Questions about the Teleological Argument

[SonofAletheia]

Hey guys,

I've been studying and researching different variations of the teleological argument. I was talking about the fine-tuning argument with a open-minded friend and he responded with this: Humans (or life in general) are just complex chunks of evolved matter. There's nothing "special" about humans that needs explaning. He is bascially saying that a universe with only planets and stars is just as "fine-tuned" than a unvierse with evoloved life. I understand what he is saying. It seems that before you can argue from design or fine-tuning you have to prove or show that something needs explaining. So we would have to show that life is rare enough or special enough to warrent explanation. Once you do that then, and only then, can you continue with any of the teleological arguments. But I'm not sure how to show this, or even If one can. Is life simply matter? Are we simply machines, just chemicals and neurons? Just evolved stuff?
I guess I just wanted your guys thoughts and if you've heard this objection. Thanks guys

Justin

[alex1]

If he's right, then we should see any form of life everywhere we look in space. But that isn't the case, so far.

[Echoside]

the teleological argument is also not restricted to just life, everything in the universe falls under it's inspection.

[SonofAletheia]

Let me rephrase my question. Im referring to William Lane Craig's fine-tuning argument which goes as follows:
1) The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life is due to physical necessity, chance, or design
2) It is not due to physical necessity or chance
3) Therefore, it is due to design

The "Intelligent life" is what some atheists are questioning. They would say that life needs no explanation since it is just complex evolved chemicals and matter. You could say that a universe with no life at all is "fine-tuned" for no life. Or that another universe is fine-tuned for only planets and stars etc. It seems that there is an assumption that "intelligent life" needs explaning, when to the atheists, life is just matter that needs no explaning. Thats the issue or question I am bringing up. Can one show that "intelligent life" needs explaning? Once that is shown then we can use the argument from design.

Justin

[dayage]

Justin,

Do you read and listen to the resources from Reasons To Believe?
http://www.reasons.org
http://www.paradoxes.org/audio/audio.htm
http://www.reasons.org/resources/radio- ... d-podcasts

Here is some of Dr. Ross' fine-tuning evidence.
http://www.reasons.org/fine-tuning

Here is Dr. Ranas' latest book "Creating Life In The Lab." It deals directly with your question.
http://www.reasons.org/catalog/creating ... se-creator

[Kurieuo]

Craig builds a lot off his kalam cosmological argument. Particularly big bang cosmology, philosophical reasoning for a beginning, and a personal omnipotent designer being the only one able to be the timeless causer who can willingly exit its timeless state to enter into time with the creation of the universe. In contradistinction, an impersonal natural causer can't exit its timeless state to cause creation. For example, a timeless universe made of ice will forever be ice because it can't will or bring about change in itself. To escape philosophical arguments for requiring a beginning (for example, impossibility of an infinite regress), the cause of creation needs to be timeless. Thus Craig reasons the causer must be personal (ie. God).

[narnia4]

This article by William Lane Craig actually addresses almost exactly the point you bring up-

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=8167

Now there are different forms of a teleological argument. I've been reading some Ed Feser lately and he talks about teleology from an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective, and he and others are actually very critical of the "Paley's watch", ID type of teleological argument.

If anyone is interested in about 20 pages on that, here-
http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art- ... 281%29.pdf

I personally don't have a problem with ID, but the perspective there is something that isn't as fully discussed.

A couple of my own thoughts on it, I think atheists are pretty much necessarily reduced to denying teleology as a whole, but the existence of purpose in the world seems obvious, doesn't it? The vast majority of atheists talk as if there is purpose of some kind as well, they don't talk as if we are mindless, directionless molecules. That's really counter-intuitive, and if you're going to try to sell me that you're going to need some pretty good evidence (even ignoring all the arguments in favor of purpose). Unfortunately for them, a lot of their arguments really fail pretty badly. Often you'll see secularists bringing up things that aren't designed or are apparently purposeless as evidence, but that really proves nothing. If one thing isn't designed with a purpose, how does that prove that nothing has purpose? Anyway, things like that.

But yeah, I would especially encourage reading the second link, good stuff.

[wrain62]

So their argument is that there is nothing instrinically sacred about life except that people arbitrarily treat it as such. That means that a random person truly means nothing without his society(including himself) to give him worth(worldly kind). No purpose either except the superficial kind.

[spartanII]

Well the argument goes beyond just "you move one of the constants slightly up and you get an entirely new universe with creatures that may or may not evolve and survive...If the constant of helium was raised in any degree at the beginning of time the entire universe would be nothing more than helium...so it's more than just "this constant or that constant...."---- a good way to put a fork in the road for showing we are more than just animals is objective morality...in the animal kindgom there isn't objective morality, yet for we as humans murdering somebody is wrong...but in the animal kingdom this isn't murder, nor is it rape...it's just stuff happening. The animal didn't "steal" the fish, or a dog didn't "rape" another dog...the same can be said about animals. If he tries to bring up mechanics and how things work, let him know your trying to go deeper then that. Your still debating over whether or not objective morals even exist. If we are nothing more than animals then they don't exist. If they do exist then we are more than just animals, something had to intervene. Something more than just us...

my 2 cents.

[SonofAletheia]

I appreciate the responses guys. Thanks for the links and articles.
As for what WLC said in his response:
Still, one might wonder why we should focus on intelligent life as the pattern with which we're concerned. Why not the pattern required for the existence of, say, crystals? Here I think John Leslie's notion of a tidy explanation may be helpful. For Leslie, "tidy explanation" is a technical term: it is an explanation which, in explaining some phenomenon, reveals that there is something to be explained. Leslie gives a great many charming examples of tidy explanations. For instance, you are shopping in the bazaar, and the silk merchant is displaying for you a drape of silk. His thumb just happens to be covering the moth hole in the cloth. Now of course his thumb has to be somewhere, and any location on the drape is equally improbable; nevertheless—! That he is hoodwinking you provides a tidy explanation of why his thumb happens to be where it is. Or again, Bob, who was born on August 23, 1982, receives a car for his birthday from his wife with the license plate BOB 82382. That this plate number is the result of intelligent design is a tidy explanation of it. In light of the fact that it is Bob's birthday which is being celebrated, one is not being "Bob chauvinistic" in singling out his name and birth date as a significant pattern crying out for explanation. The presence of a tidy explanation of the initial conditions of the universe could similarly justify us in focusing on the conditions requisite for intelligent life as a phenomenon crying out for explanation.


It still seems to me that you could input anything into the example to make it a tidy explanation. For example, you could put crystals into the example or unicorns. Then you could use the fine-tuning argument and say that the universe was not fine tuned for that. It still does not seem to address my quesion: What makes (intelligent) life so special that it demands explanation? It would seem that would have to be determined before the fine-tuning argument can be used.

[jlay]

That is why I prefer presuppositional apologetics. Natural arguments are fine, but I think utlimately it is always a probability thing. So, in a sense your friend is right, and that is why those arguments, although good, don't really do much. Obvioulsy the reality of logic begs us to ask by what method can we logically deduce things. Why is the abstract, immaterial thinking process subject to external laws of reasoning?

Of course in the end they are essentially saying that nothing would be as significant as something. I mean, why is there anything, much less a universe that supports a life form that is able to ask ontological and epistemological questions about it?

[sandy_mcd]

For example, you could put crystals into the example or unicorns. Then you could use the fine-tuning argument and say that the universe was not fine tuned for that. It still does not seem to address my quesion: What makes (intelligent) life so special that it demands explanation? It would seem that would have to be determined before the fine-tuning argument can be used.

There is one huge difference between using the fine-tuning argument for crystals and for intelligent life. If the universe were such that there were no intelligent life and only crystals, then that would be it. But only when there is intelligent life, is it even possible to ask the question "why is the universe so constructed that we exist?"
So what makes intelligent life special enough to demand explanation is that intelligent life is capable of asking the question.
When an intelligent being asks "what are the odds that universal constants will be such that intelligent life can exist?, the answer is 1 in 1, or 100% probability. Otherwise the question couldn't be posed.