Sunday, October 01, 2006


Paley VI

Continuing my trawl through the first edition of William Paley's Natural Theology (1802) Paley continues to rebutt several objections to the design inference by considering the 'dysteleology' objection:

2) Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right... It is not necessary that the machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made...

The dysteleology objection is frequently made today as an argument for Darwinism by its supporters, and as Cornelius Hunter points out, it is interesting to note Darwinist's using a theological argument in support of thier position!

The argument runs that there are features of purportedly designed things that do not fit with our expectations or intuitions about what a perfectly good and wise designer would design, and that therefore no such designer exists and that therefore there is no design. This objection (a variation of the classic 'problem of evil' and susceptible to many of the same rebuttals) is fallacious on several counts. First, it makes an unjustified leap from saying that the designer of object X (if designer there was) is imperfect, to saying that therefore there is no designer. Of course, there may be design by an imperfect designer. Cars rust, but they are still obviously the product of intelligent design. Secondly, the argument depends upon a risky inference from 'we can't think of a good reason as to why the designer made their design the way they did' to 'the designer had no good reason'. In practice, as engineers will know, design involves seeking the best trade off possible among competing design goals. The more battery life my laptop has, the heavier to carry it becomes. Who would want a laptop with a year's battery life if it meant one couldn't carry it around? But it would be silly to argue that since a laptop didn't have the maximum possible battery life an engineer could give it that it therefore could not have been designed, or designed by a good and wise designer!

We have already seen that questions about the nature of the designer/s is secondary to the question of intelligent design per se. Likewise, dysteleology is a secondary issue for philosophers and theologians to consider. Once again the rule is: first establish if intelligent design can be ruled in, then consider the best explanation of questions related to the nature of the designer.

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