William Paley, the theologist, argues that God is The Creator of the universe. In this paper, I will argue that William Paley’s argument fails due to not everything has a maker, not everything made was made for the purpose it holds, and because if the universe has a universe maker, then the universe maker made everything in the universe.
In William Paley’s analogy in, “The Watch and the Watchmaker”, he addresses a situation in which if someone sees a rock on the ground, you would not assume it just appeared there all of a sudden. “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 any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever; nor would
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I do not agree with this because not everything has a set maker. Even the objects that do have a maker, may have more than one. I know some objects that are made have many different makers, so in that case who would be considered the maker of that object or would we just consider the object to have many makers? Even if someone makes something like a table, it is not just a man who makes that table. That table is also made from tools and wood (if a wooden one), but then those tools must have a maker and the tree supposedly has a maker. But then again if the tools have a maker then what exactly made those tools? This seems to be a never-ending cycle of makers, but we never know when the first maker came about. If everything has a maker, then how was the first thing on earth ever made? Evolution seems to be the only way in my mind I can think of how the life of humans, animals, and earth all together came about. As for the things that I believe do not have a maker, Paley’s argument fails due to this. For example, if the universe was made by a universe maker AKA God, “The Creator”, then what about things like clouds. Some days, clouds appear in the sky and some days they do not. If clouds appear in the sky one day after they were not in the sky, did the universe maker put those clouds there for that one day? Since natural things like trees grow and clouds appear some days and not others, the universe maker would be very busy making …show more content…
A baby does not just appear from a mother even though a mother gives birth to a baby, a father is also required. Paley says in his first premise, that humans are the products of some kind of intelligent designer (NOVA). I do not agree with this because humans are not designed, they are made. A mother cannot pick the way her child comes out because if she could she would have a perfect child with no illnesses, if born with one. In this case I cannot see how God could have created this baby if the baby was actually created by its mother and father. Some women cannot even have children, which raises a question of, if God really existed, why can this woman who deserves one and wants one so badly not have a child? It is almost like people are being punished for no reason but why would they be if they are not bad people? This connects to the fact that people are much more complex than regular everyday objects that man can make with a machine. The human body is always changing and forming new things about it. We encounter diseases and cures for those diseases that are always evolving. The brain is so detailed and intricate it could not possibly be designed the way Paley is saying the universe was designed. It could be that this is the universe that won and it is the one hundredth one that was made but no one will ever know that. Since we did not see the universe being made, we cannot truly say that it was even made at all
There are different viewpoints on the question “what is the universe made of?” I think that both science and religion offer their own explanation to this topic and they sometimes overlap, which creates contradictions. Therefore, I do not agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial, which claims that there is a fine line separating science from religion. That being said, I think the conflict between science and religion is only in the study of evolution. It is possible for a scientist to be religious if he is not studying evolution, because science is very broad and it has various studies. In this essay, I will talk about the conflict between religion and science by comparing the arguments from Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. I argue that science and religion do overlap but only in some area concerning evolution and the cosmic design. Furthermore, when these overlaps are present it means that there are conflicts and one must choose between science and religion.
The intricacy of a simple time telling device has sparked controversy about the creation of the universe. In William Paley’s “The Analogical Teleological Argument” he argues that the universe must have been created by a universe maker, God, due to its complexity. However, David Hume, provides an empiricist objection by arguing that one cannot prove the existence of a universe maker due to lack of experience regarding the creation of a universe. Ultimately, I will argue that Paley’s argument by design is not sufficient for proving God 's existence because, as individuals, we cannot assume that the world works the way we wish it.
That thing in the Dumpster--and he refused to call it human, let alone a baby--was nobody's business but his and China's. That's what he'd told his attorney, Mrs. Teagues, and his mother and her boyfriend,and he'd told them over and over again: I didn't do anything wrong. Even if it was alive, and it was, he knew in his heart that it was, even before the state prosecutor represented evidence of blunt-force trauma and death by asphyxiation and exposure, it didn't matter, or shouldn't have mattered. There was no baby. There was nothing but a mistake, a mistake clothed in blood and mucus. When he really thought about it, thought it through on its merits and dissected all his mother's pathetic arguments about where he'd be today if she'd felt as he did when she was pregnant herself, he hardened like a rock, like sand turning to stone under all the pressure the planet can bring to bear. Another unwanted child in an overpopulated world? They should have given him a medal. (623)
During the 1800th century, William Paley, an English philosopher of religion and ethics, wrote the essay The Argument from Design. In The Argument from Design, Paley tries to prove the existence of a supreme being through the development of a special kind of argument known as the teleological argument. The teleological argument is argument by analogy, an argument based on the similarities between two different subjects. This essay purposefully attempts to break down Paley’s argument and does so in the following manner: firstly, Paley’s basis for the teleological argument is introduced; secondly, Paley’s argument is derived and analyzed; thirdly, the connection between Paley’s argument and the existence of a supreme being is made; and lastly, the supreme being is compared to the supreme being in Western Philosophy, God.
However, with genetic engineering this miracle of like is taken and reduced to petty “character creation” picking and choosing what someone else thinks should “make them special”. An unborn child that undergoes genetic treatments in this fashion is known as a designer baby (“Should Parents Be Permitted to Select the Gender of Their Children?”). By picking and choosing the traits of a child these designer babies bear similarities to abortion, choosing to get rid of the original child in favor of a “better” one. It is also unfair to deprive a child of their own life. By removing the element of chance and imputing their own preferences, children become treated more as an extension of their parents than as living beings with their own unique life. Parents could redirect a child’s entire life by imposing their wishes before they are even born, choosing a cookie cutter tall, athletic boy over a girl with her own individual traits, or any other choice that would redirect a child’s
The reason why the argument fails is because Paley put’s emphasis on giving things a single sole purpose. If things had multiple purposes from Paley’s point of view then it would be a lot more difficult to strike the argument down. This argument also shows the 3 point rule god. Paley has shown in this argument that god is all good, all powerful, and all knowing. The argument also gives a good argument as to how certain things must have intelligent design in order for it to be created. This is where I believe it mostly thrives. If we were to look at another argument like The Ontological Argument it states that the greatest thing that we can conceive exists in the mind, but it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind, but if nothing greater than god can be conceived in the mind then god must exist in reality. This argument can easily be torn apart if someone just believes that god is not the greatest thing that can be conceived. It also does not prove god’s existence throughout the world physically, but with the mind. Where as Paley’s argument shows god through the “creations” he has created and explaining how god is the
There are many who say that the preborn child is just a mass of tissue, a part of the woman's body. If this were the case, then no one would have any reason to o...
The cosmological argument is the existence of God, arguing that the possibility of each existing and the domain collected of such elements in this universe. The inquiry is that 'for what reason does anything exist? Why as opposed to nothing? In this paper, I will explain for what reason does everything need cause? Why is God thought to be the principal cause?
He had two different approaches to how the universe was created. Paley compared a watched the way the universe, he thought the world was like a machine it must have a des... ... middle of paper ... ... nthropic Principle’ believed that ‘Nature produces living beings but with fine tuning that is found in the universe; life could just as easily not developed into earth’ I think that this quote is trying to say that the universe has been developed by evolution and was created by God, a designer.
Because of the recent technological advances in genetic engineering, parents could have the choice not only to pick and choose their children’s physical appearances, but many personality traits and talents as well. As amazing and unreal as this seems, for some people a chance to create their baby’s characteristics is a dream come true. Parents can build almost every aspect of their child, taking away the faith most people have in God. The belief that He created man, makes designing and choosing characteristics in a child seem to belittle God. Altering a child‘s genetic makeup also takes away from the idea of a baby being a miracle from God because people would have the choice to change and design possibly any aspect of their child. Parents choo...
Have you ever wonder how the universe was created? Some people believe in the Earth creation by the Supreme Being, some believe in the scientific explanation of Big Bang explosion theory. Every civilization in the world has its own story of how things are created. Each story reflects how people see and think the world at their time. In this essay, I am going to compare two myths of how man was created – the creation tale of Mohawk Tribe and the Hebrew Bible creation story. There are a lot of similarities as well as differences between these legends. While some differences between the two tales are the development of the stories and the meaning behind the stories, the similarities between them is the concept of creationism.
William Paley develops his view of the design argument through an example of a wristwatch. He has the reader imagine themselves coming across a watch on the ground. He then asks the reader how they think the watch came to be there or came to exist in the first place. Looking at the watch, Paley says that one will notice the intricate design of the watch and notice that all the parts were put together in such a way to serve a purpose, namely, to tell time. Paley believes that from looking at the watch we will be lead to think that the watch has a clever designer. The watch displays a certain evidence of its own design.
Dr. William Lane Craig supports the idea of existence of God. He gives six major arguments, in order to defend his position. The first argument is quite fare, Craig says that God is the best reason of existence of everything. He gives the idea, that the debates between all the people, cannot reach the compromise, because the best explanation of the reasons of existence of everything is God, and nothing can be explained without taking Him into consideration. The second argument of Craig is from a cosmological point of view: he says that the existence of the universe is the best proof of the existence of God. Because, the process of the creation of the universe is so ideally harmonious, that it seems impossible to appear accidentally. The third argument is about the fine tuning of the universe. The universe is designed in such a way that people always have aim of life, and the life of people and the nature are interconnected. The fourth argument of Dr. Craig is about the morality: God is the best explanation of the existence of the morality and moral values in people’s lives. The...
...hat the universe is not the same as a human and these two vastly different ideas cannot be compared with each other, Paley argues that the purpose of a watch in terms of its function and complexity, that it had to be created by a designer. Same goes for humans. Hume proves that Paley has a weak conclusion by stating that this does not prove that there is a God, just someone of higher intelligence.
In this essay I discuss why there is proof that there is a supernatural being known as God, who has created everything we know and experience.