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Question a - What Are the Main Strengths and Weaknesses of the Teleological Argument, for the Existence of God?

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Philosophy essay – the teleological argument

Question A - What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the teleological argument, for the existence of god?

The teleological argument is a posteriori, this means that it is able to support its argument based of the empirical evidence that we can see around us. It states that we can easily observe that there is order and complexity in the universe around us, such as the changing of seasons or the human eye, therefore as things that have order and complexity have designers such as a watch or a computer the world must too have a designer as it is infinitely more complex than many human designs that have designers. This means that the universe must too have a designer (God), yet there are many strengths and weaknesses to this argument.

On the one hand this could be perceived as a strong argument for the existence of god as it is backed up by inductive reasoning, meaning that the whole argument is started by something that we can observe, this means that it is difficult to deny that there is order and complexity within our universe. This argument has been backed up by sir Thomas Aquinas in his book ‘summa theologica’ when he talks about qua purpose and qua regularity. Qua purpose can prove the existence of god by looking at things within nature and realizing that everything has a purpose, for example there are species of bird that’s life solely depends on the fruit from a single species of tree, yet the tree depends on the bird so that it can spread its seed and continue the survival of that tree. Qua reality is when you look at the world around you and you are able to see the regularity, such as most ants look the same, most penguins look the same and pretty much all animals within the same species look the same. This suggests that there is a designer as these similarities within species looks as though a

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