Underdetermination in the teleological argument

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teleological argument for the existence of God is an a posteriori argument which is based on the premise that the world has within it intelligent purpose and order and this leads to the conclusion that there must be a supreme designer. Although there are variations, the basic argument goes something like this: 1.X is too complex to have occurred randomly or naturally.2.Therefore, X must have been created by an intelligent being, Y.3.God is that intelligent being.4.Therefore, God exists.
One form of the argument is based on the machine like qualities within the world that suggest that there was some ultimate designer who organized all the complex parts, just as man would a machine. The second form is based upon the complexity of the world and the natural laws which govern it. William Paley puts forth the teleological argument in his Natural Theology where he likens the world to a watch. If one were walking along and randomly found a watch lying on the ground one would ...

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odds - for example, the planet’s proximity to the Sun would prove deadly if altered in either direction even fractionally. If the planet was closer to the sun, it would be too hot for life to flourish, while a greater distance between the Earth and the sun would leave the planet too cold to support life. Through several citation and examples, they try to show that those accounts which suggest that universe came into existence from nothing and merely by chance are highly improbable. In the first part of their essay, “Cosmology,” they indicate that the existence of the universe in its current form depend upon a few physical constants such as Planck’s constant, and hence, the chance of ...

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