teleological argumentphilosophy

Assorted References

• Deist theology ( in Deism: The English Deists )

  The Deists who presented purely rationalist proofs for the existence of God, usually variations on the argument from the design or order of the universe, were able to derive support from the vision of the lawful physical world that Sir Isaac Newton had delineated. Indeed, in the 18th century, there was a tendency to convert Newton into a matter-of-fact Deist—a transmutation that was...

• evolution theory ( in evolution: Charles Darwin )

  The British theologian William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802) used natural history, physiology, and other contemporary knowledge to elaborate the argument from design. If a person should find a watch, even in an uninhabited desert, Paley contended, the harmony of its many parts would force him to conclude that it had been created by a skilled watchmaker; and,...

• major references ( in Christianity: The design (or teleological) argument )

  St. Paul, and many others in the Greco-Roman world, believed that the existence of God is evident from the appearances of nature: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). The most popular, because the most accessible, of the theistic arguments is that...

  in metaphysics: The existence of God )

  ...a Creator who fashioned it on these lines must be postulated—adding in each case “and this all men call ‘God’.” These are versions of the first cause argument and the argument from design, which were to figure prominently in the thinking of later theistically inclined metaphysicians.

  in theism: The reference to value and design )

  ...Thomas; this approach, however, has been given a more explicit presentation and critical discussion in the works of David Hume, a mid-18th-century Scottish Skeptic, and in Kant. The main idea of the teleological argument, as it is called, is that of the worth and purpose, or apparent design, to be found in the world. This purposiveness is taken to imply a supreme Designer. It has been...

• religious philosophy ( in religion, philosophy of: The existence of God )

  The argument from design takes a story with acknowledged disclosure possibilities—e.g., the interrelated parts of a watch—and uses this as a catalyst to evoke a disclosure around some ever-broadening purpose patterns of the universe, in relation to which one can speak of God in terms, for example, of eternal purpose.