"Design requires a designer"-discuss
At the centre of all religious debate sits the question: is there a God? Philosophers, theologians, atheists, theists, and scientists have used a number of arguments to both prove and disprove his existence. One of the arguments at the forefront of debate over the existence of God, or a supreme being, is the teleological argument, or simply the design argument. The teleological argument dictates that nature's complexity and order cannot simply be a coincidence; hence the world must have a designer-God. The argument is based on a posteriori as it allows us to use our experiences of the world in order to create a series of premises, which can in turn induce a conclusion, however they only support the conclusion, not entail it. The reason this question is important and why we take interest in it is because it lies at the very heart of science and religious belief; to question the creation of our world is to question the very nature and meaning of life itself.
My personal stance is that I cannot accept that a designer created our world as, not only do a feel that this concept is too far fetched and generally incredible, but also because I feel that the arguments against the design argument are much stronger than the arguments for it. In order to argue against the teleological argument, I will explain, then analyse two famous arguments: William Paley's watchmaker analogy and the fifth of Thomas Aquinas' quinque viae.
One of the most well-known and contemplated analogies used to explain the design argument is the watchmaker analogy. It is from 19th Century philosopher William Paley's 1802 book Natural Theology, The title refers to one of two forms of theology (the other being revealed theology, the idea that information about...