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.
Part of Cleanthes argument states how everything with complexity didn’t just appear, it was designed by something (Hume) .
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
other. Another flaw In Cleanthes argument is how he did not plan for scientific advances in the world. Philo points out how every scientific advance makes Cleanthes argument less likely and less believable (Hume). Scientists have researched the Big Bang Theory and found that a God was not needed to create the universe. The universe started as the size of a pin head or as a single atom. When that atom exploded, the universe was created into what it is today (European Space Agency). Well then what caused the atom to explode? Some people might say God had to explode the atom but how believable does that sound? Hopefully as science continues to make advances, that will soon be able to be explained. There does not have to be a God who exploded the atom. If everything else can be explained by science, one day this mystery will be solved too.