Criticisms of the Teleological
Argument
By Becky, Katherine, meli and
mimi
• The Teleological argument has received
many criticisms, the most famous coming
from David Hume, John Stuart Mill and
Charles Darwin.
David Hume
• David Hume criticised
the Teleological
argument in his book
published in 1779
named “Dialogues
Concerning Natural
Religion”
Hume's Arguments were based
around the following points:
• As humans our knowledge and experience of the origins
of the world are so limited we cannot conclude that there
is only one designer, if a designer at all.
• God transcends human understanding and cannot be
limited to a human analogy.
• The analogy themselves are flawed as a manufactured
item is more likely to come from many hands rather than
just one.
• The ordered world could have come from a designer but
also by random chance (the epicurean hypothesis
explains this)
• David Hume is very famous for arguing that even if there
was a designer, who is to say this designer is the
superior being above all others when the world could
have just been “the first rude essay of some infant deity
who afterwards abandoned it”. In other words, the
teleological argument does necessarily correspond with
the god of Christianity if a god at all according to Hume.
John Stuart Mill
•
Mill was more commonly
known for his work on
ethics and liberty but in his
book “the nature and the
utility of religion” published
in 1874 he raised some
important criticisms to the
teleological argument.
• Mill was also an empiricist
so knowledge had tobe
grounded by experience.
Mill’s main points are:
• As suffering is in the world the designer could not have
been all loving and an all-loving designer would not have
allowed human suffering in the design.
• This means that the attributes of the god of Christianity
and classical theism do not meet the god proposed by
the teleological argument as the presence of evil and
suffering seem to indicate a fault in the design.
Charles Darwin
• Charles Darwin was a
naturalist who formulated
the theory of natural
selection in his work “the
origins of species”
published in 1859. His
work developed from
studying species on the
various Galapagos Islands
on the HMS Beagle
voyage, and expanding
work written by Thomas
Mathus.
Darwin's Theory provided an alternative to the
teleological argument in the following ways:
• He stated that the teleological argument was not the only
explanation for how each aspect of the universe seems to be
perfectly designed for the job it does. His theory of evolution and
natural selection shows how animals and plants may adapt over
time to their habitat and lifestyle. For example, birds on one island
had beaks adapted to break nuts, where as a similar species on a
different island had beaks to aid eating worms.
• This seems to continue on from Hume’s arguments who stated it
was possible for order to come from random chance, but did not
have the evidence that Darwin had to explain it.
• Therefore, everything is more well adapted to its environment
because it has been tailored over time. Those animals which have
not survived failed to successfully adapt.
Conclusions
• The teleological argument does successfully describe
why the universe may have been designed by something
but it does not necessarily mean this designer was the
god of Christianity or classical theism. This is because
the argument leaps from saying the world was designed
to saying this was only one god, who was also all
powerful and loving. As beings on this world we do not
have sufficient knowledge to conclude that the world was
designed at all, let alone by the attributes listed in
Christianity. Also, Darwin’s theory shows a viable
alternative to the design argument but explaining how
things may have become as adapted as they have.
THE END!!!!
Thank you
for
watching
