Topics Religion

Question Let's say arguments for Intelligent Design are correct. So what? The inference from apparent order in nature to the existence of a Creator is theoretically interesting, however this doesn't bear on the vast majority of beliefs, practices and norms which actually make up religion. (A Creator exists! But is he Zeus or Allah or Yahweh? Is the Bible his word? Does he want us to eat pork or not?) In the end, what significance can teleological arguments really have for a religious person?

Accepted:
June 12, 2008

Comments

You ask an excellent question. I think that your suspicion is correct; that an argument that shows merely that the universe had a designer does not show enough about the nature of the designer to warrant belief in any particular theological system. But I don’t think that many theologians would rely on the Argument from Design to justify the particulars of their respective religious systems. Most major religions derive the details from some body of authorized texts or testimony. It is, as you notice, a serious and quite open question what justifies the assumption that any of these authorized texts or testimonies embodies the word of the Creator – that is, that they accurately represent the mind of the Being whose existence is (let us concede) supported by the Argument from Design.

Still, let’s see how far the Argument from Design could take us in learning the attributes of the Creator. In its strongest form, the Argument from Design is an “inference to best explanation.” It begins with the observation that the universe exhibits a high degree of complexity and orderliness, and then posits a designer to explain this. If we want to get more specific in the conclusion, we need to look at the details in the observation. For example, the complexity of the universe is vast. From this we might suppose, with some warrant, that the designer of the universe possesses vast knowledge and a capacious intellect. This might strike some as a pretty good argument for the claim that the Creator is omniscient.

But on the other hand, there is a lot about the universe that looks less than optimal, from a design standpoint. Just looking at the human body, we see that our upright posture has its positives (it keeps our hands free for making tools, playing musical instruments, petting the dog, whatever), it also carries some serious drawbacks – virtually inevitable lower back pain for everyone and, for us women, a narrow pelvis that makes childbirth not just painful, but often life-threatening. A designer worth her salt would take one look at the blueprint for the human body and go back to the drawing board. (Stephen Jay Gould – see his essays “The Panda’s Thumb” and “Senseless Signs of History” – would frequently cite such examples of suboptimal design to make one of his favorite points: the best evidence for evolution – as opposed to special creation – was bad design. It’s because human’s bipedalism was a modification of a pre-existing skeletal structure that it has so many flaws. Robotic engineers aren’t constrained to design around the human hip joint.) Conclusion? The Designer of the universe wasn’t very good at it. David Hume, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, raises this and a host of other possibilities consistent with the reasoning in the Argument from Design. The Designer, for all the universe shows us, could be a single individual, or a committee. He (or She or It) could be senile, or could be an inexperienced adolescent. The universe could be merely an experiment or prototype, something the Designer regards as a failed effort, to be done better in the next iteration.

The final question to consider (and one to which Hume devotes a great deal of attention) is what the nature of the observable universe tells us about the intentions of the Designer. It’s a clear fact that there is a great deal of suffering, at least in our little corner of the universe. What characteristics of the Designer would explain that? Arguably, the best explanation would be that the Designer either didn’t care about the happiness of sentient creatures, or that He was unable to prevent their suffering. (Compare: why isn’t that building accessible to handicapped people? Probably, either because its owners don’t care or lack the means to make it so.) Notice that the argument here is not that it’s impossible for the universe to have been created by a Being Who is both benevolent and omnipotent; it’s that such a Being doesn’t explain the observed facts as well as does a being of limited powers or a being who’s morally indifferent.

So I think that the Argument from Design is really a trap for anyone who wants to justify belief in the kind of God posited by many (most?) extant religions: a Being who is omniscient, omniopotent, and perfectly benevolent: if you are moved by it at all, you’re going to have to realize that it takes you places you don’t necessarily want to go.