© Michael Lacewing
The argument from design: God
This handout follows the handouts on ‘The Argument from Design: Paley v. Hume’ and
‘Swinburne’s Argument from Design’. You should read those handouts first.
The argument from design argues from the order and regularity that we see in the universe
to the existence of a God that designed the universe. Paley, Hume and Swinburne all agree
that even if we could infer the existence of a designer of the universe, it is an extra step to
argue that the designer is God.
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Pt 5
Hume understands the argument from design to be an argument from analogy:
1
2
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4
In the organisation of parts for a purpose (‘the fitting of means to ends’), nature resembles
the products of human design.
Similar effects have similar causes.
The cause of the products of human design is an intelligent mind that intended the design.
Therefore, the cause of nature is an intelligent mind that intended the design.
If we are arguing for a designer on the basis of a similarity between human inventions
and the universe, then shouldn’t we think that the designer is more similar to human
beings than God is traditionally said to be? Here are five objections based on this idea.
1
The scale and quality of the design reflect the power and ability of the designer (p. 24).
The universe isn’t infinite. So we can’t infer that the designer is infinite. And we can’t tell
whether the universe is perfect; perhaps it contains some mistakes in design. If so, we
should say that the designer isn’t fully skilled, but made mistakes. So we can’t infer that
the designer is perfect or infinite in power or knowledge. We also have no reason to think
the designer is good (Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, §11, p. 73). By contrast,
God is said to be omnipotent, omniscient and supremely good. So we can’t infer that the
designer is God.
2
Designers are not always creators (p. 25). Someone who designs a car may not also build it.
So we can’t infer that the designer of the universe also created the universe. The creator
could just be following someone else’s designs. But God is said to be the creator of the
universe; so we can’t infer that the designer is God.
The design may have resulted from many small improvements made by many people (p.
25). So we cannot infer that ‘the designer’ is just one person. More generally, we can’t
infer that the powers to design and create a universe are all united in one being, rather
than being shared out between lots of different beings. But God is said to be one.
We find mind always connected to body (p. 25). There is no reason to think that the
designer has no body. But God is thought to be just a mind.
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5
Designers can die even as their creations continue (p. 26). So the designer may have
designed the universe and then died. God is said to exist eternally, so again, we can’t say
the designer is God.
In summary, the argument from design doesn’t show that the designer is omnipotent,
omniscient, the creator of the universe, just one being, non-corporeal, or even still in
existence. So it doesn’t show that God – as a single omnipotent, omniscient, eternal creator
spirit – exists.
Kant’s Critique
Kant echoes Hume’s first two points (Critique of Pure Reason, Second Division (Transcendental
Dialectic), Bk 2, Ch. 3, §6). The argument from design can only work by analogy, and so, on
the basis of order in nature, we can at best infer that there is a designer of nature. We can’t
draw any conclusions about the designer creating the universe or matter – just as human
designers don’t literally create the matter they work with, but only shape it. Again, we can
only say that this designer must be ‘very great’, though we don’t really understand how great
and can’t form any ‘determinate’ ideas of this being.
Swinburne, ‘The Argument from Design’, pp. 209–10; Paley,
Natural Theology, Chs 24–6
Swinburne accepts Hume’s objection (1) – if the designer is God, many of God’s traditional
qualities will need to be established by some other argument. Paley, by contrast, argues that
the argument from design can establish that the designer has all the features of God (Ch. 24).
He accepts that the argument shows only that the designer has the power and knowledge
necessary to create this universe, but he says that such power and knowledge is ‘beyond
comparison and there is no reason… to assign limits to it’ (p. 287). So, considered in terms of
our ability to conceive of such power and knowledge, they are unlimited, and so infinite.
‘Infinite’ power is a ‘superlative’, like ‘best’ and ‘greatest’. We are expressing our conception
of such power in the strongest terms we have.
In Ch. 26, Paley adds that the designer is good. The design of nature benefits natural
organisms and also gives rise to more pleasure than is strictly necessary for the design to
work. Furthermore, where there is evil, we have no evidence to think that it is by design.
However, to assess this last point would require us to discuss the problem of evil.
In reply to (2) and (3), Swinburne invokes Ockham’s razor. Simplicity requires that we
shouldn’t suppose that two possible causes exist when only one will do. If we can explain the
design and creation of the universe by supposing that there is just one being capable of this,
then we shouldn’t suppose that there is more than one being unless we have positive
evidence that there is. Swinburne argues that the order in the universe that requires a
designer is found in the laws of nature. So if, for instance, different parts of the universe
operated according to different laws, then that could be evidence for more than one
designer being involved. But, as Paley also argues (Ch. 25), the uniformity of nature gives us
good reason to suppose that there is just one designer and creator.
In reply to (4), the explanation requires that the designer doesn’t have a body. Having a body
means that one has a particular location in space and can only act on a certain area of space.
If God’s effects are the laws of nature, and these hold throughout the universe, then God can
act everywhere in space simultaneously. So it is better to say that God has no body.
In reply to (5), Swinburne asserts that the objection only works if we are thinking about things
in spatial order, such as inventions. But temporal order – regularities in ‘what happens next’ –
requires that the agent is acting at that time. To bring about order in what happens next, I
must act. If I don’t act, then the laws of nature take over. But these laws of nature are
exactly what we are explaining in terms of God’s activity. So God acts wherever the laws of
nature hold. So God must continue to exist.
Paley adds (Ch. 24) that this also establishes that God’s existence has no beginning or end. It
has no beginning, because at such a time, there would have been nothing – and out of nothing,
nothing can come into existence. So the designer, God, must always have existed. This does
not establish that the designer, God, cannot – at some point in the future – cease to exist; but
if we reflect on what kind of existence God must have in order to always have existed, then
we have reason to think that God must continue to exist always as well.