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THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT JOSEPH MIXIE Rhode Island College Providence, Rhode Island I. Introduction M ANY PHILOSOPHERS think that any argument for the existence of God is " mere metaphysical speculation ." Often these philosophers use the criteria of scientific empiricism as the standard for an "acceptable" scientific theory, regardless of the subject matter. While acknowledging Kuhn's work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the insights it gives us regarding how the nature of scientific theories and paradigms change, it is still appropriate to ask whether any argument for the existence of God can be formulated in such a way so as to fulfill the currently acceptable criteria of scientific empiricism. I shall explore the possibility of formulating the argument from design as an empirical scientific theory. There are currently several schools of thought regarding the criteria of scientific empiricism.1 Rudolf Carnap argued in Philosophical Foundations of Physics that scientific empiricism should proceed according to verificationist methodology.2 Imre Lakatos in his work entitled Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge discusses several schools of scientific methodology including conventionalism , sophisticated methodological falsificationism, and 1 For an anthology on this subject see the essays included in Janet A. Kourany, Scientific Knowledge, Part 3, "The Validation of Scientific Knowledge ," p. 112-227. 2 Rudolf Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics (New York: Basic Books, 1966), chapter 2. 635 636 JOSEPH MIXIE justificationism.3 (Sect. 1, 2, and 3 of "Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programs "). One major school of thought regarding the criteria of scientific empiricism is that of falsificationism. Karl Popper was one of the leading exponents of falsificationism and both presented and defended that position in his works entitled Science: Coniectures and Refutation and The Logic of Scien:tific Discovery.4 For the purposes of this paper, I will adopt Popper's criteria of falsification . II. Revised Teleological Argument I shall consider a form of the argument from design which infers the existence of God from our experience of instances of natural order. I shall discuss the notion of natural order in greater detail later in this paper. I shall not count as instances of natural order those patterns which appear randomly in nature from time to time. Consider the following formulation of the argument from design in modus ponens argument form: (1) If there are instances of natural order (N0), then there is intelligent design of these instances of natural order (D). (2) There are instances of natural order (NO). (3) Therefore, there is intelligent design of these instances of natural order (D). The acceptance of the truth of the conclusion that there is intelligent design depends upon the strength of the evidence for the antecedent-consequent relation in premise ( 1) between natural order (N0) and the existence of a designer (D). The evidence for the truth of the antecedent, required for premise (2), is provided in Section IV and I shall argue in Section VI for the acceptance of the truth of the antecedent-consequent relation . s Imre Lakatos, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), sections I, 2, and 3 of "Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programs." 4 Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Basic Books, 1962) and The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959). THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 637 III. The Scientific Criterion1 Recall Popper's method of empirical falsification. According to Popper, for a claim to qualify as empirical, a minimal requirement is that there be some evidence from experience which would indicate the claim to be false. Popper writes in The Logic of Scientific Discovery: But I shall admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criteria of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an...

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