The Existence of God IIIa: The Teleological Argument - Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit

Now that I have discussed the a priori arguments for the existence of God, the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments, it is time to discuss the main a posteriori argument - the Teleological Argument, or Argument from Design or Purpose (though one could argue that my version of the Cosmological Argument is also a posteriori, depending on one's view of causation - see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article, "Kant and Hume on Causality").

I believe most readers are familiar with the Teleological Argument. It is, I believe, the most commonly used argument to demonstrate God's existence. The basic premise is that the Universe (or something within the universe) resembles an object too complex ot have occurred simply through random processes without purpose. Thus, there must be a Designer, namely, God.

Now there are two main streams of objections to this argument. The more common is that the Universe could be the way it is simply through naturalistic, undesigned processes, such as evolution. Now, evolution is a very long and difficult topic, so I will save that for a different post (or several posts).

The other stream is that even if it does appear designed, one runs into problems. A famous argument of this kind is Dawkins's "ultimate Boeing 747 gambit." There is a famous quote by Fred Hoyle where he claims that the Universe being the way it is now without design is like the wind randomly blowing together random scraps of metal and forming a 747. Dawkins replied, that if something could design an object so complex, then it must be at least as complex itself. Thus the Teleological Argument, according to Dawkins, begs the question.

Many religious philosophers have responded by saying that God, as a spirit, is not complex. I feel, though, that while this argument would satisfactorily rebut his claim if true, the question is how we can maintain a doctrine of spirits. After all, do we have any empirical evidence that spirits which are capable of design, yet without complexity, exist? We only see that intelligence exists with complex mechanisms, such as brains (and increasingly, with computers). Thus these religious philosophers would have to prove that intelligence is possible without complexity, based on empirical evidence. This will be hard, though, since one cannot directly observe spirits. Perhaps they would try to argue this from the existence of souls, but this is a separate argument, and I will deal with it in a separate post on the mind-body problem at some point.

I have a different objection to Dawkins's challenge: it doesn't matter if the Designer is more complex! After all, the Designer could have existed since the beginning of the Universe. Thus it would not need a designer, since it has always existed (for more on this idea, see my post on the Cosmological Argument). Thus, with evidence in favor of a Designer, and no question-begging necessary, the argument as it is might hold.

There is also to consider other objections, which David Hume most notably brought up in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, that the Teleological Argument falls short of what it is trying to prove. I will consider this in my next post, where I will walk through Hume's arguments.