Paley's Teleological Argument

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In this paper I will argue that William Paley successfully proves the existence of God, or some kind of intelligent designer of the natural world that we call God, is very probable with the teleological argument. The debate over the existence of God involves many arguments and counter arguments. These arguments include the cosmological, ontological, and teleological argument for the existence of God. The main argument against the existence of God is the theistic problem of evil. I will consider, but ultimately reject David Hume's argument of the theistic problem of evil and his other objections regarding William Paley’s teleological argument. The teleological argument is also referred to the argument of design, because it is used in effort …show more content…
Hume’s first arguments is that Paley’s analogy between an orderly universe and something orderly like a watch is weak, he says it is not obvious that nature is very orderly as the watch is. He uses the examples of colliding astronomical bodies, exploding stars, and deformed organisms. Clearly it doesn't seem that things such as exploding stars, colliding astronomical bodies, and deformed organisms are orderly at …show more content…
The main focus of this objection is that God must be evil or incompetent, and you can assume so by looking at what he has created. This is most commonly know as the problem of evil and is the strongest argument used against the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. To refute this I will use the free will defense. Clearly an omnibenevolent being would want the best of all possible worlds for humans. In order to create the best of all possible worlds God has granted humans free will, as opposed to controlling everyone but making sure that they are always happy. It seems clear that humans would rather be able to make decisions and feel different emotions instead of living like robots even though they would be happy all the time. Therefore evil exists because God has given humans free will, and unfortunately some people misuse it in order to do terrible things. Therefore it is possible for there to be a God who is omnipotent and
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