The Facade Of The Teleological Argument
Greavu 1 John Greavu
Mark Herr
Philosophy 1002
12 November 2012
The Façade of the Teleological Argument In Accordance with David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” The Teleological argument for the existence of God seems strikingly compelling at first glance, but greatly weakens once it becomes subjected to intense discourse. This argument, also referred to as the “design argument”, is an a posteriori argument claiming that through observation of the universe we can discover evidence of intelligent design that justifiably infers the existence of a “grand designer”, usually posited as God. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume, a British empiricist, first presents his version of the Teleological argument through the use of his character Cleanthes, Hume’s representation of the typical 18th century empirical theist:
Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them . . . By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the
Greavu 2 existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence. (Hume, and Smith 143)
Cleanthes argues here that the universe is like a purposefully made machine––only an extremely intricate, big, orderly, and complex one. He asserts that since an intelligent, human creator must design every machine (as machines do not assemble themselves randomly nor by chance) we can justifiably assume that an intelligent creator, whom instead holds divine-like, rather than human-like, properties, must have designed the universe as well. However, Hume attempts to disprove
Mark Herr
Philosophy 1002
12 November 2012
The Façade of the Teleological Argument In Accordance with David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” The Teleological argument for the existence of God seems strikingly compelling at first glance, but greatly weakens once it becomes subjected to intense discourse. This argument, also referred to as the “design argument”, is an a posteriori argument claiming that through observation of the universe we can discover evidence of intelligent design that justifiably infers the existence of a “grand designer”, usually posited as God. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume, a British empiricist, first presents his version of the Teleological argument through the use of his character Cleanthes, Hume’s representation of the typical 18th century empirical theist:
Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them . . . By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the
Greavu 2 existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence. (Hume, and Smith 143)
Cleanthes argues here that the universe is like a purposefully made machine––only an extremely intricate, big, orderly, and complex one. He asserts that since an intelligent, human creator must design every machine (as machines do not assemble themselves randomly nor by chance) we can justifiably assume that an intelligent creator, whom instead holds divine-like, rather than human-like, properties, must have designed the universe as well. However, Hume attempts to disprove