Design Arguement evaluation

Weakness: anological form

• Payley compares complexity of a watch to the human eye, making a link between the watches intelegent designer and the need for a creator in the far more intricate universe
• David Hume
• Anology is flawed
• To make it work God's characteristics must be closely identified with human beings
• This removes God's divene distinctiveness that the theist wants to preserve
  

Strengths: Anological form

• Easy to understand as we can show evidence for God with clear imperical evidence in our world today

• Paley also able to answer the criticisms:

• Everything said about the watch applies to the world, but in this circumstance its:
• QUOTE: "contrivances surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety and curiosity of the mechanism"
• contrivances: a cleverly made device or machine to fufil a need

weakness: Problem of evil

John Stewart Mill: doesnt prove the God of classical theism

• omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient "designing creator" Payley and Aquinas suggest cant exsist due to natural and moral evil on earth
• impossible for designer to have these qualities if their is human suffering on earth, he wouldnt have included it in his design
• QUOTE: "if the maker of the world can do all that he will, he wills misery and there is no escaping that conclusion"
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Strengths: Anological form (P.O.E)

Paley avoid critism for the problem of evil

• His anology only there to show their is a designer, not about the designers nature

• He didnt commit to saying the world was perfect, or that we as humans can understand it
• Even if the world shows evidence of bad design, we still know it has been designed in the first place

• Answers critism about Mill's weakness of problem of evil& balences out strengths and weaknesses

• Weakness: inductive form

Tennant's anthropic principle  

• suggests we should not reject science as it can work alongside religion and God planed key scientific theories to help human life evolve
• This can be critisied as if there were no natural laws there would be no humans or animals and we would not be here
• So of course we percive order in the universe, there could be nothing else or we would not be here to percive it
• order is not improbable and we shouldnt approch it as if it were extraordinary

strengths: inductive form (A.P)

Swinburne responds to claims that order is improbable:

• Parable of the card shuffling machine
• " a man kidnaps a victim" and then shuts him in a room "with a card shuffling machine"

• Imagine there are 10 decks of cards, each deck shuffles simultaniously, one card is drawn from each deck
• machine linked to explosive device, if each card drawn isnt ace of hearts the victim will die
• to victim's "amazement and relief" he is still alive

• Victim thinks it is extraordinary as chances of being drawn is very little

• To mock the criticism's kidnapper thinks it is "hardly suprising" and "you would not be here to see anything at all if any other cards had been drawn"

• Swinburne states kidnapper is wrong + vicitm is right

• The anthropic principle doesnt explain why things are right for us, it just points out how fine tuned the universe is
• Our universe is still amazing and therefore demands an explanation

Weakness: inductive form (Probability)

• Swinburnes arguement for probability:

• said evidence of design and order increases probability of exsistance of God

• But if we feel strongly that God does exsist, we must also consider the probability he doesnt
• If we come to the conclusion that God exsists and designed the universe, we must accept the probability of other higher beings being in exsistance

strengths: inductive form (probability)

Tennant balances out criticism:

• God is just as sufficient explanation than other theories

• when some people judge the universe they cannot just accept it came about by chance

• more inclined to accept probability of God on psychological grounds

• Tennant able to suffiently support his arguement aganist criticism

Weakness: inductive form (Asthetic)

Tennant

• believes nature is "satured with beauty" but this has not happened through evolution as it has "no survial value"
• but we as humans do not know if our world really is beautiful
• 1. Beauty is very subjective, individuals cannot claim world is beautiful as everyone has their own concept of what beauty is
• 2. we have nothing to compare our world to, how can we say our world is beautiful if we have not seen other worlds
• 3. evil and suffering: we cannot claim our world is beautiful if their is pain all around it
  

strengths: inductive form (Asthetic)

• human perception of beauty is not the same as God's

• God is not bound by human perception, we cannot judge what is beautiful in his supirior vision

• what may appear inefficent to humans may be perfectly forfuilling for God.
• God is omnipotent, we should not question what he creates