human might design, it too must have been designed. However, considering "snowflakes and crystals of certain salts", "[i]n no case do we find intelligence". "There are other ways that order and design can come about" such as by "purely physical forces." British empiricists The 17th-century Dutch writers Lessius and Grotius argued that the intricate structure of the world, like that of a house, was unlikely to have arisen by chance. The empiricist John Locke, writing in the late 17th century, developed the Aristotelian idea that, excluding geometry, all science must attain its knowledge a posteriori—through sensual experience. In response to Locke, Anglican Irish Bishop George Berkeley advanced a form of idealism in which things only continue to exist when they are perceived. When humans do not perceive objects, they continue to exist because God is perceiving them. Therefore, in order for objects to remain in existence, God must exist omnipresently. David Hume, in the mid-18th century, referred to the teleological argument in his A Treatise of Human Nature. Here, he appears to give his support to the argument from design. John Wright notes that "Indeed, he claims that the whole thrust of his analysis of causality in the Treatise supports the Design argument", and that, according to Hume, "we are obliged 'to infer an infinitely perfect Architect. However, later he was more critical of the argument in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This was presented as a dialogue between Hume and "a friend who loves sceptical paradoxes", where the friend gives a version of the argument by saying of its proponents, they "paint in the most magnificent colours the order, beauty, and wise arrangement of the universe; and then ask if such a glorious display of intelligence could come from a random coming together of atoms, or if chance could produce something that the greatest genius can never sufficiently admire". Hume also presented arguments both for and against the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The character Cleanthes, summarizing the teleological argument, likens the universe to a man-made machine, and concludes by the principle of similar effects and similar causes that it must have a designing intelligence: On the other hand, Hume's sceptic, Philo, is not satisfied with the argument from design. He attempts a number of refutations, including one that arguably foreshadows Darwin's theory, and makes the point that if God resembles a human designer, then assuming divine characteristics such as omnipotence and omniscience is not justified. He goes on to joke that far from being the perfect creation of a perfect designer, this universe may be "only the first rude essay of some infant deity... the object of derision to his superiors". Derham's natural theology Starting in 1696 with his Artificial Clockmaker, William Derham published a stream of teleological books. The best known of these are Physico-Theology (1713); Astro-Theology (1714); and Christo-Theology (1730). Physico-Theology, for example, was explicitly subtitled "A demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation". A natural theologian, Derham listed scientific observations of the many variations in nature, and proposed that these proved "the unreasonableness of infidelity". At the end of the section on Gravity for instance, he writes: "What else can be concluded, but that all was made with manifest Design, and that all the whole Structure is the Work of some intelligent Being; some Artist, of Power and Skill equivalent to such a Work?" Also, of the "sense of sound" he writes: Derham concludes: "For it is a Sign a Man is a wilful, perverse Atheist, that will impute so glorious a Work, as the Creation is, to any Thing, yea, a mere Nothing (as Chance is) rather than to God. Weber (2000) writes that Derham's Physico-Theology "directly influenced" William Paley's later work. The power, and yet the limitations, of this kind of reasoning is illustrated in microcosm by the history of La Fontaine's fable of The Acorn and the Pumpkin, which first appeared in France in 1679. The light-hearted anecdote of how a doubting peasant is finally convinced of the wisdom behind creation arguably undermines this approach. However, beginning with Anne Finch's conversion of the story into a polemic against atheism, it has been taken up by a succession of moral writers as presenting a valid argument for the proposition that "The wisdom of God is displayed in creation." Watchmaker analogy popularized the "watchmaker analogy" used by earlier natural theologians, making it a famous teleological argument. The watchmaker analogy, framing the teleological argument with reference to a timepiece, dates at least back to the Stoics, who were reported by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum (II.88), using such an argument against Epicureans, whom, they taunt, would "think more highly of the achievement of Archimedes in making a model of the revolutions of the firmament than of that of nature in creating them, although the perfection of the original shows a craftsmanship many times as great as does the counterfeit". It was also used by Robert Hooke and Voltaire, the latter of whom remarked: William Paley presented his version of the watchmaker analogy at the start of his Natural Theology (1802). According to Alister McGrath, Paley argued that "The same complexity and utility evident in the design and functioning of a watch can also be discerned in the natural world. Each feature of a biological organism, like that of a watch, showed evidence of being designed in such a way as to adapt the organism to survival within its environment. Complexity and utility are observed; the conclusion that they were designed and constructed by God, Paley holds, is as natural as it is correct." Natural theology strongly influenced British science, with the expectation as expressed by Adam Sedgwick in 1831 that truths revealed by science could not conflict with the moral truths of religion. These natural philosophers saw God as the first cause, and sought secondary causes to explain design in nature: the leading figure Sir John Herschel wrote in 1836 that by analogy with other intermediate causes "the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process". As a theology student, Charles Darwin found Paley's arguments compelling. However, he later developed his theory of evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, which offers an alternate explanation of biological order. In his autobiography, Darwin wrote that "The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered". Darwin struggled with the problem of evil and of suffering in nature, but remained inclined to believe that nature depended upon "designed laws" and commended Asa Gray's statement about "Darwin's great service to Natural Science in bringing back to it Teleology: so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology." Darwin owned he was "bewildered" on the subject, but was "inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance:" ==Recent proponents==

Probabilistic arguments In 1928 and 1930, F. R. Tennant published his Philosophical Theology, which was a "bold endeavour to combine scientific and theological thinking". He proposed a version of the teleological argument based on the accumulation of the probabilities of each individual biological adaptation. "Tennant concedes that naturalistic accounts such as evolutionary theory may explain each of the individual adaptations he cites, but he insists that in this case the whole exceeds the sum of its parts: naturalism can explain each adaptation but not their totality." Richard Swinburne's "contributions to philosophical theology have sought to apply more sophisticated versions of probability theory to the question of God's existence, a methodological improvement on Tennant's work but squarely in the same spirit". Swinburne writes: Swinburne acknowledges that his argument by itself may not give a reason to believe in the existence of God, but in combination with other arguments such as cosmological arguments and evidence from mystical experience, he thinks it can. While discussing Hume's arguments, Alvin Plantinga offered a probability version of the teleological argument in his book God and Other Minds: Following Plantinga, Georges Dicker produced a slightly different version in his book about George Berkeley: The Encyclopædia Britannica has the following criticism of such arguments: According to the website Biologos: Also, the fine-tuning of the Universe is the apparent delicate balance of conditions necessary for life to emerge. In this view, speculation about a vast range of possible conditions in which life cannot exist is used to explore the probability of conditions in which life can and does exist. For example, it can be argued that if the force of the Big Bang explosion had been different by 1/10 to the sixtieth power or the strong interaction force was only 5% different, life would be impossible. In terms of a teleological argument, the intuition in relation to a fine-tuned universe would be that God must have been responsible, if achieving such perfect conditions is so improbable. However, in regard to fine-tuning, Kenneth Einar Himma writes: "The mere fact that it is enormously improbable that an event occurred... by itself, gives us no reason to think that it occurred by design ... As intuitively tempting as it may be..." He concluded that the fine-tuning of the universe was too precise to be the result of chance, so accepted the existence of God. He said that his commitment to "go where the evidence leads" meant that he ended up accepting the existence of God. Flew proposed the view, held earlier by Fred Hoyle, that the universe is too young for life to have developed purely by chance and that, therefore, an intelligent being must exist which was involved in designing the conditions required for life to evolve. According to Collins, the universe's laws, fundamental parameters, and initial conditions must be just right for the universe to be as discoverable as ours. According to Collins, examples of fine-tuning for discoverability include: • The fine-structure constant is fine-tuned for energy usage. If it were stronger, there would be no practical way to harness energy. If it were weaker, fire would burn through wood too quickly and energy usage would be impractical. • The baryon-to-photon ratio allowed for the discovery of the big bang via the cosmic microwave background. • Many things in particle physics are within a narrow range required for discoverability, such as the mass of the Higgs boson. Creation science and intelligent design A version of the argument from design is central to both creation science and intelligent design, The teaching of evolution was effectively barred from United States public school curricula by the outcome of the 1925 Scopes Trial, but in the 1960s the National Defense Education Act led to the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study reintroducing the teaching of evolution. In response, there was a resurgence of creationism, now presented as "creation science", based on biblical literalism but with Bible quotes optional. ("Explicit references to the Bible were optional: Morris's 1974 book Scientific Creationism came in two versions, one with Bible quotes, and one without.") Scientists disagreed with the assertion that intelligent design is scientific, and its introduction into the science curriculum of a Pennsylvania school district led to the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, which ruled that the "intelligent design" arguments are essentially religious in nature and not science. Proponents of the intelligent design movement such as Cornelius G. Hunter, have asserted that the methodological naturalism upon which science is based is religious in nature. They commonly refer to it as 'scientific materialism' or as 'methodological materialism' and conflate it with 'metaphysical naturalism'. They use this assertion to support their claim that modern science is atheistic, and contrast it with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports theistic science. This ignores the distinction between science and religion, established in Ancient Greece, in which science can not use supernatural explanations. Intelligent design advocate and biochemist Michael Behe proposed a development of Paley's watch analogy in which he argued in favour of intelligent design. Unlike Paley, Behe only attempts to prove the existence of an intelligent designer, rather than the God of classical theism. Behe uses the analogy of a mousetrap to propose irreducible complexity: he argues that if a mousetrap loses just one of its parts, it can no longer function as a mousetrap. He argues that irreducible complexity in an object guarantees the presence of intelligent design. Behe claims that there are instances of irreducible complexity in the natural world and that parts of the world must have been designed. This negative argument against step by step evolution ignores longstanding evidence that evolution proceeds through changes of function from preceding systems. The specific examples Behe proposes have been shown to have simpler homologues which could act as precursors with different functions. His arguments have been rebutted, both in general and in specific cases by numerous scientific papers. In response, Behe and others, "ironically, given the absence of any detail in their own explanation, complain that the proffered explanations lack sufficient detail to be empirically tested". "Third way" proposal University of Chicago geneticist James A. Shapiro, writing in the Boston Review, states that advancements in genetics and molecular biology, and "the growing realization that cells have molecular computing networks which process information about internal operations and about the external environment to make decisions controlling growth, movement, and differentiation", have implications for the teleological argument. Shapiro states that these "natural genetic engineering" systems, can produce radical reorganizations of the "genetic apparatus within a single cell generation". Shapiro suggests what he calls a 'Third Way'; a non-creationist, non-Darwinian type of evolution: In his book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, Shapiro refers to this concept of "natural genetic engineering", which he says, has proved troublesome, because many scientists feel that it supports the intelligent design argument. He suggests that "function-oriented capacities [can] be attributed to cells", even though this is "the kind of teleological thinking that scientists have been taught to avoid at all costs". Interacting whole The metaphysical theologian Norris Clarke shared an argument to his fellow professors at Fordham University that was popularised by Peter Kreeft in his "Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God" (1994). The argument states that as components are ordered universally in relation to one another, and are defined by these connections (for example, every two hydrogen atoms are ordered to form a compound with one oxygen atom.) Therefore, none of the parts are self-sufficient, and cannot be explained individually. However, the whole cannot be explained either because it is composed of separate beings and is not a whole. From here, three conclusions can be found: firstly, as the system cannot in any way explain itself, it requires an efficient cause. Secondly, it must be an intelligent mind because the unity transcends every part, and thus must have been conceived as an idea, because, by definition, only an idea can hold together elements without destroying or fusing their distinctness. An idea cannot exist without a creator, so there must be an intelligent mind. Thirdly, the creative mind must be transcendent, because if it were not, it would rely upon the system of space and time, despite having created it. Such an idea is absurd. As a conclusion, therefore, the universe relies upon a transcendent creative mind. == Criticism ==

Classical The original development of the argument from design was in reaction to atomistic, explicitly non-teleological understandings of nature. Socrates, as reported by Plato and Xenophon, was reacting to such natural philosophers. While less has survived from the debates of the Hellenistic and Roman eras, it is clear from sources such as Cicero and Lucretius, that debate continued for generations, and several of the striking metaphors used still today, such as the unseen watchmaker, and the infinite monkey theorem, have their roots in this period. While the Stoics became the most well-known proponents of the argument from design, the atomistic counter arguments were refined most famously by the Epicureans. On the one hand, they criticized the supposed evidence for intelligent design, and the logic of the Stoics. On the defensive side, they were faced with the challenge of explaining how un-directed chance can cause something which appears to be a rational order. Much of this defence revolved around arguments such as the infinite monkey metaphor. Democritus had already apparently used such arguments at the time of Socrates, saying that there will be infinite planets, and only some having an order like the planet we know. But the Epicureans refined this argument, by proposing that the actual number of types of atoms in nature is small, not infinite, making it less coincidental that after a long period of time, certain orderly outcomes will result. David Hume Louis Loeb writes that David Hume, in his Enquiry, "insists that inductive inference cannot justify belief in extended objects". Loeb also quotes Hume as writing: Loeb notes that "we observe neither God nor other universes, and hence no conjunction involving them. There is no observed conjunction to ground an inference either to extended objects or to God, as unobserved causes." Hume also presented a criticism of the argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The character Philo, a religious sceptic, voices Hume's criticisms of the argument. He argues that the design argument is built upon a faulty analogy as, unlike with man-made objects, we have not witnessed the design of a universe, so do not know whether the universe was the result of design. Moreover, the size of the universe makes the analogy problematic: although our experience of the universe is of order, there may be chaos in other parts of the universe. Philo argues: Philo also proposes that the order in nature may be due to nature alone. If nature contains a principle of order within it, the need for a designer is removed. Philo argues that even if the universe is indeed designed, it is unreasonable to justify the conclusion that the designer must be an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God – the God of classical theism. Hume also pointed out that the argument does not necessarily lead to the existence of one God: “why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing the world?” (p. 108). Nancy Cartwright accuses Salmon of begging the question. One piece of evidence he uses in his probabilistic argument – that atoms and molecules are not caused by design – is equivalent to the conclusion he draws, that the universe is probably not caused by design. The atoms and molecules are what the universe is made up of and whose origins are at issue. Therefore, they cannot be used as evidence against the theistic conclusion. Intelligence may not be God Referring to it as the physico-theological proof, Immanuel Kant discussed the teleological argument in his Critique of Pure Reason. Even though he referred to it as "the oldest, clearest and most appropriate to human reason", he nevertheless rejected it, heading section VI with the words, "On the impossibility of a physico-theological proof." In accepting some of Hume's criticisms, Kant wrote that the argument "proves at most intelligence only in the arrangement of the 'matter' of the universe, and hence the existence not of a 'Supreme Being', but of an 'Architect. Using the argument to try to prove the existence of God required "a concealed appeal to the Ontological argument". argued that, at best, the teleological argument could only indicate the existence of a powerful, but not necessarily all-powerful or all-knowing, intelligence. In his Traité de métaphysique Voltaire argued that, even if the argument from design could prove the existence of a powerful intelligent designer, it would not prove that this designer is God. Argument from improbability Richard Dawkins is harshly critical of intelligent design in his book The God Delusion. In this book, he contends that an appeal to intelligent design can provide no explanation for biology because it not only begs the question of the designer's own origin but raises additional questions: an intelligent designer must itself be far more complex and difficult to explain than anything it is capable of designing. Philosopher Edward Feser contends that Dawkins fundamentally misunderstands the teleological argument, particularly Aquinas' version, and refutes a straw man. Perception of purpose in biology The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse has argued that Darwin treated the structure of organisms as if they had a purpose: "the organism-as-if-it-were-designed-by God picture was absolutely central to Darwin's thinking in 1862, as it always had been". He refers to this as "the metaphor of design ... Organisms give the appearance of being designed, and thanks to Charles Darwin's discovery of natural selection we know why this is true." In his review of Ruse's book, R.J. Richards writes, "Biologists quite routinely refer to the design of organisms and their traits, but properly speaking it's apparent design to which they refer – an 'as if' design." Robert Foley refers to this as "the illusion of purpose, design, and progress". He adds, "there is no purpose in a fundamentally causative manner in evolution but that the processes of selection and adaptation give the illusion of purpose through the utter functionality and designed nature of the biological world". Richard Dawkins suggests that while biology can at first seem to be purposeful and ordered, upon closer inspection its true function becomes questionable. Dawkins rejects the claim that biology serves any designed function, claiming rather that biology only mimics such purpose. In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins states that animals are the most complex things in the known universe: "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." He argues that natural selection should suffice as an explanation of biological complexity without recourse to divine providence. However, theologian Alister McGrath has pointed out that the fine-tuning of carbon is even responsible for nature's ability to tune itself to any degree. Proponents of intelligent design creationism, such as William A. Dembski question the philosophical assumptions made by critics with regard to what a designer would or would not do. Dembski claims that such arguments are not merely beyond the purview of science: often they are tacitly or overtly theological while failing to provide a serious analysis of the hypothetical objective's relative merit. Some critics, such as Stephen Jay Gould suggest that any purported 'cosmic' designer would only produce optimal designs, while there are numerous biological criticisms to demonstrate that such an ideal is manifestly untenable. Against these ideas, Dembski characterizes both Dawkins' and Gould's argument as a rhetorical straw man. Eric Rust argues that, when speaking of familiar objects such as watches, "we have a basis to make an inference from such an object to its designer". However, the "universe is a unique and isolated case" and we have nothing to compare it with, so "we have no basis for making an inference such as we can with individual objects. ... We have no basis for applying to the whole universe what may hold of constituent elements in the universe." Other criticisms George H. Smith, in his book Atheism: The Case Against God, points out what he considers to be a flaw in the argument from design: The teleological argument assumes that one can infer the existence of intelligent design merely by examination, and because life is reminiscent of something a human might design, it too must have been designed. However, considering "snowflakes and crystals of certain salts", "[i]n no case do we find intelligence". "There are other ways that order and design can come about" such as by "purely physical forces." Most professional biologists support the modern evolutionary synthesis, not merely as an alternative explanation for the complexity of life but a better explanation with more supporting evidence. Living organisms obey the same physical laws as inanimate objects. Over very long periods of time self-replicating structures arose and later formed DNA. In response to such objections, Andrew Loke of Hong Kong Baptist University argues that these can be avoided by formulating the argument deductively as an argument by exclusion concerning the possible explanations for the highly ordered laws of nature rather than as an argument based on analogy, and that the objection from evolution is invalid because evolution requires the highly ordered laws of nature to be already in place. ==Similar discussions in other civilizations==

Hinduism Nyaya, the Hindu school of logic, had a version of the argument from design. P.G. Patil writes that, in this view, it is not the complexity of the world from which one can infer the existence of a creator, but the fact that "the world is made up of parts". In this context, it is the Supreme Soul, Ishvara, who created all the world. The argument is in five parts: • The ... world ... has been constructed by an intelligent agent. • On account of being an effect. • Each and every effect has been constructed by an intelligent agent, just like a pot. • And the world is an effect. • Therefore, it has been constructed by an intelligent agent. However, other Hindu schools, such as Samkhya, deny that the existence of God can ever be proved, because such a creator can never be perceived. Krishna Mohan Banerjee, in his Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy, has the Samkhya speaker saying, "the existence of God cannot be established because there is no proof. ... nor can it be proved by Inference, because you cannot exhibit an analogous instance." Buddhist criticism of Hindu Nyaya logic Buddhism denies the existence of a creator god, and rejects the Nyaya syllogism for the teleological argument as being "logically flawed". Buddhists argue that "the 'creation' of the world cannot be shown to be analogous to the creation of a human artifact, such as a pot". Confucianism The 18th century German philosopher Christian Wolff once thought that Confucius was a godless man, and that "the ancient Chinese had no natural religion, since they did not know the creator of the world". However, later, Wolff changed his mind to some extent. "On Wolff's reading, Confucius's religious perspective is thus more or less the weak deistic one of Hume's Cleanthes." Taoism The Taoist writings of the 6th-century-BC philosopher Laozi (also known as Lao Tzu) have similarities with modern naturalist science. B. Schwartz notes that, in Taoism, "The processes of nature are not guided by a teleological consciousness ... the tao [dao] is not consciously providential. == See also ==