Hume, Mill, Darwin, and Dawkins provide criticisms of the teleological argument for God's existence. [1] Hume argues that the world's imperfections and ability to arise naturally undermine the design argument. [2] Mill believes natural evils like animal suffering mean God cannot be both all-powerful and good. [3] Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection offers a non-supernatural explanation for biological complexity and adaptation. [4] Dawkins emphasizes how genetic mutations and natural selection, not design, explain life's diversity.

1. ‘A’ Level Philosophy and Ethics
Notes
Criticisms of
The Teleological Argument
The Teleological Argument (Argument from Design)
1. David Hume (1711 - 1776)
In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume noted the
Argument by Design. He argued:-
§ The possibility that the Universe was designed does not necessarily
mean that God designed it. The world is imperfect and finite. It is
full of suffering and misery (remember he was writing in the
Eighteenth Century!). It hardly suggests a good, all-perfect God!
§ There is no evidence that the universe needs a designer - it may
come into existence naturally.
§ The Universe may have a predisposition to order. It may be in its
nature to be the way it is, just as a vegetable develops naturally (as
opposed to some machine that needs a builder).
§ We have no evidence to suggest that the Universe is not just the
result of pure chance.
Patrick Clarke points out that Hume's attempt to force us to consider
the universe from within, and locate its cause within itself (see
Cosmological Argument notes), may simply refocus attention on the
ultimate cause of the universe.
Hume sets out two versions of the Design argument.
His First Argument goes as follows:
§ Seeing evidence for design in the world suggests an intelligent
designer.
§ Suggesting that the design in the world is “great” suggests a
“great” designer.
§ There is “great” design in the world.
§ There must therefore be a great designer.
This would seem reasonable – think of any great design, and it seems
reasonable to argue for a designer!
In a recent TV Poll, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was voted one
of the greatest Britons ever. He is responsible for some of the
greatest feats of engineering in the UK. To look at his Clifton
Suspension Bridge, or the Great Western Railway, or the Tamar
Bridge, is to see evidence of genius.
The cause of great design is a great designer. Hume sees this as a
perfectly reasonable conclusion, but he goes on to note that it would
mean an anthropomorphic view of God – we are back with the “God
the Builder” view of God!
In a word, Cleanthes, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to
assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something
like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single
circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the
utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is

2. Criticisms of The Teleological Argument
very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only
the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it,
ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent,
inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the
production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever
since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active
force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, Demea, at
these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same
kind, are Cleanthes's suppositions, not mine. From the moment the
attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I
cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is,
in any respect, preferable to none at all.
Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, pt 5
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
The imperfection of the world, with its earthquakes and volcanoes,
diseases and famine, suggests an inadequate or vindictive God. If one
of Brunel’s bridges collapsed, we would argue that he was a flawed
designer.
It would also seem reasonable to argue that if the world shows
evidence of design, it shows evidence of not one but an entire army of
Designer Gods!
Hume concludes:
Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated
and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and
fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only
beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How
insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious
to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature,
impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap,
without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!
Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, pt 5
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
Hume’s Second Argument argues that the world came about through
chance.
§ The World is ordered
§ It could be ordered and organised because someone meant it to be,
or it could be pure chance.
§ It is equally possible that either option is true.
Science notes that random events can occur, but that order tends to
impose itself eventually. Hume argues for an early form of the theory
of Natural Selection. Hume notes that animals can adapt to respond
to their surroundings – the variety of life on earth may be a result of
these adaptations, rather than of intelligent design.
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3. Criticisms of The Teleological Argument
Hume argues that the perception of design and regularity in the world
simply argues for the existence of design and purpose in the universe. It
does not argue for an intelligent designer God to be in charge of the
Universe.
2. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Mill is best known for his development of Utilitarianism. In one of his
Three Essays on Religion, Mill laid out his objections to the idea that
there is an intelligent designing power behind a perceived order in the
Universe.
Consider:
This is a scene from Wildlife on One (a BBC Wildlife Programme)
A Warthog gives birth to a litter of piglets. She protects them in a
small hollow beneath a log.
§ A pride of lions is in the area. A lioness gets the scent of the
warthog, and begins to circle.
§ The warthog puts up a stout defence.
§ Eventually, the lioness uses her claws and teeth to hack through
the Warthog’s body to get to the piglets.
§ The lioness doesn’t seem terribly bothered. However, the
audience is sobbing with memories of Puumba and Nuala fresh
on their mind.
The poet Alfred Tennyson wrote:
Man…
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law –
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed
In Memoriam A.A.H.
Mill thought that the Universe is not a pleasant place. He saw instances
of events which, if carried out by a Human, would be punished with the
full force of the law.
'Nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing
to one another are nature's everyday performances. “Even the love of
'order' which is thought to be a following of the ways of nature is in
fact a contradiction of them. All which people are accustomed to
deprecate as 'disorder' and its consequences is precisely a
counterpart of nature's ways. Anarchy and the reign of Terror are
overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death by a hurricane and a
pestilence...”
http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/poltheory/mill/three/intro.html
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4. Criticisms of The Teleological Argument
He believed that the existence of so much suffering in the world could
mean one of two things:
§ Either God is not Good
Or
§ God is limited in some way (i.e. God is not omnipotent)
Mill does not argue against the existence of God, but rather that God is
not the unlimited omnipotent being that traditional Christianity has
taught.
3. Charles Darwin
These are arguments for Design qua Purpose, appearing to argue
that the universe works to some pre-ordained purpose. Hume
compares the universe to a machine, and then prefers to compare it
with a vegetable. This suggestion that the Universe's apparent purpose
is rather more internal and organic than external and mechanical is
before its time - Darwin's Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection is
a possible explanation for the apparent design in the world.
Remember the comparison between the camera and the eye. Darwin's
theory of natural selection would explain that the eye is the result of
countless generations of genetic development and mutation. Only those
members of the species that displayed characteristics which enabled them
to survive went on to breed. The less well suited simply die off!
Darwin offers a mechanical explanation for the perceived design -
previously this was thought of as the role of God. Recent developments
in Quantum Mechanics suggest that the design in the universe can be
explained in terms of Einsteinian Physics. The role of God appears to
have been explained away!
4. Richard Dawkins
In The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins looks at the impact of recent
genetic research on the view of the Universe.
Genetic mutation takes place when damage occurs to genetic information
stored in DNA molecules. Where this mutation promotes the chances of
survival, the carrier is able to pass on the mutation to its offspring. Where
the mutation is not beneficial, the carrier has less chance to pass it on.
These changes are entirely random.
Dawkins illustrates the way that these random changes lead to an
amazing diversity in nature. He reflects a growing interest in the way
that "open" complex systems appear to self-arrange.
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