The Design Argument, which was published in the nineteenth century is based on a pocket watch & a watch maker. Paley stated that pocket watches are complicated & intricate & has these miniscule cogs to keep the watch ticking. He also stated that complicated & purposeful things like a computer tend to have designers and so the pocket watch must have a designer.
Similarly, the world is complex but things still work quite well. The human anatomy and many things in nature are perfect examples for this. Therefore there must be a designer for the world and that designer must be a supremely great being, God.
There are lots of strengths regarding this argument but also weaknesses. An example of a strength is that there are definitely examples of design in the world, like the laws of nature, the human eye, architecture, the galaxy, etc... Again, all of these things listed above are complicated things and so probably have a designer as the world cannot simply be a result of chance.
However, a weakness of Paley's Design Argument is that there are natural disasters in the world, which clashes with the fact that Gods is omnibenevolent, meaning that he is all loving. This raises the question of why these disasters still exist if God is all loving. An atheist may also argue that if God is omnipotent (all-powerful), why doesn't He stop these natural disasters to cease suffering?
Another weakness is that evolution can explain how living things change over time. Again, an atheist could ask, if God is omnipotent, why do we have to evolve or why can't we just be made perfect? This can also make people ponder if it has to be God who created the world and that it could be the Big Bang that created it.
In conclusion, I don't think that Paley's Design Argument proves that God exists as there are more convincing weaknesses that outweighs the strengths; due to the huge flaws with the argument which are hard to back up. For example, a theist would find it rather difficult to explain why natural disasters exist.
ความคิดเห็น