Explain Hume’s criticisms of the teleological argument. (25)

St. Thomas Aquinas’s teleological argument seeks to prove, a posteriori, the existence of an intelligent God by arguing that the world is full of inanimate, non-intelligent natural bodies which function in order, in an intelligent way. He said that for inanimate bodies to do this, they require an intelligent being to bring this action about. This being is God.
The 18th-century philosopher David Hume wrote a book named Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in which he criticised Aquinas’s teleological argument, and several other teleological arguments.
Firstly, Hume says that the apparent intelligent functioning of many unintelligent bodies – e.g., the complex systems by which plants take up minerals from the soil to cause water uptake into their roots – can be explained by the ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest, by which the organisms that happen by chance mutations to be most well-adapted to their environments are the ones which survive to reproduce, making their functions appear to be ordered specifically for their environments and therefore seeming designed. Therefore, apparent design may well not be in fact design. Hume uses this idea to criticise the major premise of Aquinas’s teleological argument.
Hume also asserts that the world does not necessarily point to an intelligent designer. He uses the apparent cruelty often observed in nature – said to be “red in tooth and claw” – to argue that even if the universe had been designed, it was designed with flaws. For example, cats play with their prey for some time before they kill and eat it. The prey is caused to suffer unnecessarily by this – i.e., the suffering does not contribute to the cat’s survival. This, Hume posits, is one of many instances of flaws in the world. If the world was designed, the designer may not possess the intellectual ability or the inclination to create a flawless world. As the god whose existence Aquinas tries to prove with the teleological argument is the Judaeo-Christian God – who is meant to be omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient – could not have created a flawed world, Hume says that the teleological argument cannot prove this god’s existence.
Another teleological argument that Hume criticised is known as design qua purpose – an example of this particular argument, used by William Paley twenty years later, is the watch analogy (although Cicero formed a very similar argument in Ancient Greece, regarding a sundial). Paley posits that if one were to find a watch on a heathland, one would not assume that it had come into existence by chance – observing it, one would come to the conclusion that, because of its multiple complex parts which all work together to perform the purpose of telling the time, it had been designed for this purpose. He compares the watch to the universe which we live in, saying that God has also designed the complex world for a purpose.
Hume criticises this particular teleological argument in several ways. Firstly, he says that it is not really feasible to compare the universe to a machine; we do not have enough understanding of the way the universe works to make this comparison. Secondly, he says that we simply cannot draw conclusions about the design of the universe from observing it, as we have no experience of designing universes ourselves – for instance, a goldfish in a tank cannot draw conclusions about the design of the tank without having experience of tank-making itself.
Thirdly, he states that machines are often made by many people, so to argue from the watch analogy that there is only one God is simply jumping to conclusions – perhaps the universe is the product of many lesser gods working together. Fourthly, he says that the universe may be much more like a vegetable than a machine, and may have grown of its own accord rather than having been created by anything.
Hume also says in general that teleological arguments attempt to argue for the existence of a supreme deity God, who is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient. However, he believes that this is simply not possible to prove with a teleological argument. For him, “like effects imply like causes” – this means that as we, and the universe, are the “effect” of God’s creation, he must be a “like cause” to us and the universe. As we observe flaws in ourselves, God must simply be a superhuman designer, with the same flaws and imperfections. Therefore, even if there were a designer, it would not be the God of Judaeo-Christian tradition, so the teleological argument is not successful in proving the existence of this God.