PHI 231
11/10/12
Paper #1
People have many reasons as to why they believe in “God” or a higher being or no being at all. Whether you side with those that believe that god does exist or with those who believe that we evolved through the process of evolution, I will be siding with neither. Instead, I will explain the main points from both the advocate of the teleological argument and the Theory of Evolution.
The Teleological Theory states that the world that we live in possesses a highly ordered structure, like a machine. Our world’s design is so intricate and complex that it must require a designer, a supreme mind. The supreme mind belongs to God. In the article by Rauhut, “Design Arguments”, the concept of the Teleological Theory is explained by using the example of finding a memory chip in an undiscovered planet. The discovery of this memory chip makes many theories to surface; like that there must have been some form of intelligent life on this planet to create this object or that maybe the chip was left there by some lost civilization that had once occupied the now barren planet. The design argument will argue that because the memory chip is an organized and arranged object, it must have been designed by an organized and arranged entity. This type of entity could only be created by an intelligent designer, which goes to prove that an intelligent designer must exist. Life itself is very complicated and complex. Because of its complexity, its origin must be explained and the only reasonable explanation for the existence of life is that it must have been designed and created by an intelligent designer. Life was not created or designed by humans; therefore life must have been created by something non-human. Therefore, it would be created by God. The human eye is often used as an example to prove the design argument. The human eye is made up of several components that function coherently with one another to provide a person with clear vision. The vision allows the human mind to take in the information that it receives from the eye and be able to determine what to do with it. The argument states that if one of the many components were to stop functioning as a whole, the entire eye would stop functioning as a whole; the entire eye would stop functioning efficiently. Sure, you may still be able to see. However, the question still remains as to whether you’ll be able see and understand the same thing another person with perfect vision sees. The teleological argument is an argument that states that God does exist; however, it portrays this supernatural designer differently than what many religious believers commonly view him as. According to the article “Does god exist?” by Steven M. Cahn, “God” is known as “an all-good, all-powerful, eternal Creator of the world”. The Teleological argument points out that this Supreme Being is an intelligent designer who was able to carefully arrange and organize entities in this world. It does not specifically point out that this Supreme Being has all the qualities or virtues that are most commonly attributed to what people see god as.
The theory of evolution states that life started from simple life forms. Over the course of time, those life forms developed into the different species through the process of natural selection. The theory of evolution challenges the soundness of the Teleological theory because it is able to provide evidence that different species share common ancestry, which somewhat discredits the Teloegical’s theory claim that humans and other organisms were designed by an intelligent being. The common descent hypothesis states that all species on Earth are related by a common ancestor. There are many different species that exist, those that are able to fly, to climb, to walk and have many other qualities. As different as they may sound, all of these diverse species stemmed from one single organism that lived between 3 to 4 billion years ago. How is this possible? Well,