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Life, the Universe and Everything
Quick questions on The Teleological Argument - TCE Philosophy (Tasmania)
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is paley's watchmaker?Show answer
William Paley offered the classic statement. If you found a watch on a heath, its intricate parts arranged to keep time, you would infer it had a designer, not that it formed by chance. Paley argued that living things and the universe display the same marks of contrivance, parts adapted to ends, only more impressively, so they too point to an intelligent designer. The argument is an analogy: like effects, here ordered complexity adapted to a purpose, suggest like causes, namely intelligent design.
What are hume's objections?Show answer
David Hume, writing before Paley, anticipated powerful objections to design arguments. The universe is not clearly like a machine, so the analogy may be weak. Even if it points to a designer, it points to no more than a cause roughly proportioned to the effect, not necessarily an infinite, perfect or single God; the world's flaws might suggest a limited or apprentice designer, or a committee. Hume also noted that we have no other universes to compare ours with, so we cannot judge whether ordered universes typically come from design.
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