Design Argument The Design Argument also known as the Teleological Argument or ‘telos’ meaning end or purpose in Greek. It is an posteriori argument, where it is based on the observation of the apparent order of the universe and the natural world, which supports that we are not just here by chance but out of design. It starts with finding meaning and purpose in parts of the world and later moving onto the universe as a whole, looking at the progress of the world and its part towards an ultimate goal. There are two main arguments within the design argument; the first is an analogical argument, where an analogy is made between the world or its parts and objects to human design. The second is the inductive argument, which is based on the observation that the universe shows regular motion both in its parts and in the whole, a system that abides by laws and rules. The argu-ment argues design qua purpose, the universe is designed to fulfil a purpose and design qua regularity, the universe behaves according to some order. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) a philosopher who wrote Summa Theologi-ca, argues that the general order and purpose of the universe is proof of a de-signer behind it. The apparent purposeful behaviour of non-rational thing in the universe can only be explained by God. For example, every year groups of grey whales migrate from their sub-arctic feeding grounds off the Alaskan coast to their Mexican breeding grounds. This is a journey of 20,000 kilometres which takes up to three months. These behaviour patterns rarely change, and their end result is beneficial to the whales, so there is purpose in them. Accord-ing to Aquinas, something must be directing them to do this, and he believed it is God.’ We see that things which lack knowledge such as natural bodies act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always in the same way so as to ob-tain the result.’ Aquinas said that there is beneficial order in the universe, where things on the universe are working towards their end or purpose. This could not have happened by chance. Many objects in the universe do not have the intelli-gence to work towards an end or purpose, therefore they must be directed by someone that does not have intelligence and God exists as the explanation of beneficial order, the universe cannot be explained because the universe itself is not self-explanatory and does not exhibit intelligence in its own right. Paley came to the conclusion that we are to put on this earth for a purpose and that we are not just here by chance. Paley uses the analogy of a watch to explain his argument; if we were to come across a watch we would assume that it had a creator, this is mainly due to the fact it has such an intricate design, like DESIGN ARGUMENT! ! "1a machine, so it must have been designed with a purpose in mind, proving it can’t have been made by pure chance. ‘When we came to inspect the watch, we perceive that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose.’ This is an analogy for the world as the watch is like the universe, it is full of small parts that work perfectly together, if one part wasn’t there or in a different place it would not function correctly, like the universe. It had a creator; the watch had a watch maker, so therefore the universe must have an all powerful creator as the universe is so perfectly created and it can’t have got here by chance. Paley uses the principle of like causes to have like effects, what is true of human design is also true of the world. God is far greater with his design power than any human. Paley also used the instincts of animals as an example to strengthen his argu-ment. They use their instincts for survival, like a bird uses its wings for flight and a fish uses its fins to swim. This evidence, as Paley argues, can only be the result of a designing creator which is God. One of Swinburne’s argument which he looked at was the aesthetic form which observes the universe has a natural beauty that goes beyond what is nec-essary to live. This further supports that it is a creation of God. Some of the beauty is part of the order; our appreciation of it not only reflects our attraction to things that are aesthetically pleasing, improving our dislike of chaos. Beauty is also found in thing that are not a part of the natural world but as humans we still appreciate them even though they play no part in the survival of humans. These thing consist of music and art, as well as other things, which contribute to the way we view the world as a beneficial place to live which is appealing and attractive, even though we would be able to survive without them. Tennant found ‘Nature is not just beautiful in places; it is saturated with beauty… Our scientific knowledge brings us no nearer to understanding the beauty of music’ Tennant had five key observations with the view that the world was also to be considered superior to others in the fact that it catered for moral and spiritual dimensions. The universe is intelligible and not chaotic; it is sustainable for hu-man life. Human life possesses an awareness of moral worth and works in har-mony with nature to keep the beauty. Tennant offers a different argument where he suggests that once the aspects of probability have been identified, the evi-dence of a divine designer becomes more probable than not. There are also other form such as the Anthropic Principle, which states that it gives reason and purpose for the universe in the support of human life. ‘As we look out into the universe, and identify many accidents of physics and as-tronomy that have worked together for our benefit, it almost seems as if the uni-verse must in some sense know that we were coming’. There is speculation about the improbability of achieving conditions in which life does exist, and then indi-cating a fine-tuned universe purposely made so human life is possible. The An-DESIGN ARGUMENT! ! "2thropic Principle shows that the design argument does not reject the principle of solution in order to create a designing God. DESIGN ARGUMENT! !