Arguments for design
Michael Lacewing
[email protected]
Amazement
• Two natural phenomena often inspire
amazement in us: the night sky and life
• The first is vast, awesome
• The second is wonderful and intricate
• Philosophers can also be amazed that
we can understand the world at all
Life
• Organs serve a purpose –
heart – pump blood, eye –
seeing
– We understand parts of an
organ in relation to serving
this purpose
• A living organism requires
huge coordination of tiny
parts each functioning
well – complexity
Design
• Complexity of this kind, the way parts
work together, can indicate planning
and design – intentional purpose
• If life involves design, by definition,
there must be a designer
• But are living organisms designed?
Evolution by natural
selection
• Darwin explained how the
appearance of design is
possible without design
• Genetic alterations happen
randomly; most disappear. But
those that improve
reproduction survive and
spread in a population, altering
the species.
• Such alterations are not
actually ‘selected’ – natural
forces secure their survival
Starry sky
The ‘fine tuning’ argument
• Why do we live in a universe in which
life (and evolution) is possible?
• The conditions for life are very, very
improbable. Life needs planets, and
planets need stars.
• For stars to exist, the conditions of the
Big Bang (how big, how much bang)
had to be exact to 1/1060
1 in 1060
• 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000001 percent
– As precise as hitting a one-inch target on the
other side of the universe
• That’s for planets – life is even more
improbable
• Of course, if God designed the universe to
develop life, this is not a massive
coincidence
Paley
• What’s the difference between
a stone and a watch?
• What is it about a watch that
leads us to think that it must
be designed?
– The property of having an
organization of parts put
together for a purpose
• But natural things also exhibit
this same property (not
analogy)
Objection
• But natural things are produced by
nature, and watches are not
– They both have design-like properties
– But watches also have properties that
show they are manufactured
• Without this, we can’t infer from
apparent design to (real) design
‘Intelligent design’
• Behe on ‘irreducible
complexity’:
– a single system which is
composed of several
interacting parts that
contribute to the basic
function, and where the
removal of any one of these
parts causes the system to
effectively cease functioning’.
(‘Molecular machines’)
Discussion
• Over 40 parts work together to move the tail
of a bacterium – unless all 40 are present,
the tail doesn’t work at all – so you can’t
have evolution bit by bit
• Parts of a system are often parts of a
different system first, e.g. some parts of the
bacterium tail motor work well as a pump
• Something that was minor becomes
essential, e.g. lungs