Teleological argument

Watch design argument. If you found a watch on the floor, it is so complex, there must be a watchmaker.

World is so perfect for man to evolve, it must have been designed. Closer/further from the sun, human life wouldn't be possible. COUNTER: Tennants idea suggests that the entire universe exists for the sake of one tiny planet.

In the world, there are few elemnents operating to the same simple laws. The world must have been designed, or else such regularity would not be possible. COUNTER: However for a theory to be simple, we must understand it. How can we understand God's mind? Things like quantum physics are not simple.

In addition to Swinburne, the most simple  theory is most likely to be true, the one with fewer hypothesis.

Is the world any more like a watch than it is a cabbage? Natural things can be complex too, and it is easier to view the world as a complex natural object, than a machine.

In infinite time, particles will combine to create a perfect universe. Just as if you put a bunch of monkeys in a room of typewriters, in infinite time they will type every possible combination of letters, including the bible and Shakespeare.

We cannot go from an effect to a cause greater than that needed to produce the cause. Hume gives us the example of weighing scales. We can only see one pan which has a known weight in it, and it is being held up by the other pan that does not have a known weight in it.  Who knows if the weight in the other pan is heavier by an ounce or 1000 tonnes? In the same way, we cannot jump to the conclusion of the universe being caused by an infinite, incredible God. We simply cannot know.

·        Flawed universe = flawed creator. Evil is not compatible with a designed world. Most noticeably natural evil (illness, plagues, earthquakes). Must be a faulty design, which is not compatible with an all loving, all powerful God.

Said that Paley’s argument ‘leads to a God which is no more a source of good than a source of evil’.

Survival is based entirely on chance, therefore it seems like a purpose to it all is unlikely. T.H. Huxley used the common phrase ‘survival of the fittest’.

Using terms like “logical fallacy” and “illusion of plausibility” to describe the teleological argument. The logical fallacy being that using a designer as proof of the universe due to it being unbelievably complex means believing in an even more complex designer.

If God created the world, what created God?