Teleological Argument

This argument is another defense for the existence of God. It says that if something shows design, it must have been designed by someone.

Imagine a person walking through a forest and finds a watch lying on the ground. It shows a significant amount of order in how it works, therefore it displays a high degree of design. The only conclusion to this observation is that it was designed by someone.

Charles Darwin critiqued this by using an example of sand deposits on the beach. When one examines the sand deep into the earth, a person will find different levels of dirt. This shows specific order between each sand...yet that doesn't mean it was designed. Only that over hundreds of years of waves coming through, certain sands were deposited in such a way that it merely "showed" order, not "demanding" that it was designed.

The flaw I believe that Darwin missed is that although he may have described how sands "naturally" built themselves into a specific order, this doesn't negate the fact of where the sand came from. Certain natural events occur in such a way that displays order, but naturally occurring "order" doesn't negate the "design" of those natural elements (such as "sand" itself). So in another sense, everything was started by something prior to it all the way to something that never had a beginning (or in other words, God). This immediately leads into the "Cosmological Argument" On to the next post!