Paley's Teleological Argument

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JNance philo4 essay paper TOPIC: Faith and Reason. Does William Paley’s Teleological argument give conclusive grounds for the existence of God? This argument otherwise known as Argument from Design makes an attempt to attribute the origin of the universe to a purposeful designer whom the proponent thinks is God. Despite the apparent validity of his reasoning, does Paley’s teleological argument lend us adequate grounds to accept that God exists? The crux of this paper is in two phases, at the first moment the author of this paper thinks like William Paley and states the adequacy of the teleological argument as evidential prove to God’s existence, and in a second phase, a counterargument drawn from the thought of D. Hume ( though he died before Paley’s…show more content…
Analogy is the comparism of two things based on their similarities, by so doing a conclusion is drawn concerning the objects in question. Emphasis is laid on the similarities or likeness of objects under such scrutiny. In this respect David Hume’s argued against Paley’s analogy. (As earlier said though Hume died before Paley’s work was published, it is true that Paley’s arguments are directly addressed by him proving that they were already in circulation among the intelligentsia before publication) Hume argued against it by examining the nature of the Analogy involved. According to Hume, the nature of the two things compared by Paley are not similar making such comaprism vain. The Universe he claimed cannot be acceptably compared to a created work of human hands like the watch.Such comparism would be void of meaning. Further, our knowledge of the universe is so limited compared to to our knowledge of the watch or any created thing made by human hands. For such analogy to be plausible, we need have knowledge of the objects in comparism but that is not the case with the watch and the universe, therefore Paley’s Design analogy is invalid and a product of
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