The design argument for God, as it is structured by many apologists, fails to rationally establish the existence of a designer. I will explain why and how these errors can be identified, countered, and corrected. Since the design argument for God remains popular at the layperson and professional apologetics level, this needs to be addressed.
What usually happens during debates about whether or not a designer exists? I will recite the formula I have often seen unfold. The theist will argue that the presence of a designer is "obvious" from the order or nature. Pressed for proof or evidence, he or she will begin listing examples of things which are "clearly" designed. When the skeptic points out the fallacies in this argument--that it does not follow from the appearance of design that intentional design by a mind actually exists, or that the design argument is just a big appeal to perceived probability [1]--the intelligent design advocate will usually just continue citing more examples of design, or seeming design, until the skeptic either gives in or leaves. Logically, this is overtly fallacious. It is nothing but an an attempt to persuade instead of prove. It is an appeal to probability and not a purely logical argument. Yes, it clearly seems more and more improbable that chance shaped the universe after its creation the more and more precision is discovered, but this is not a proof of anything except that the world seems designed.
Is there no such thing as design? Is there no way to verify the existence of a designer? There is a way! The only way to actually prove the existence of God is to define him as the uncaused cause and prove from logic and mathematics that it is impossible for an uncaused cause to not exist [2]. Of course, if God created the material world, then God would be responsible for the initial design of it. Really, the only way to soundly and validly argue for divine design is to prove that a designer exists (by proving an uncaused cause exists and then explaining how this entity is also a designer) and then showing how it follows from the existence of the designer that design exists. It does not follow from the appearance of design that chance is not responsible for shaping the universe after its creation. But it is logically inescapable that there is an uncaused first cause and that it would have designed at least the initial form of the universe.
This is comparable to how theistic apologists often use the moral argument for God. There is no such thing as a valid argument from morality to God--one can prove that if morality (or beauty or meaning or any other values) exists then God must exist, but no one can prove that morality exists without first proving that God exists, just as no one can prove that design exists without first proving a designer. The moral argument for God needs to be changed to the God argument for morality, and the design argument for God into the God argument for design.
Also, proving a designer exists does not refute deism or establish that the designer loves us, that it has a moral nature, that it has intervened post-creation, and so forth. A mistake I have seen all too often is for someone to add to the fallacies of the design argument for God by concluding that the apparent design of the physical world means that God loves them.
As you can hopefully see, I am not denying the existence of divine design or that it can be known to exist. I am showing the logical errors inherent in the way the "design argument for God" is structured--chiefly non sequiturs and appeals to probability. One can easily prove the utterly necessary existence of an uncaused cause and that this uncaused cause would be responsible for the apparent design of the material world. This is how to prove a designer exists, not by trying to persuade someone by appealing to examples of the appearance of design.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/judgments-of-probability.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html
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