This is a good article. Click here for more information.

Teleological argument

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The teleological argument (from τέλος, telos, 'end, aim, goal'; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an intelligent creator.[1][2][3]



From its beginning, there have been numerous criticisms of the different versions of the teleological argument, and responses to its challenge to the claims against non-teleological natural science. Especially important were the general logical arguments made by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published in 1779, and the explanation of biological complexity given in Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, published in 1859.[9] Since the 1960s, Paley's arguments have been influential in the development of a creation science movement which used phrases such as "design by an intelligent designer", and post 1987 this was rebranded as "intelligent design", promoted by the intelligent design movement which refers to an intelligent designer. Both movements have used the teleological argument to argue against the modern scientific understanding of evolution, and to claim that supernatural explanations should be given equal validity in the public school science curriculum.[10]



Contemporary defenders of the teleological argument include Richard Swinburne and John Lennox.

Classical philosophy[edit]

Socrates and the pre-Socratics[edit]




Plato and Aristotle[edit]

Plato's Timaeus is presented as a description of someone who is explaining a "likely story" in the form of a myth, and so throughout history commentators have disagreed about which elements of the myth can be seen as the position of Plato.[13]: 132  Sedley (2007) nevertheless calls it "the creationist manifesto" and points out that although some of Plato's followers denied that he intended it, in classical times writers such as Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and Galen all understood Plato as proposing the world originated in an "intelligent creative act".[13]: 133  Plato has a character explain the concept of a "demiurge" with supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work.





Aristotle felt that biology was a particularly important example of a field where materialist natural science ignored information which was needed in order to understand living things well. For example birds use wings for the purpose of flight.[22] Therefore the most complete explanation in regard to the natural, as well as the artificial, is for the most part teleological.[23] In fact, proposals that species had changed by chance survival of the fittest, similar to what is now called "natural selection", were already known to Aristotle, and he rejected these with the same logic.[23][24][25][26][27] He conceded that monstrosities (new forms of life) could come about by chance,[28][29] but he disagreed with those who ascribed all nature purely to chance[30] because he believed science can only provide a general account of that which is normal, "always, or for the most part".[31] The distinction between what is normal, or by nature, and what is "accidental", or not by nature, is important in Aristotle's understanding of nature. As pointed out by Sedley, "Aristotle is happy to say (Physics II 8, 199a33-b4) without the slightest fear of blasphemy, crafts make occasional mistakes; therefore, by analogy, so can nature."[13]: 186  According to Aristotle the changes which happen by nature are caused by their "formal causes", and for example in the case of a bird's wings there is also a final cause which is the purpose of flying. He explicitly compared this to human technology:


— Aristotle, Physics, II 8.[32]


Roman era[edit]

It was the Stoics who "developed the battery of creationist arguments broadly known under the label 'The Argument from Design'".[13]: xviii  Cicero (c. 106 – c. 43 BC) reported the teleological argument of the Stoics in De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Book II, which includes an early version of the watchmaker analogy, which was later developed by William Paley. He has one of the characters in the dialogue say:


— Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.34



Medieval philosophy and theology[edit]

Late classical Christian writers[edit]

As an appeal to general revelation, Paul the Apostle (AD 5–67), argues in Romans 1:18–20[1:18–20], that because it has been made plain to all from what has been created in the world, it is obvious that there is a God.[34]



Islamic philosophy[edit]




Jewish philosophy[edit]

An example of the teleological argument in Jewish philosophy appears when the medieval Aristotelian philosopher Maimonides cites the passage in Isaiah 40:26, where the "Holy One" says: "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number:"[42] However, Barry Holtz calls this "a crude form of the argument from design", and that this "is only one possible way of reading the text". He asserts that "Generally, in the biblical texts the existence of God is taken for granted."[43]

Maimonides also recalled that Abraham (in the midrash, or explanatory text, of Genesis Rabbah 39:1) recognized the existence of "one transcendent deity from the fact that the world around him exhibits an order and design".[44] The midrash makes an analogy between the obviousness that a building has an owner, and that the world is looked after by God. Abraham says "Is it conceivable that the world is without a guide?"[45] Because of these examples, the 19th century philosopher Nachman Krochmal called the argument from design "a cardinal principle of the Jewish faith".[44]


Thomas Aquinas[edit]




— St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Article 3, Question 2)[48]



Newton and Leibniz[edit]



This view, that "God is known from his works", was supported and popularized by Newton's friends Richard Bentley, Samuel Clarke and William Whiston in the Boyle lectures, which Newton supervised.[50] Newton wrote to Bentley, just before Bentley delivered the first lecture, that:




Leibniz considered the argument from design to have "only moral certainty" unless it was supported by his own idea of pre-established harmony expounded in his Monadology.[53] Bertrand Russell wrote that "The proof from the pre-established harmony is a particular form of the so-called physico-theological proof, otherwise known as the argument from design." According to Leibniz, the universe is completely made from individual substances known as monads, programmed to act in a predetermined way.[54] Russell wrote:


British empiricists[edit]

The 17th-century Dutch writers Lessius and Grotius argued that the intricate structure of the world, like that of a house, was unlikely to have arisen by chance.[56] The empiricist John Locke, writing in the late 17th century, developed the Aristotelian idea that, excluding geometry, all science must attain its knowledge a posteriori - through sensual experience.[57] In response to Locke, Anglican Irish Bishop George Berkeley advanced a form of idealism in which things only continue to exist when they are perceived.[58] When humans do not perceive objects, they continue to exist because God is perceiving them. Therefore, in order for objects to remain in existence, God must exist omnipresently.[59]






Derham's natural theology[edit]

Starting in 1696 with his Artificial Clockmaker, William Derham published a stream of teleological books. The best known of these are Physico-Theology (1713); Astro-Theology (1714); and Christo-Theology (1730). Physico-Theology, for example, was explicitly subtitled "A demonstration of the being and attributes of God from his works of creation". A natural theologian, Derham listed scientific observations of the many variations in nature, and proposed that these proved "the unreasonableness of infidelity". At the end of the section on Gravity for instance, he writes: "What else can be concluded, but that all was made with manifest Design, and that all the whole Structure is the Work of some intelligent Being; some Artist, of Power and Skill equivalent to such a Work?"[63] Also, of the "sense of sound" he writes:[64]


Derham concludes: "For it is a Sign a Man is a wilful, perverse Atheist, that will impute so glorious a Work, as the Creation is, to any Thing, yea, a mere Nothing (as Chance is) rather than to God.[65] Weber (2000) writes that Derham's Physico-Theology "directly influenced" William Paley's later work.[66]


Watchmaker analogy[edit]


The watchmaker analogy, framing the teleological argument with reference to a timepiece, dates at least back to the Stoics, who were reported by Cicero in his De Natura Deorum (II.88), using such an argument against Epicureans, whom, they taunt, would "think more highly of the achievement of Archimedes in making a model of the revolutions of the firmament than of that of nature in creating them, although the perfection of the original shows a craftsmanship many times as great as does the counterfeit".[69] It was also used by Robert Hooke[70] and Voltaire, the latter of whom remarked:[71][72]

L'univers m'embarrasse, et je ne puis songer
Que cette horloge existe, et n'ait point d'horloger

The Universe troubles me, and much less can I think
That this clock exists and should have no clockmaker.








Recent proponents[edit]

Probabilistic arguments[edit]

In 1928 and 1930, F. R. Tennant published his Philosophical Theology, which was a "bold endeavour to combine scientific and theological thinking".[81] He proposed a version of the teleological argument based on the accumulation of the probabilities of each individual biological adaptation. "Tennant concedes that naturalistic accounts such as evolutionary theory may explain each of the individual adaptations he cites, but he insists that in this case the whole exceeds the sum of its parts: naturalism can explain each adaptation but not their totality."[82] The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that "Critics have insisted on focusing on the cogency of each piece of theistic evidence – reminding us that, in the end, ten leaky buckets hold no more water than one." Also, "Some critics, such as John Hick and D.H. Mellor, have objected to Tennant's particular use of probability theory and have challenged the relevance of any kind of probabilistic reasoning to theistic belief."[82]

Richard Swinburne's "contributions to philosophical theology have sought to apply more sophisticated versions of probability theory to the question of God's existence, a methodological improvement on Tennant's work but squarely in the same spirit".[82] He uses Bayesian probability "taking account not only of the order and functioning of nature but also of the 'fit' between human intelligence and the universe, whereby one can understand its workings, as well as human aesthetic, moral, and religious experience".[83] Swinburne writes:[84]



While discussing Hume's arguments, Alvin Plantinga offered a probability version of the teleological argument in his book God and Other Minds:[85]

The universe is a contingent object.
So probably the universe is designed.

Following Plantinga, Georges Dicker produced a slightly different version in his book about Bishop Berkeley:[86]

A. The world ... shows amazing teleological order.
C. Probably the world is a result of intelligent design.
D. Probably, God exists and created the world.

The Encyclopædia Britannica has the following criticism of such arguments:[83]


Fine-tuned universe[edit]

A modern variation of the teleological argument is built upon the concept of the fine-tuned universe: According to the website Biologos:[87]

Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature's physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.

Also, the fine-tuning of the Universe is the apparent delicate balance of conditions necessary for human life. In this view, speculation about a vast range of possible conditions in which life cannot exist is used to explore the probability of conditions in which life can and does exist. For example, it can be argued that if the force of the Big Bang explosion had been different by 1/10 to the sixtieth power or the strong interaction force was only 5% different, life would be impossible.[88] Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking estimates that "if the rate of the universe's expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed into a hot fireball due to gravitational attraction".[89] In terms of a teleological argument, the intuition in relation to a fine-tuned universe would be that God must have been responsible, if achieving such perfect conditions is so improbable.[87][88] However, in regard to fine-tuning, Kenneth Einar Himma writes: "The mere fact that it is enormously improbable that an event occurred... by itself, gives us no reason to think that it occurred by design ... As intuitively tempting as it may be..."[88] Himma attributes the "Argument from Suspicious Improbabilities", a formalization of "the fine-tuning intuition" to George N. Schlesinger:


Himma considers Schlesinger's argument to be subject to the same vulnerabilities he noted in other versions of the design argument:[88]


Antony Flew, who spent most of his life as an atheist, converted to deism late in life, and postulated "an intelligent being as involved in some way in the design of conditions that would allow life to arise and evolve".[90] He concluded that the fine-tuning of the universe was too precise to be the result of chance, so accepted the existence of God. He said that his commitment to "go where the evidence leads" meant that he ended up accepting the existence of God.[91] Flew proposed the view, held earlier by Fred Hoyle, that the universe is too young for life to have developed purely by chance and that, therefore, an intelligent being must exist which was involved in designing the conditions required for life to evolve.[90]



Creation science and intelligent design[edit]





Proponents of the intelligent design movement such as Cornelius G. Hunter, have asserted that the methodological naturalism upon which science is based is religious in nature.[96] They commonly refer to it as 'scientific materialism' or as 'methodological materialism' and conflate it with 'metaphysical naturalism'.[97] They use this assertion to support their claim that modern science is atheistic, and contrast it with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports theistic science. This ignores the distinction between science and religion, established in Ancient Greece, in which science can not use supernatural explanations.[94]


Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics[edit]

William Lane Craig has proposed an nominalist argument influenced by the philosophy of mathematics. This argument revolves around the fact that, by using mathematical concepts, we can discover much about the natural world. For example, Craig writes, Peter Higgs, and any similar scientist, 'can sit down at his desk and, by pouring [sic] over mathematical equations, predict the existence of a fundamental particle which, thirty years later, after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours, experimentalists are finally able to detect.' He names mathematics as the 'language of nature', and refutes two possible explanations for this. Firstly, he suggests, the idea that they are abstract entities brings about the question of their application. Secondly, he responds to the problem of whether they are merely useful fictions by suggesting that this asks why these fictions are so useful. Citing Eugene Wigner as an influence on his thought, he summarizes his argument as follows:[99][100][101]

3. Therefore, God exists.

"Third way" proposal[edit]




Interacting whole[edit]

The metaphysical theologian Norris Clarke shared an argument to his fellow professors at Fordham University that was popularised by Peter Kreeft in his 'Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God'. The argument states that as components are ordered universally in relation to one another, and are defined by these connections (for example, every two hydrogen atoms are ordered to form a compound with one oxygen atom.) Therefore, none of the parts are self-sufficient, and cannot be explained individually. However, the whole cannot be explained either because it is composed of separate beings and is not a whole. From here, three conclusions can be found: firstly, as the system cannot in any way explain itself, it requires an efficient cause. Secondly, it must be an intelligent mind because the unity transcends every part, and thus must have been conceived as an idea, because, by definition, only an idea can hold together elements without destroying or fusing their distinctness. An idea cannot exist without a creator, so there must be an intelligent mind. Thirdly, the creative mind must be transcendent, because if it were not, it would rely upon the system of space and time, despite having created it. Such an idea is absurd. As a conclusion, therefore, the universe relies upon a transcendent creative mind.[104]



The original development of the argument from design was in reaction to atomistic, explicitly non-teleological understandings of nature. Socrates, as reported by Plato and Xenophon, was reacting to such natural philosophers. While less has survived from the debates of the Hellenistic and Roman eras, it is clear from sources such as Cicero and Lucretius, that debate continued for generations, and several of the striking metaphors used still today, such as the unseen watchmaker, and the infinite monkey theorem, have their roots in this period. While the Stoics became the most well-known proponents of the argument from design, the atomistic counter arguments were refined most famously by the Epicureans. On the one hand, they criticized the supposed evidence for intelligent design, and the logic of the Stoics. On the defensive side, they were faced with the challenge of explaining how un-directed chance can cause something which appears to be a rational order. Much of this defence revolved around arguments such as the infinite monkey metaphor. Democritus had already apparently used such arguments at the time of Socrates, saying that there will be infinite planets, and only some having an order like the planet we know. But the Epicureans refined this argument, by proposing that the actual number of types of atoms in nature is small, not infinite, making it less coincidental that after a long period of time, certain orderly outcomes will result.[13]


David Hume[edit]


Louis Loeb writes that David Hume, in his Enquiry, "insists that inductive inference cannot justify belief in extended objects". Loeb also quotes Hume as writing:

It is only when two species of objects are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other.… If experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inference of this nature; both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes…which we have found, in many instances, to be conjoined with another.… [The proponents of the argument] always suppose the universe, an effect quite singular and unparalleled, to be the proof of a Deity, a cause no less singular and unparalleled.




— David Hume, Dialogues 2[107]

Philo also proposes that the order in nature may be due to nature alone. If nature contains a principle of order within it, the need for a designer is removed. Philo argues that even if the universe is indeed designed, it is unreasonable to justify the conclusion that the designer must be an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God – the God of classical theism.[107] It is impossible, he argues, to infer the perfect nature of a creator from the nature of its creation. Philo argues that the designer may have been defective or otherwise imperfect, suggesting that the universe may have been a poor first attempt at design.[108] Hume also pointed out that the argument does not necessarily lead to the existence of one God: “why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing the world?” (p. 108).[62]


Nancy Cartwright accuses Salmon of begging the question. One piece of evidence he uses in his probabilistic argument – that atoms and molecules are not caused by design – is equivalent to the conclusion he draws, that the universe is probably not caused by design. The atoms and molecules are what the universe is made up of and whose origins are at issue. Therefore, they cannot be used as evidence against the theistic conclusion.[110]

Immanuel Kant[edit]

Referring to it as the physico-theological proof, Immanuel Kant discussed the teleological argument in his Critique of Pure Reason. Even though he referred to it as "the oldest, clearest and most appropriate to human reason", he nevertheless rejected it, heading section VI with the words, "On the impossibility of a physico-theological proof."[111][112] In accepting some of Hume's criticisms, Kant wrote that the argument "proves at most intelligence only in the arrangement of the 'matter' of the universe, and hence the existence not of a 'Supreme Being', but of an 'Architect'". Using the argument to try to prove the existence of God required "a concealed appeal to the Ontological argument".[113]

Does not prove the existence of God[edit]


In his Traité de métaphysique Voltaire argued that, even if the argument from design could prove the existence of a powerful intelligent designer, it would not prove that this designer is God.[114]


— Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique[114]

Søren Kierkegaard questioned the existence of God, rejecting all rational arguments for God's existence (including the teleological argument) on the grounds that reason is inevitably accompanied by doubt.[115] He proposed that the argument from design does not take into consideration future events which may serve to undermine the proof of God's existence: the argument would never finish proving God's existence.[116] In the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard writes:


— Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments[116]

Argument from improbability[edit]




... The whole argument turns on the familiar question 'Who made God?'... A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. This argument… demonstrates that God, though not technically disprovable, is very very improbable indeed.[117]

— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Dawkins considered the argument from improbability to be "much more powerful" than the teleological argument, or argument from design, although he sometimes implies the terms are used interchangeably. He paraphrases St. Thomas' teleological argument as follows: "Things in the world, especially living things, look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Therefore there must have been a designer, and we call him God."[117]

Philosopher Edward Feser has accused Dawkins of misunderstanding the teleological argument, particularly Aquinas' version.[118][119]

A flawed argument[edit]



Perception of purpose in biology[edit]

The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse has argued that Darwin treated the structure of organisms as if they had a purpose: "the organism-as-if-it-were-designed-by God picture was absolutely central to Darwin's thinking in 1862, as it always had been".[121] He refers to this as "the metaphor of design ... Organisms give the appearance of being designed, and thanks to Charles Darwin's discovery of natural selection we know why this is true." In his review of Ruse's book, R.J. Richards writes, "Biologists quite routinely refer to the design of organisms and their traits, but properly speaking it's apparent design to which they refer – an 'as if' design."[122] Robert Foley refers to this as "the illusion of purpose, design, and progress". He adds, "there is no purpose in a fundamentally causative manner in evolution but that the processes of selection and adaptation give the illusion of purpose through the utter functionality and designed nature of the biological world".[123]

Richard Dawkins suggests that while biology can at first seem to be purposeful and ordered, upon closer inspection its true function becomes questionable. Dawkins rejects the claim that biology serves any designed function, claiming rather that biology only mimics such purpose. In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins states that animals are the most complex things in the known universe: "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." He argues that natural selection should suffice as an explanation of biological complexity without recourse to divine providence.[124]

However, theologian Alister McGrath has pointed out that the fine-tuning of carbon is even responsible for nature's ability to tune itself to any degree.






Fideists may reject attempts to prove God's existence. For example, Calvinist theologian Karl Barth held that God can be known only through Jesus Christ, as revealed in scripture, and that any such attempts should be considered idolatry.[127]

Other criticisms[edit]



Most professional biologists support the modern evolutionary synthesis, not merely as an alternative explanation for the complexity of life but a better explanation with more supporting evidence.[131] Living organisms obey the same physical laws as inanimate objects. Over very long periods of time self-replicating structures arose and later formed DNA.[132]

Similar discussions in other civilizations[edit]


Nyaya, the Hindu school of logic, had a version of the argument from design. P.G. Patil writes that, in this view, it is not the complexity of the world from which one can infer the existence of a creator, but the fact that "the world is made up of parts". In this context, it is the Supreme Soul, Ishvara, who created all the world.

The argument is in five parts:[133]

  2. On account of being an effect.
  4. And the world is an effect.


Buddhist criticism of Hindu Nyaya logic[edit]





The Taoist writings of the 6th-century-BC philosopher Laozi (also known as Lao Tzu) have similarities with modern naturalist science. B. Schwartz notes that, in Taoism, "The processes of nature are not guided by a teleological consciousness ... the tao [dao] is not consciously providential.[137]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ "teleological argument". Oxford English Dictionary.
  2. ^ Ayala, Francisco J. 2006. "The Blasphemy of Intelligent Design". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28(3):409–21. JSTOR 23334140. (review of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design): "The argument from design to demonstrate God's existence, now called the 'Intelligent Design' argument (ID) is a two-tined argument. The first prong asserts that the universe, humans, as well as all sorts of organisms, in their wholes, in their parts, and in their relations to one another and to their environment, appear to have been designed for serving certain functions and for certain ways of life. The second prong of the argument is that only an omnipotent Creator could account for the perfection and purposeful design of the universe and everything in it."
  3. ^ "The Argument from Design". Princeton University. Archived from the original on 2019-07-16.
  4. ^ a b Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and R. Kamtekar. 2009. A Companion to Socrates. John Wiley & Sons. p. 45. "Xenophon attributes to Socrates what is probably the earliest known natural theology, an argument for the existence of the gods from observations of design in the physical world."
  5. ^ Sedley (2007:86) agrees, and cites other recent commentators who agree, and argues in detail that the argument reported by Xenophon and Plato is "at any rate the antecedent" of the argument from design (p. 213). He shows that the Stoics frequently paraphrased the account given by Xenophon.
  6. ^ Sedley 2007, p. xvii.
  7. ^ Derham, William. 1713. Physico-Theology.
  8. ^ "Design". Oxford English Dictionary, substantive number 4.
  9. ^ Manning, Russell Re. 2013. "Introduction". Pp. 1–9 in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 3, for example: "Between them, so the story goes, Hume, Darwin and Barth pulled the rug out from underneath the pretensions of natural theology to any philosophical, scientific, or theological legitimacy."
  10. ^ a b c d e Scott, Eugenie C. 2007. "Biological design in science classrooms". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(suppl. 1):8669–76. doi:10.1073/pnas.0701505104. PMID 17494747. PMC 1876445.
  11. ^ a b McPherran, Mark (1996), The Religion of Socrates, The Pennsylvania State University Press, ISBN 978-0271040325, pp. 273–75.
  12. ^ a b Ahbel-Rappe, Sara. 2009. Socrates: A Guide for the Perplexed. ISBN 9780826433251. p. 27.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Sedley, David (2007), Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity, University of California Press, ISBN 9780520934368.
  14. ^ Metaphysics I.4.984b.
  15. ^ Kirk, Raven, and Schofield. 1983. The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ch. 10.
  16. ^ Kirk, Raven, and Schofield. 1983. The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 204, 235.
  17. ^ 28c and 30d. Translation by Fowler.
  18. ^ 97-98. Also see Ahbel Rappe.
  19. ^ Ahbel-Rappe (2009); McPherran (1996:290); and Kirk, Raven & Schofield (1983, ch. XVI)
  20. ^ Brickhouse, Thomas, and Nicholas D. Smith. 21 April 2005. "Plato". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 12, 2011.
  22. ^ Aristotle. History of Animals. I 2.
  24. ^ Aristotle. Physics. I 2 (¶15).
  25. ^ Aristotle. Parts of Animals. I 1.
  28. ^ Aristotle. Physics. II 8  (¶2).
  29. ^ Aristotle. Physics. II 8  (¶5).
  30. ^ Aristotle. Physics. II 8  (¶8).
  31. ^ Aristotle. Physics. II 8.
  32. ^ Sachs translation (1998), Aristotle's physics; a guided study, 2nd ed., pages 67–68.
  33. ^ Sedley (2007) Epilogue.
  34. ^ "Christian philosophy as natural theology". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  36. ^ Augustine of Hippo, City of God XI, ch. 4: "the world itself, by its well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been created, and also that it could not have been created save by God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible".
  37. ^ Goodman, Lenn Evan (1992), Avicenna, Cornell university press, p. 63, ISBN 978-0801472541
  38. ^ Abrahamov, Binyāmîn (1990), "Introduction", in Abrahamov, Binyāmîn (ed.), Kitāb al-Dalīl al-Kabīr, Brill, ISBN 978-9004089853
  40. ^ Belo, Catarina. 2007. Chance and Determinism in Avicenna and Averroës. Leiden: Brill. p. 194.
  41. ^ Fraenkel, Carlos. 2012. Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 199.
  42. ^ King James Version of the Bible
  43. ^ Holtz, B., Back to the Sources, Simon and Schuster, 2008, p. 287.
  45. ^ Genesis Rabbah, 39:1
  52. ^ Leshem, A., Newton on Mathematics and Spiritual Purity, Springer, 2003, pp. 21–22.[1]
  64. ^ Derham, W., Physico-Theology, 1713, pp. 131–132.
  65. ^ Derham, William. 1713. Physico-Theology. p. 328.
  66. ^ Weber, A. S. 2000. Nineteenth-Century Science: An Anthology. Broadview Press. p. 18.
  67. ^ Peter France, "The poet as a teacher" in Poetry in France: metamorphoses of a muse, Edinburgh U 1992, p. 138
  68. ^ Spirago, Francis, and James Joseph Baxter. 1904. Anecdotes and Examples: Illustrating the Catholic Catechism. New York: Benziger Bros. pp. 39–40.
  69. ^ De natura deorum, London W. Heinemann, 1933, translated by H. Rackham. This is discussed at Sedley p. 207.
  71. ^ Gilson, Étienne, trans. 2009. Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species, and Evolution. Ignatius Press. p. 126.
  72. ^ Voltaire (1772). Les cabales,: oeuvre pacifique. Oxford University, s. n., 1772. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-165-51896-8.
  73. ^ Paley 1809, p. 1.
  75. ^ Browne, E. Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: vol. 1 Voyaging. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 1-84413-314-1. p. 129.
  76. ^ Wyhe, John van. 2007. "Mind the Gap: Did Darwin Avoid Publishing His Theory for Many Years?" Notes and Records of the Royal Society 61:177–205. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2006.0171. p. 197.
  77. ^ Babbage, Charles. [1838] 2002. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (2nd ed.), edited by J. van Wyhe. London: John Murray. pp. 225–27.
  78. ^ Darwin 1958, pp. 59, 87.
  79. ^ Miles, Sara Joan, "Charles Darwin and Asa Gray Discuss Teleology and Design", PSCF (2001) 53: 196–201.
  80. ^ Darwin, Charles. 1903. More Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by F. Darwin. New York: D. Appleton & Company. p. 252, quoted in Miles, Sara Joan. 2001. "Charles Darwin and Asa Gray Discuss Teleology and Design". Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 53:196–201.
  81. ^ "Tennant, Frederick Robert". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  82. ^ a b c Craig, E. 1998. "Tennant, Frederick Robert (1866–1957)." Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Taylor & Francis.
  83. ^ a b "Christian philosophy". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  84. ^ Swinburne, Richard. 2004. The Existence of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 166.
  85. ^ Plantinga, A. [1967] 1990. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. Cornell University Press. p. 104.
  86. ^ Dicker, G. 2011. Berkeley's Idealism: A Critical Examination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 262.
  87. ^ a b c "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-12-21. Retrieved 2015-01-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  89. ^ White, Martin; Kochanek, C. S. (2001). "Constraints on the Long‐Range Properties of Gravity from Weak Gravitational Lensing". The Astrophysical Journal. 560 (2): 539–543. arXiv:astro-ph/0105227. Bibcode:2001ApJ...560..539W. doi:10.1086/323074. S2CID 11812709.
  93. ^ Padian, Kevin, and Nicholas Matzke. 2009. "Darwin, Dover, 'Intelligent Design' and textbooks". Biochemical Journal 417(1):29–42. doi:10.1042/bj20081534. PMID 19061485.
  96. ^ "Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism". Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, (2007)
  99. ^ "God and the 'Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics' - Reasonable Faith".
  100. ^ "Does God Exist? - Reasonable Faith".
  101. ^ "YouTube". Archived from the original on 2020-03-13. Retrieved 2018-12-11.
  102. ^ a b Shapiro, James. "A Third Way".
  103. ^ Shapiro, James A. 2011. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. Pearson Education. pp. 136–37.
  104. ^ "Twenty Arguments God's Existence by Peter Kreeft (& Ronald K. Tacelli)".
  105. ^ Chiaradonna, Riccardo. "Plotinus' account of demiurgic causation and its philosophical background". Pp. 31–50 in Causation and Creation in Late Antiquity, edited by A. Marmodoro and B. D. Prince. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 31.
  107. ^ a b c Fiesar, James (June 30, 2011). "David Hume (1711–1776)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved November 24, 2011.
  110. ^ Cartwright, Nancy (1978). "Comments on Wesley Salmon's 'Science and Religion ...'". Philosophical Studies. 33 (2): 177–183. doi:10.1007/BF00571885. JSTOR 4319204. S2CID 170346176.
  111. ^ Buroker, J. V. Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason': An Introduction, Cambridge University Press. p. 279.[2]
  112. ^ Kant, Immanuel. [1781] 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. in Guyer, P. and A. W. Wood, trans. Cambridge University Press. p. 578.
  113. ^ Rabitte, E. 1995. David Hume: Critical Assessments 5, edited by S. Tweyman. Taylor & Francis. p. 192.
  115. ^ Southwell, Gareth (2011-01-06). Words of Wisdom: Philosophy's Most Important Quotations And Their Meanings. Quercus. ISBN 978-1-78087-092-2.
  116. ^ a b Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments (1844).
  118. ^ Feser, Edward. 2008. The Last Superstition. St. Augustine Press. p. 111.
  119. ^ "The New Philistinism". 2010-03-26.
  120. ^ Smith, George H. 2003. Atheism: The Case Against God. Prometheus Books. p. 155.
  121. ^ Ruse, Michael (2003). Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?. Harvard University Press. pp. 122.
  127. ^ "Arguments for the existence of God". Hodder Education.
  128. ^ Cornman, J. W., K. Lehrer, and G. S. Pappas. 1992. Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction. Hackett Publishing. pp. 245–56.
  131. ^ IAP Statement on the Teaching of Evolution Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine Joint statement issued by the national science academies of 67 countries, including the United Kingdom's Royal Society (PDF file)
  132. ^ Russell, P. J. 2008. Biology: The Dynamic Science 1. Cengage Learning. p. 72.
  133. ^ Patil, Parimal. G. 2013. Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India. Columbia University Press. Chapter 2. In a note, the author says that the Nyaya argument has been called a "cosmo-teleological argument".
  134. ^ Banerjea, K. M. 1861. Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy Comprising the Nyaya, the Sankhya, the Vedanta. Thacker Spink. p. 252.
  135. ^ Jackson, R. R. 1993. Is Enlightenment Possible?: Dharmakīrti and RGyal Tshab Rje on Knowledge, Rebirth, No-self and Liberation. Snow Lion Publications. p. 130.
  136. ^ Van Norden, B. W. 2002. Confucius and the Analects. Oxford University Press. p. 83.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]