Design Arguments for the Existence of God
“Design Arguments for the Existence of God,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (James Fieser, ed.); Internet
20 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2015
Date Written: July 9, 2015
Abstract
Design arguments are empirical arguments for God’s existence. These arguments typically, though not always, proceed by identifying various empirical features of the world that constitute evidence of intelligent design and inferring God’s existence as the best explanation for these features. This article explains and evaluates a number of classic and contemporary versions of the argument: (1) Aquinas’s “fifth way’; (2) the argument from simple analogy; (3) Paley’s watchmaker argument; (4) the argument from guided evolution; (5) the argument from irreducible biochemical complexity; (6) the argument from biological information; and (7) the fine-tuning argument.
Keywords: design argument, arguments for God's existence, teleological argument, fine-tuning argument, intelligent design argument
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