‘We see examples of design throughout the natural world and conclude that an intelligent designer is clearly demonstrated.’ Assess whether this argument succeeds.

The idea of an intelligent designer has split philosophers down the middle. Many different arguments are proposed by philosophers on each side as to why an Intelligent designer exists or doesn't exist. Arguments both from and for design present clearly that there is a god and we know this just by looking at objects around us. However it can be questionable that would an intelligent designer design diseases such as cancer , this rules out the possibility of an omnipotent designer.

Examples of design are practically ever, from the printer that printed this work to the waterproofing of feathers on ducks. It is clear to us that a printer has been designed as it would be near impossible that it grew from a tree or just appeared. If I was to say a flying bee is more complex than a printer it would be hard to conceive. However the science or printers has been around for many years now and they are fairly easy to explain, but the flight of bee, a natural object, an insect, has only been understood in recent years. If a printer, which at face value seems more complex than a bee has been designed surely reason permits us to assume that a bee would have also been designed.

You don't have to look very far to see evidence of design, a human eye provides a perfect example of design, it is made up of loads of tiny parts all working in perfect harmony in order for someone to see and yet no human designer has managed to come anywhere close to making an eye. Surely this proves that there must be an intelligent designer who created us and the world? A theory which would disprove this would be Darwin's theory of evolution. It states that such complex things, such as sensitive hearing, were a genetic mistake, however since it helped survival as predictors could be heard. For example the fennec fox has very large ears so it can hear its predators giving it time to escape and not get eaten meaning it can breed with other foxes and pass down the genetic mutation as it's a survival advantage. So things like the Fennec foxes ear may appear to be very complex however it is over millions of years of mutations that they have come to be so large as they have a survival advantage.

However, the evolution argument is held by many believers of an intelligent designer, surely they are contradicting themselves? No. It can be argued that the intelligent designer knew that such survival advantages would be needed so created the possibility for this to happen, god set up the universe so that life evolves by natural selection otherwise we would still all be cave worms. This is known as the fine tuning argument.

These are all arguments that can be taken from design, however you can look at it from a different perspective and start from the other end. David Hume express an argument from this point of view. He says that human inventions display purpose, binoculars allow us to see into the distance, cars allow us to get from A to B quicker and picture frames allow us to display artwork and photos clearly and decoratively. He argues that natural objects display purposes as well, the gills on the fish, the long finger on an Madagascan aye aye allow it to reach inside a tree and pick out a nest of grubs which means it can eat food that no other animals can get to. Hume is effectively saying that as in human creations with a purpose are designed then natural objects with a purpose have also been designed.

A very strong argument put against this is by Hume himself, he looks at the example of Paley's Watch that a watch in found in a field must of been designed as it is too complex to come about by chance. However Hume says we cannot compare living creatures to non living objects such as a watch, watches don't reproduce of eat so we can't infer similar causes of their creation as they don't share many similarities. Secondly Hume says we are only comparing do things we know in our Galaxy, there could be infinite galaxies so why are we being so specific by looking directly at our planet to set the laws of nature when our planet is so small and minute compared to the universe which has laws of nature. Thirdly and finally, Hume says that there could be other explanations of design, this universe is infinitely old and all variations of life are possible. However as the universe begun around 13.8 billion years ago and we also know that everything is sequenced and doesn't occur randomly and follows very strict laws of nature.
In Conclusion, there are numerous and countless examples of design throughout the natural world, many of which suggest that there was intelligent life that created them. Although arguments such as Humes that because there are different explanations of the universe design so we can't infer the designer stand very strongly against it.