Case Study about The Design Argument

I) Explain the prominent features of the design argument 'I) Comment on the view that the design argument provides coherent explanation for the universe. The design argument is the argument for the existence of God based around the idea that the universe is designed and if it has been designed then there must have been a designer and therefore that designer must be God. Like the cosmological argument it is an a posteriori argument, which means that it relies upon empirical evidence (evidence that can be shown through experiment and scientific testing).This means that It also has something called synthetic premises, these are statements, which make a larger claim than their mere definition.

Finally It Is known as an Inductive argument because it draws on many sources of evidence and uses them to point towards a conclusion instead of just proving it absolutely. The design argument consists of two parts. The first part is forming a test for design and then putting nature through that test. The design argument says that nature qualifies the test and therefore must be designed.The second part Is that a God must be the designer of the universe and this proves that God exists. Some of the earliest known statements about the design argument were made by a man called Cicero (106 ? BBC), he said that it is obvious that there must be some "divinity of superior intelligence" because merely looking at the sky must make you think that it is designed and that therefore there must be a designer.

This is essentially the basis of the entire of the design argument.It is based around the notion that it is so impossible to look an something s complex as the world around us and claim that Is It not designed. Another early philosopher who argued for the design argument was SST Thomas Aquinas (1 225 - 1274 Ad). What Aquinas said was that there are things In this world, which are unthinking like trees but they still, follow their instincts and head towards an end.

For example trees grow upwards towards the light even though no one tells them to and they have no intelligence. He then goes on to say that to want an end and to even understand what an end is shows intelligence.This then leads to two Ideas, the first s that an unthinking thing, Like a tree, cannot move Itself towards an end and therefore any unthinking thing must be moved towards an end by an outside intelligence. This outside intelligence he reasoned must be what we call God.

William Palely (1 743 - ADDED) was also another key philosopher in the development of the design argument. He came up with the famous analogy of the watch and the watchmaker. His analogy was that we know that a watch is designed because it has a purpose and Its parts work together to achieve that purpose.He also says that a rock goes not have purpose because It doesn't a purpose have parts working together to achieve It purpose and so therefore the rock Isn't designed. Once he had established his test for design he moved onto looking at whether he could apply it to nature. The first thing that he tested was the eye, which is likens to a telescope.

His conclusion was that: it had moving parts and that the parts work together for a purpose. Therefore the eye must be designed according to the pre-set criteria that he had already laid out.Richard Sinecure is a more current philosopher arguing for the ad published his theory about evolution. Sinecure argues that there should be no order in the universe and that the natural state of affairs is for there to be chaos and no universe at all. This having been said there is a universe and it has order so therefore there must be something creating order in the universe and that that something must be God.

He argues that the best explanation for the fact that the universe exists where is shouldn't is that something deliberately created it and that the most feasible explanation is that this creator must be God.Palely argument voids the problems that Darwin put forward about the design argument because he says that he universe allows for evolution and that in fact it is specially designed for evolution to occur. He calls the universe a machine-making-machine. This means that the purpose of the universe is to make other things with purpose, this fits in with Palely argument for design as well. Sinecure used the theory of Scam's razor in his arguments, he based all of his arguments on one claim: God made the universe into a machine with parts working towards the purpose of making other machines tit purposes.

Another major argument for design was put forward by several important philosophers; a major contributor to this argument was William A. Dempsey. The argument was known as the fine-tuning argument and it consisted of several key points. The first idea was the test for design put forward by Demised this consisted of two parts: the first was the something had to adhere to a predefined pattern and the second was that it had to be complex and highly improbable.

Therefore is something meets both criteria it is then consequently considered to be designed.Demised said that whenever something intelligent acts it leave behind a signature and he said that this signature was known as complexity. This argument can be applied to nature by looking at the laws of physics. There are six laws of physics known as constant, which govern the universe. If someone created a universe then they would need to set all of the laws exactly to ensure that the universe would work. Therefore if our universe Just happened without any design or outside influences the odds of all of the laws of physics being exactly what they are not are overall billion to one.

Therefore this means that the universe adheres to predefined patterns as it contains intelligent life as any other universe cannot and secondly it is highly complex and so therefore extremely improbable. So then this points to the conclusion that he universe is designed. So if the universe is designed then therefore there must be a designer must be God. This final argument was known as the multiversity theory because it said that through probability there could be billions of universes but only one can actually work.