The teleological argument: Aquinas' Fifth Way, Paley's design argument, Tennant's anthropic and aesthetic arguments, and the challenges of Hume, Mill and Darwin.

What this dot point is asking

This WJEC theme asks you to explain and evaluate the teleological (design) argument, the a posteriori argument from the order and apparent purpose of the universe to a designer. You need Aquinas' Fifth Way, Paley's watchmaker, Tennant's anthropic and aesthetic arguments, and the criticisms from Hume, Mill and Darwin. AO1 wants accurate exposition; AO2 wants a reasoned judgement on whether the argument works.

The answer

Aquinas' Fifth Way and Paley's watchmaker

Paley's argument. If you found a watch on a heath, its intricate parts adapted to a purpose ("contrivance") would force you to conclude it had a maker, even if you never saw one. The natural world (Paley's example is the human eye) shows the same marks of design, parts adapted to ends, so it too must have a designer, and only God is adequate to the task. Paley's argument combines design qua purpose (parts working towards an end) and design qua regularity (the order of the cosmos, such as planetary motion).

Tennant's anthropic and aesthetic arguments

Tennant's versions are important because they shift the argument from biological mechanisms (vulnerable to Darwin) to the deeper question of why the universe has life-permitting laws at all. Modern "fine-tuning" arguments develop this.

The challenges of Hume, Mill and Darwin

• Hume. Writing before Paley, Hume anticipated the argument and attacked the analogy: the universe is not much like a machine (it is more like a vegetable or animal); like causes need only be inferred for like effects, and the world is unique; the designer might be an apprentice, a committee, or a now-absent god, not the one perfect God; and the world's flaws suggest an imperfect designer.
• Mill. J. S. Mill pointed to the cruelty and waste in nature (predation, disease, natural disaster), arguing that if nature is designed, its designer is not wholly good. This links to the problem of evil.
• Darwin. Natural selection explains the appearance of design, the adaptation of organisms to their environment, by an undirected process of variation and survival. Paley's biological evidence no longer needs a designer; Dawkins calls this the "blind watchmaker".

Defenders reply that Darwin explains adaptation but not the life-permitting universe, so the anthropic and fine-tuning arguments survive.

Examples in context

Model paragraph (does fine-tuning survive Darwin?). The decisive question for the design argument today is whether Darwin disposes of it entirely or only of one version. Paley's biological examples, the eye above all, were the strongest cases for design in 1802, and natural selection has indeed supplied an undirected mechanism that explains exactly such adaptation, so that part of the argument is genuinely undermined. But Tennant's anthropic argument operates at a level Darwin does not touch: evolution by natural selection can only occur in a universe whose fundamental constants permit stable matter, chemistry and life, and the apparent fine-tuning of those constants is not itself a product of evolution. Critics answer with the multiverse (many universes, of which ours happens to be life-permitting) or by denying that fine-tuning needs explanation. A strong evaluation therefore concedes the biological ground to Darwin while arguing that the cosmic version remains live, turning on whether the multiverse is a better explanation than design.

Try this

Q1. What does Paley's watch analogy aim to show? [2 marks]

• Cue. That the contrivance seen in nature, like that in a watch, implies a designer (God).

Q2. State Tennant's anthropic argument. [2 marks]

• Cue. The universe is finely tuned with exactly the conditions needed for intelligent life, which is best explained by design.

Q3. Evaluate the view that the design argument no longer works after Darwin. [20 marks]

• What the marker wants. A balanced argument weighing Darwin's refutation of biological design against the survival of cosmic fine-tuning, with a reasoned judgement.