Cleanthes: The Design Argument

The way I see the design argument explained by Cleanthes is how everything in the universe is designed. Meaning everything that is designed was designed by a creator. It didn’t just appear out of thin air. Something or someone made it become possible. Cleanthes also brings up the analogy that the earth resembles a machine. He explains how everything about the earth had to be put together perfectly in order for the earth to functions like it does. Just like how for machines to work, every small detail had to be perfectly thought through and perfectly designed. Machines would not function without a creator perfectly planning every part of it. An intelligent creator had to create the universe and every small detail of it for it to perfectly function. Cleanthes argument is well thought through but not sound.
This is not a sound argument because he is clearly contradicting himself. God is supposed to be the designer of the universe. Only something extremely complex would be able to create the universe and Cleanthes says if things are complex then they were created and did not just appear. Taking from his own view, this means that God could not have just appeared and was created by another intelligent creator. Now, some people might say then that there is nothing else before God. God is the all-powerful intelligent being and nothing created him. But how could that be true based on Cleanthes’ argument? God could not just happen without any cause. It is impossible for him to appear out of thin air just like everything else in the universe and on Earth. God had to be created by a more powerful intelligent being. If God was created by an intelligent creator, then that means the creator that created God was also created and so on. There are infinitely more powerful creators creating each