Theological Term of the Week: Teleological Argument

teleological argument
An argument for the existence of God that begins with evidence of order, complexity, pattern and purpose in the universe and argues from that evidence that the universe must have an intelligent and purposeful designer.

• In scripture:

  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Romans 1:19–20 ESV).

• From William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802), a bit of his watchmaker analogy, which is an example of a teleological argument:

  In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (…) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (…) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.     

Learn more:

1. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry: The Teleological Argument 
2. John Lennox: Why God is like Henry Ford
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence
4. Simply Put: The Teleological Argument

Related terms: 

• cosmological argument
• moral argument
• ontological argument
• trancendental argument for the existence of God

Filed under Apologetics

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