3 Kinds of Design Argument

There are various forms of the argument: an argument from analogy, and argument from final cause and the anthropic argument.

Argument from analogy

The best known design argument or argument from analogy is that of William Paley, who likened the observation of the universe to the discovery of a “watch upon a heath.” In the case of the watch, one would know—even if they had never seen a watch before—that this object, with all of its working parts, was not the random product of chance but of a intelligent designer. Other forms of the argument were put forward by the medieval Jewish scholar, Rabbeinu Bachya who likened the order in the universe to writing on a piece of paper. The idea that an essay, he maintained, could be the result of an ink spill on the page is absurd:

“Do you not realize that if ink were poured out accidentally on a blank sheet of paper, it would be impossible that proper writing should result, legible lines that are written with a pen? Imagine a person bringing a sheet of handwriting that could only have been composed with a pen. He claims that ink spilled on the paper and these written characters had accidentally emerged. We would charge him to his face with falsehood, for we could feel certain that this result could not have happened without an intelligent person's purpose.”


Final Cause Argument

An Argument relying on the concept of final cause (this kind of argument is called teleological properly being derived from the Greek word, telos, which means ‘end’) has most famously been brought forward by St Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.

This kind of design argument is based on the Aristotelian concept of causation. According to Aristotle, everything that exists has a material, formal, efficient and final cause. The final cause points to the purpose of the thing—and purpose implies design.

Thomas uses the analogy of an arrow being shot at a target; just as the arrow must be directed towards a target by an archer, so too must anything that is directed towards a final end be directed by an Intelligence.

Anthropic Arguments

More recently—and especially with increasing knowledge about chemistry, astronomy and physics—arguments have been put forward by scholars that argue that the universe and planet earth are not only friendly to the production of life, but have exactly the right conditions to make life possible.

Barrow and Tipler have classified the principle as being either ‘weak’ (WAP) or ‘strong’ (SAP). The WAP states that the fact that we can observe the universe means that the conditions must be perfect for such an observation to take place. The appeal of this form of the argument for many is that the God of traditional or classical theism does not need to be invoked to accept it. The SAP, principle however holds that the fine-tuning of the universe not only makes life possible but necessary—suggesting a deliberate and intelligent act to bring the observer into being.