Teleological argument
Both movements have used the teleological argument to argue against the modern scientific understanding of evolution, and to claim that supernatural explanations should be given equal validity in the public school science curriculum.
Anaxagoras is the first person who is definitely known to have explained such a concept using the word "nous" (which is the original Greek term that leads to modern English "intelligence" via its Latin and French translations).
[14][16] In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates is made to say just before dying that his discovery of Anaxagoras' concept of a cosmic nous as the cause of the order of things, was an important turning point for him.
[23] Plato's world of eternal and unchanging Forms, imperfectly represented in matter by a divine Artisan, contrasts sharply with the various mechanistic Weltanschauungen, of which atomism was, by the 4th century at least, the most prominent ...
[24]Plato's student and friend Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 BC), continued the Socratic tradition of criticising natural scientists such as Democritus who sought (as in modern science) to explain everything in terms of matter and chance motion.
[16]: 204 Instead of direct intervention by a creator it is "scarcely an exaggeration to say that for Aristotle the entire functioning of the natural world, as also the heavens, is ultimately to be understood as a shared striving towards godlike actuality".
[16] Aristotle felt that biology was a particularly important example of a field where materialist natural science ignored information which was needed in order to understand living things well.
[16]: xviii Cicero (c. 106 – c. 43 BC) reported the teleological argument of the Stoics in De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Book II, which includes an early version of the watchmaker analogy, which was later developed by William Paley.
How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?Another very important classical supporter of the teleological argument was Galen, whose compendious works were one of the major sources of medical knowledge until modern times, both in Europe and the medieval Islamic world.
[citation needed] As an appeal to general revelation, Paul the Apostle (AD 5–67), argues in Romans 1:18–20,[37] that because it has been made plain to all from what has been created in the world, it is obvious that there is a God.
[40] Early Islamic philosophy played an important role in developing the philosophical understandings of God among Jewish and Christian thinkers in the Middle Ages, but concerning the teleological argument one of the lasting effects of this tradition came from its discussions of the difficulties which this type of proof has.
The argument from design was also seen as an unconvincing sophism by the early Islamic philosopher Al-Farabi, who instead took the "emanationist" approach of the Neoplatonists such as Plotinus, whereby nature is rationally ordered, but God is not like a craftsman who literally manages the world.
"[47] Maimonides also recalled that Abraham (in the midrash, or explanatory text, of Genesis Rabbah 39:1) recognized the existence of "one transcendent deity from the fact that the world around him exhibits an order and design".
[52] Isaac Newton affirmed his belief in the truth of the argument when, in 1713, he wrote these words in an appendix to the second edition of his Principia: This most elegant system of the sun, planets, and comets could not have arisen without the design and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.
He had not it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion[56]Leibniz considered the argument from design to have "only moral certainty" unless it was supported by his own idea of pre-established harmony expounded in his Monadology.
John Wright notes that "Indeed, he claims that the whole thrust of his analysis of causality in the Treatise supports the Design argument", and that, according to Hume, "we are obliged 'to infer an infinitely perfect Architect.
He attempts a number of refutations, including one that arguably foreshadows Darwin's theory, and makes the point that if God resembles a human designer, then assuming divine characteristics such as omnipotence and omniscience is not justified.
[71] However, beginning with Anne Finch's conversion of the story into a polemic against atheism, it has been taken up by a succession of moral writers as presenting a valid argument for the proposition that "The wisdom of God is displayed in creation.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
"[86] The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that "Critics have insisted on focusing on the cogency of each piece of theistic evidence – reminding us that, in the end, ten leaky buckets hold no more water than one."
Also, "Some critics, such as John Hick and D.H. Mellor, have objected to Tennant's particular use of probability theory and have challenged the relevance of any kind of probabilistic reasoning to theistic belief.
"[86] Richard Swinburne's "contributions to philosophical theology have sought to apply more sophisticated versions of probability theory to the question of God's existence, a methodological improvement on Tennant's work but squarely in the same spirit".
[91][92] However, in regard to fine-tuning, Kenneth Einar Himma writes: "The mere fact that it is enormously improbable that an event occurred... by itself, gives us no reason to think that it occurred by design ... As intuitively tempting as it may be..."[92] Himma attributes the "Argument from Suspicious Improbabilities", a formalization of "the fine-tuning intuition" to George N. Schlesinger: To understand Schlesinger's argument, consider your reaction to two different events.
For example, Craig writes, Peter Higgs, and any similar scientist, "can sit down at his desk and, by pouring [sic] over mathematical equations, predict the existence of a fundamental particle which, thirty years later, after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours, experimentalists are finally able to detect."
But the Epicureans refined this argument, by proposing that the actual number of types of atoms in nature is small, not infinite, making it less coincidental that after a long period of time, certain orderly outcomes will result.
[66] Wesley C. Salmon developed Hume's insights, arguing that all things in the universe which exhibit order are, to our knowledge, created by material, imperfect, finite beings or forces.
[120] He believes the chances of life arising on a planet like the Earth are many orders of magnitude less probable than most people would think, but the anthropic principle effectively counters skepticism with regard to improbability.
[The entire biological] evolutionary process depends upon the unusual chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as well as other elements, creating highly complex molecules that are stable over prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of conveying genetic information (especially DNA).
Dembski claims that such arguments are not merely beyond the purview of science: often they are tacitly or overtly theological while failing to provide a serious analysis of the hypothetical objective's relative merit.
[138] The 18th century German philosopher Christian Wolff once thought that Confucius was a godless man, and that "the ancient Chinese had no natural religion, since they did not know the creator of the world".
