Teleological Argument and the Logical Conditional
A friend once introduced me to a religion by saying "Look at all the order/design in the universe. Therefore God exists". Back then I didn't have any understanding of logic but I translated his claim as follows:
1. If there is design in the universe then there is a designer/God
I got confused because the alternative, the converse:
2. If there is a god/designer then there will be design in the universe
seemed, let's say, more plausible. I was thinking of the possibility of design or the semblance of it arising spontaneously out of randomness. As you can see the Teleological argument depends quite crucially on which premise, 1 or 2, is being used.
If it's statement 1 then the Telelogical argument works but if it's statement 2 then the argument fails by the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
There's another possibility of course - the biconditional:
3. God exists if and only if (IFF) there's design in the universe
As you can see statement 2 is logically weak and so probably isn't part of the Teleological argument.
So theists are using either statement 1 or 3 (this includes both 1 and 2)
What in your view us the correct statement and why?
Thanks.
1. If there is design in the universe then there is a designer/God
I got confused because the alternative, the converse:
2. If there is a god/designer then there will be design in the universe
seemed, let's say, more plausible. I was thinking of the possibility of design or the semblance of it arising spontaneously out of randomness. As you can see the Teleological argument depends quite crucially on which premise, 1 or 2, is being used.
If it's statement 1 then the Telelogical argument works but if it's statement 2 then the argument fails by the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
There's another possibility of course - the biconditional:
3. God exists if and only if (IFF) there's design in the universe
As you can see statement 2 is logically weak and so probably isn't part of the Teleological argument.
So theists are using either statement 1 or 3 (this includes both 1 and 2)
What in your view us the correct statement and why?
Thanks.
Comments (30)
When we have free will discussions, folks have a problem with saying that the sciences posit anything random. Why in this context would we assume that science is positing randomness and "things arising spontaneously out of it" after all? Do the sciences suppose that the world works randomly? And if not, are we claiming that the sciences are positing a god?
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/a-fortunate-universe-life-in-a-finely-tuned-cosmos/
Which is the correct premise for the design argument for God:
1. If there is order in the universe then there exists a god
2. If there exists a god then there is order in the universe
3. There is order in the universe if and only if there exists a god
By spontaneous random origin I'm referring to the initial state of the universe. What follows from the initial state is not necessarily random.
Thanks.
As tim points out, #1 is the correct form. But this simple argument is rather pointless without including the difficult part, which is to demonstrate how a god is necessary for the existence of order.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, that's what I actually want to discuss.
The correct premise according to you and tim wood is:
1. If there is order in this universe then there exists a God
I would like to rephrase statement 1 as below which I hope is correct:
1a. All things that have order are things that have a designer
The argument for God now becomes:
1a. All things that have order are things that have a designer
2a. The universe has order
Therefore
3a. The universe has a designer
4a. This designer of the universe is God
As you can see premise 1a. All things that have order are things that have a designer is the crucial piece of the argument.
Therefore to refute the design argument we must falsify statement 1a. All things that have order are things that have a designer
The negation of 1a would be:
1b. Some things that have order are not things that have a designer.
We need just one instance to prove 1b. What is this instance?
Thanks.
But why would you even think that? Did you not cover statistics at school? The set of {all things which have order and we know to have a designer} is such an infinitesimally small subset of {all things which have order}, and is not even a properly stratified sample (they're all ordered by life on earth). It would be statistically invalid to draw any conclusions at all from such a tiny, unrepresentative sample.
Imagine if I went to Australia for the first time, saw the sand on the beach and thereby concluded all of Australia was probably made entirely of sand.
Quoting TheMadFool
You're begging the question. If the apparent absence of a designer (I can't, see, hear, or in any other way detect one) is to be counted as insufficient evidence that there is not a designer, then you have, by design, made it impossible to disprove your hypothesis. It is impossible to find one thing that has order but does not have a designer if you close down any reasonable evidence that there isn't a designer.
Let's say it turns out that DNA doesn't have a designer. What could I possibly forward as evidence of that fact?
Thanks for pointing at the possibility of equivocation between design and order. As someone in another thread was kind enough to explain that order is the existence of a pattern which is simply a set of rules matter-energy obeys.
Design is most definitely order but with one additional element - a conscious intellect behind the order, a designer.
When and why did humans teach themselves that a conscious intellect (a designer) is necessary for any and all instances of order? Surely this must be from observation. For example a well-used water well differs from one that is abandoned. The former has features like cleanliness and working pulleys while the latter is overgrown with vegetation and the tools are rusted or broken.
As you can see the inference of a designer (conscious intellect) from order is quite well-founded. To deny it you'd need to show me order without a designer. Keep in mind that any such example would be far more complex than anything humans can do; forcing us to conclude an even greater intellect (designer) rather than no designer.
Quoting Isaac
That's a fantastic observation. However the design argument is an argument from analogy where the universe is taken as ONE object and not as a composite of smaller parts. It's not a case of distributing the property of order and therefore designer to all members of the universe. Rather the design argument says the universe, as ONE object, has a designer. Note that if the universe has a designer then all objects in it also have a designer.
Well then it can't be an argument from analogy as there is no other object to which to compare it.
Hmmm......
Can chaos be designed?
If order implies design, and if everything is ordered, wouldn’t chaos be impossible?
Eye’s mind. I like it!!
Reason’s greatest teaching tool: euphemism.
My point is very simple.
Argument A:
1.A digital watch is more complex than a sun dial.
2. We infer, from the above, that a digital watch is designed by a far more intelligent being
Argument B:
1. The universe is far more complex than any man-made object
2. What should/could I conclude but that the universe has a designer of extraordinary ability?
There is. man-made objects, as a group, is compared to the universe itself.
Yes, but you're not talking about man-made objects. The footprint I just made in the sand is a man-made object, the eddies I just made in the water as I walked through it are man-made objects. Neither were designed intelligently. The vast majority of man-made objects are complex but not designed, we make them every time we interact with anything.
What you're really talking about is the set {objects made with the intention to carry out some function}, but in this case the property you're claiming to deduce from that set is the very defining factor of it. It's like saying all things in the set {things which are red} are red.
So you end up begging the question. You haven't' taken a set with property X and found that every member also has property Y (for you to then say All other things with Property Y might well be considered to have property X. You've taken a set and determined it has Property X simply because you defined the set that way in the first place. This then gives you no information at all about members of another set.
You're correct but only if the argument is statistical in which case I would be saying that ALL objects in the universe are designed.
However the argument from design doesn't make this claim as a primary objective although it follows quite naturally from it.
The design argument in the most common version of it:
1. A watch has order. The watch has a designer
2. The universe (as ONE object) has order
Therefore
3. The universe has a designer
4. If the universe has a designer then ALL objects in it have a designer
Therefore
5. All objects in the universe have a designer
Statement 5, which is relevant to your point, is only a corollary of statement 3 which is the main claim of the argument from design.
As you can see there is no statistical generalization from a sample to the whole for the conclusion (statement 3) of the design argument. It's just an analogy.
If the main conclusion of the design argument had been statement 5 without statement 3 then your objection is to the point.
3 does not follow from 1 unless there is some reason to think that the universe is otherwise in the same category as watches.
Consider...
1. A watch has parts made of metal. A watch has been designed the way it is by a watchmaker.
2. A randomly scattered pile of nails has parts made of metal
Therefore
3. A randomly scattered pile of nails must have been designed that way by a watchmaker.
Doesn't make sense does it?
The property of being a metal is too weak a link to draw such a conclusion. Your argument is susceptible to disanalogies because there are many metallic objects that aren't designed, the pile of nails in your argument being one such case.
Order, however, is strongly associated with a designer providing a strong connection between the order in the universe and the presence of a designer.
No. To say order is strongly associated with a designer is begging the question. That is the very matter the argument is trying to resolve. Does the order in the universe mean that it is designed?
In order to say empirically, that order is associated with a designer in all or most cases, you must have evidence of a large number of diverse cases of order, all of which have a designer. But we have no such sample. All we have is a very small number of cases (using the same scale/complexity criteria for both sets) of very specific cases of order (all objects made by one species on one planet in a tiny solar system off one end of one of the smaller galaxies). That is not a sufficiently large or diverse sample from which to justifiably reach the conclusion that all ordered things are associated with a designer. Not even close.
To solve this problem by 'fixing' the scales (one watch counts as a single example in one group, but 'the whole universe' becomes the comparitve object in the other) is just blatant bias. Set up an experiment with that level of bias in any serious science and you'd be laughed out of the establishment. It's this sort of crap that gives philosophy such a bad reputation.
The order in a watch or any man-made object is strongly associated with a designer (human).
This connection (order-designer) between man-made objects and human is then used to infer a designer (god) from the order in the universe.
There is no begging the question fallacy because the order-designer link is inferred from man-made objects to the universe.
Your last paragraph hits the bullseye.
As for your moon-green cheese "inference" you'll have to show me what you mean. Thanks.
Yes, the logic is correct but there seems to be something missing - I'll call it relevance. The antecedent, tim isn't relevant to consequent the moon is made of green cheese.
Perhaps you have something else in mind. Do tell.