Major Teleological Arguments - Essay Example

In this case, God is akin to the watchmaker, the agency that made the Universe, part by part, with each part held together in defined relations with the others, and nothing left to chance or accident.

Some of the most powerful critiques of the teleological argument for the existence of God have come from the works of David Hume, widely considered one of the most significant exponents of philosophical naturalism ever to have written in English. Taking forward Darwin’s famous naturalistic explanation of the nature of existence without the need of a Supreme Being, Hume calls into question whether the order and design in the Universe can be proven to exist without doubt, because in many cases order can happen without conscious design.

Order lies in eyes of the beholder, according to Hume, human beings impose apparent order on chaos while viewing it, for there is no credible empirical evidence for a higher purpose or design. As to the watchmaker analogy, Hume argues that we can make a statement about watches and watchmakers because we have experience of both. All legitimate concepts must be grounded in experience, and we have no sure knowledge of the Universe in its entirety, its creation or its creator, or indeed of any other Universe and thus cannot reliably carry on with the analogy with the watch and the watchmaker. Also, watches can be made by apprentices, committees, and so on, and even in this respect, the analogy is impossible to continue further, without admitting multiple creators.

Further, Hume argued that the objects the universe was being compared to were in many ways different from the things found in nature, a watch is a man-made, lifeless machine, and the universe or the part that we see around us is not so. Even if we were to willfully suspend disbelief, and accept such analogies, according to Hume it only goes on to prove known and perceived goodness and intelligence. But the world we live in is not perfect and if one follows the analogy to its logical conclusion, evil or suffering becomes the brainchild of a malicious or impotent creator, capricious at best or a committee of powerful entities with limited judgment. This does not go very well with the traditional concept of an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God.

Though Hume examined some of the most vulnerable facets of the design argument, the teleological argument still appeals to inductive and deductive reasoning, much in the way of the theories of Newton and Einstein, whose generalizations on the nature of matter have now been proven on a scale bigger than our Earth. Hume’s conclusion on the teleological argument can be summed up as “the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence” (Hume, 1779 [1998], 88). But beyond that, the argument did not hold further significance for the famous philosopher in explaining the existence of God.