At the dawn of the nineteenth century, William Paley presented an argument for God’s existence from design in nature, also known as the teleological argument. The argument was generally plausible and well-respected until it was challenged by Darwin’s concept of evolution and natural selection. It was at this point that numerous objections were raised against his argument. Despite these objections, however, his argument still holds valid as a proof for the existence of, if not God, at least an intelligent, divine creator or designer.
The basic structure of Paley’s argument is very simple. It contains only one premise, and then proceeds to draw a conclusion from it. The premise is that we find in nature the appearance of complex design. That is to say that the parts of nature seem to be assembled together for a purpose. This design must be accounted for by something; logic tells us that there cannot be design without a designer, contrivance without a contriver, or order without choice (Paley, 35). Although there is no direct logical step from this point, the inference of best explanation is that there is in fact a designer. There is no other logical explanation. It was in this way that Paley argued for the existence of a divine designer who oversaw all things in creation.
Since its creation, though, several objections have been raised against Paley’s argument; the first being that we do not actually perceive design in nature, but only the appearance of design. We do not actually know whether or not there is a purpose in the assembly of nature. Nature, for all that we know, could just be a result of a random assembly of parts of matter which continued to play with each other within a given set of laws until nature as we know it was formed.
Although this is a possible theory, there are two key problems with it. The first is that it is highly improbable. The chances of atomic particles playing with each other as such to form the lifeblood of life that is water; the earth being just the precise distance from the sun so as to accommodate life; or the particles being just the right distance from each other after the big bang so as not to cause an implosion or endless drifting into space are nearly infinitesimally small. Even given an exorbitant amount of time, it is still unlikely that nature could result from this process. However, taking only this into consideration, it is still possible. It is when we consider the second problem that we see that the fault in this objection. The problem lies in the assumption that these parts randomly interact with each other in a given set of laws. The assumption itself is not false, but does necessitate further examination. The laws themselves contain a certain, specific order that needs to be explained. We can account for the random evolution of nature, but not for the laws which govern it. We will examine this in further detail, however, in a moment.
The second objection to Paley’s argument is that it is not, in fact, the inference of best explanation to the problem at hand. Remember that the problem he seeks to answer is the appearance of design in nature. He can only answer this problem through an inference of best explanation, namely, that a divine designer exists. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Darwin devised an alternative explanation in his Origin of Species. He suggested that nature seems to be designed not as a result of a designer, but as a result of evolution, which is a process by which organisms differentiate from each other and fill their own niches in nature over time. They do this via a process called natural selection, in which genetic information is passed on to offspring, but slightly varied each time such that the offspring have a similar, but unique set of genetic traits and behaviors. These behaviors and traits are tested in the environment and those which aid in survival and reproduction are passed onto the next generation, whereas those which hinder either are not. Over enormous periods of time, this process will differentiate all forms of life from even the most basic. It is in this way that different parts of nature appear to have functions, or design. If this is the case, then the inference of best explanation is no longer a divine designer, but evolutionary design.
To further the objection, not only is the theory of evolution by natural selection an alternative explanation for the design in nature, but there is also more evidence to support it. The tangible fossil record, accompanied by carbon dating techniques, lends heavy argumentative weight to the theory of evolution, as they provide the remains of organisms which underwent the process. Intelligent design does not have this kind of physical evidence at its command. Also, the existence of imperfect design supports evolutionary theory. There exist in nature extremely inefficient methods of doing things. Why would a divine designer not design everything perfectly or at least more efficiently? There is no answer to this question. However, because these designs are not necessarily hindering to survival, they can be explained by evolutionary theory. Lastly, real-time observations in controlled environments have proven the existence of natural selection. In times of dramatic environmental change, organisms visibly adapted to fit their new environment in a fairly quick amount of time. Intelligent design cannot account for this data.
Evolution, therefore, seems to pose a monstrous problem to Paley’s argument for a design. At this point, it seems as if it steals his argument’s position as the inference of best explanation. However, if we examine our situation on a deeper level, we find that evolutionary theory views nature on a superficial level. It makes the same mistake as the first objection: it explains the interaction of bodies in a universe of set laws, but it does nothing to explain the actual laws under which they operate. The laws of gravity, electricity, magnetism, and even evolution itself all have a very unique and distinct order to them, and, as we originally stated, order necessitates a will to cause it. To look at nature in biological terms alone is narrow-minded. Forces in chemistry and physics, which are so regular and dependable that scientists are willing to stake their lives and the lives of others on them, have an order and a design to them that evolution cannot explain. Therefore, although evolution may be the inference of best explanation for the order in the biological universe, there is a much larger order in the rest of nature that is left unaccounted for. We still need an inference of best explanation for order in all other parts of nature outside of biology. An intelligent and divine designer is the only plausible possibility.
The final objection we may make against intelligent design is a critique of its method. To place it in simple terms: it is bad science. Evolutionary theory is falsifiable, in that it can be disproved if a given set of phenomena are observed, it is fruitful in that it explains other phenomena outside of its field, and it makes predictions about future phenomena to be observed. Intelligent design contains none of these attributes consistent with good, scientific theory, and therefore should not be regarded with as much academic respect as evolutionary theory.
In the defense of intelligent design, however, we may say that it never claimed to be good science. In effect, what it attempts to do is describe phenomena in nature and draw them out of the realm of science and into the realm of philosophy. It is asserting that these questions regarding order in nature cannot be answered by science and must be answered by reason. It is true, though, that it is a hypothesis explaining data and there are standards, even in the realm of philosophy, which good theory should meet which it does not. Its weak method does not, however, invalidate its claim as the inference of best explanation for the problem at hand. Although its methods are not flawless, there is still no other explanation sufficient for the problem at hand.
Having examined the objections against and responses for Paley’s argument, there are still a few more relevant topics that need be discussed. The first is the recognition that evolution and intelligent design are not mutually exclusive. It is quite possible that both theories are true simultaneously; they do not contradict each other. In fact, this seems to be the only theory which fully explains the problem of design in nature. It accounts for the order outside of biological nature in the realms of physics, chemistry, and others, but at the same time does not deny the obvious evidence in support of the theory of evolution, such as the fossil record. In fact, it is quite probable that evolution is the divine designer’s way of designing things in the biological world. We must not look at intelligent design and evolution as contradicting theories, but instead as interrelated: one a method of the other. It is in this way that the problem of design in nature is explained in its fullness.
Also, we must recognize that although this argument essentially proves the existence of a divine designer, it does not necessarily prove the existence of the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It does, however, provide support for a claim made by the Judeo-Christian tradition; namely, that God is the creator or designer of the universe. The teleological argument proves that at least this aspect of God is necessary in the universe. Also, it can be demonstrated that if the divine designer of this argument is not omnipotent, it is at least very powerful, because it must, out of necessity, be greater than anything which has order, since it has the ability to manipulate it. Since the foundation of empirical science is that everything in the universe has order and can be studied scientifically, it follows that this designer, if not omnipotent, is at least more powerful than anything this universe contains.
In conclusion, Paley’s argument, despite the objections against it, is still a valid argument to the existence of a divine designer.