Richard Swinburne's Teleological Argument

Richard Swinburne (whom we mentioned in Can Philosophy be Christian?) is one of the few contemporary theistic philosophers attempting to mount a teleological argument. Historically, there is good reason others hold their peace. Let us briefly, then, offer a few definitions, looking at them against the timeline of history so that we may explain what some of these reasons are; we then will examine the specific version of the teleological argument Swinburne proposes, showing how it avoids many of the pitfalls that tend to discredit other versions of the argument.

Teleology derives from the Greek word telos, or end, and attempts to explain the “final cause” for which a given thing is made. In other words, rather than simply observing “human beings see with their eyes,” a teleological explanation would add “because their eyes were made for seeing.” Teleology was one of four explanatory causes Aristotle set forth as together combining an adequate explanation of anything discoverable in the material universe. These four causes dominated scholastic philosophy (and what would be called the sciences) throughout the Middle Ages, until teleology became largely decommissioned from the canon beginning with seventeenth-century thinkers like Francis Bacon who proposed, most notably in The New Organon, a “new science” based on induction and experimentation. Induction can reveal that we have eyes that see; it cannot, by itself, reveal whether or not these eyes were made for seeing or if they came to see by some other means. But even if it could be shown that we see because our eyes are purposely so designed, many do not feel that this discovery would add any meaningful information to empirical data: if I can explain how the apple tree growing in my back yard unfolded from a seed buried in the soil, it matters little to my scientific explanation—except as a matter of incidental interest—whether it was intentionally planted there, if it happened to be deposited there in the feces of some bird, or if some third means was responsible for its manifestation in the present locale of my yard.

A teleological argument, however, might argue that it could make a difference how it got there. If someone planted it, presumably someone did so for the end cause of providing apples for eating. Regardless what a teleological argument might say about a particular apple tree, however, it has much to say about the entire cosmos. For while we may be able to give a naturalistic account for any one particular thing in the universe, we have not answered how universes themselves come to exist. Further, when we look at the existing universe, we see what appears to be an ordered regularity, which is quite possibly suggestive of a design of some sort. We know that in the world of humanity, high levels of order indicate that someone—or a group of someones—had a hand in designing it. For instance, if we see a beautifully manicured golf course laid out in a pleasantly symmetrical pattern with neatly trimmed shrubbery here and perfectly enclosed sections of flowers there (perhaps in clustered groups all of the same color, with several different-colored groups strategically dotting the green), we infer that someone purposely designed this plot of ground. By analogy, the teleological argument looks at the apparent order or design of nature and argues that there is too much regularity here to be best explained by chance and that the more plausible explanation is that some Cosmic Designer is behind it all.

In our own day, arguments from design are generally considered irrelevant, because it is believed that purely naturalistic explanations can be offered to account for the origins of the physical world. The addition of any kind of metaphysical explanation, like how the apple tree may have grown up in my back yard, is considered purely speculative, adding no objective knowledge beyond what is empirically tenable. The proponent of a teleological argument would disagree, particularly if I had more than one apple tree in my back yard and especially if they were lined up in apparent rows. Now granted, few would deny the presence of a person behind such things, for we have all observed creatures of our own species numerous times and know of individuals who tend orchards: we are not dealing with invisible gods, but well-known empirical phenomenon when we are dealing with apple trees planted in rows. The question is whether the analogy between humanly ordered things holds on a cosmological level: if it is a plausible explanation for how the universe began.

The world of science is not against theories that have explanatory or predicting power, for theories are the provisional glue that holds various data together in meaningful ways. A theory that does not offer an efficient means of coalescing observed data, however, is dismissed as irrelevant. Therefore, others who have tried to frame teleological arguments have lost credibility because rather than working within the framework of the overwhelming scientific consensus of Darwinian mechanisms, they proposed arguments that were at odds with this data while purporting that their arguments were scientific. By contrast, Swinburne’s argument set forth in The Existence of God is unique in that it seeks to work fully in concert with scientific consensus. What does such an argument look like, then?

After noting that teleological arguments may highlight spatial order (regularity of co-presence), temporal order (regularity of succession), or both, Swinburne presents a brief survey of the eighteenth-century versions of the argument. Picking this time period was an intentional strategy on Swinburne’s part, for not only does it allow him to transition smoothly into his own thesis, it also represents the last consensual framing of the argument by men of letters before teleology completely lost its credibility and Darwin’s theories gained preponderance. During the eighteenth century, one opposed to theism was not generally an atheist (as we conceive the term), but rather a deist whose God designed clocks, winding up the universe and walking away. Thus, even the skeptics found the teleological argument very credible; the ever-skeptical Hume, as Swinburne notes, shows a thorough knowledge of the analogy from design and we may infer was himself quite taken with it, for though in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion his skeptical character Philo argues against the teleological argument, later in the Dialogues he admits that he finds it almost impossible to refute.

In his 1802 effort Natural Theology, William Paley describes walking across a field and seeing a stone: one would not likely ask why it was there. But upon finding a watch in the same field, whether one knew what one was seeing or not, one would almost certainly conclude that it had a designer, for it is far too intricate to easily be explained otherwise. This classic form of the teleological argument is representative of many such versions of the argument in the eighteenth century. In fact, Swinburne himself finds the machine-like analogy plausible, with one qualification. Darwin’s theories seriously undermined the belief that complex plants and animals are only generated from equal or greater complexity; an evolutionary model shows just the opposite. But is this concession fatal to the teleological argument, as many have claimed? Not according to Swinburne. We have seen that men make machine-making machines and that is precisely what nature has shown herself to be, at least at times throughout her history. In fact, making that single allowance appears to leave much of Paley’s argument intact.

The machine-like animals and plants Paley noticed were generated through a natural, machine-producing process guided by certain physical laws. These include (a) the chemical laws that dictate in what ways inorganic chemicals may coalese in order that life may result and (b) the laws of natural selection that favor large numbers of hardy offspring with a great capacity to adapt to different climates and other aspects of their environment. Nevertheless, we do not continue to see widespread evidence of this machine-making process, suggesting to Swinburne that nature does not often act in this fashion. As a whole, however, the fact that the industrial aspects of nature are not common suggests that this particular parallel between the machines humanity manufactures and those produced by nature is a fairly weak one. Analogies, in other words, are stronger when they compare things more like one another, weaker when comparing things less alike.

Swinburne seeks a stronger version of the teleological argument which tends to bypass the co-present (spatial) regularities in favor of the successive (temporal) regularities that seem apparent in the universe. What strikes Swinburne here is that the entire world is governed by comparatively simple laws that can be mapped out by formulae understandable to humanity in order to make accurate predictions and gain greater understanding of their world. One can pick up texts relating to physics, chemistry, or biology, for example, and learn a great deal about how the world works to a degree that has strong predicting power. It would not have this ability to forecast behavior in the future, however, if there was not this successive uniformity about the universe.

Of course, suggesting that these formulae and laws are actually found in nature is sometimes challenged on the basis that humanity has itself so categorized and classified the natural realm. Perhaps these apparent regularities are simply human constructs, patterns we have “noticed,” our brains pre-programmed by the gradual machine-making process that spawned us. Perhaps. However, we think persons quite sensible who believe that gravity will continue on unabated, working just as well a hundred years from now (if the world still exists) as it does just this second, that oaken boards will still be as inflexibly strong as ever, that water will still boil at two-hundred-twelve degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, that days will still bear witness to the apparent rising and setting of the sun, and that the moon will continue to pull the tides. The teleogical argument from successive (temporal) regularity, then, suggests that not only is there a recognizable order in the world, but that this order is a constant, having been operative long before there were creatures to observe it, and remaining constant even long after they might perish. As such, this order is not an invention of human ingenuity or skill: perhaps slightly different formulae would capture the same phenomenon equally well, but the observation of laws and the words and symbols used to describe them are dictated by the order in nature to which they give testament, not the other way around. Different languages may well have different names for the sky and the earth, but the sky and earth must first exist for these different names to bear them symbolic reference.

Swinburne now turns his attention to a second objection: “Of course there is order in the world: if there were not order, humanity would not exist to discover it!” One way to answer this objection is to suggest that human beings could very well have been highly ordered and yet much of the world around them remain in disorder: there is nothing logically preposterous about this possibility. But assuming that all is indeed perfectly ordered both within and without: does this mean that an explanation of order is still not warranted? Swinburne thinks not and offers us a fanciful parable to demonstrate. He has us imagine a deranged kidnapper who plays an extreme game with his victim. The villain has a machine that shuffles ten packs of cards; it then simultaneously draws a single card from each deck. If all ten cards from each of the ten packs comes up an ace of hearts, the victim lives; if not, an instantaneous explosion will detonate, killing the victim before she has had a chance to see the cards. Amazingly, all ten cards come up an ace of hearts to the untold relief of the victim and she thinks there must be some explanation: perhaps the machine was rigged. The kidnapper, however, is scornful: “Of course the machine drew aces of hearts: had it drawn any other combination, you would have been blown to smithereens and would not be alive to have known it.” Swinburne’s point is that while we may only discover order because order is there, it makes it no less remarkable. There are, then, two ways to explain this apparent order: by a scientific explanation which is indifferent to whether the machine has been rigged or not, its only interest in the physical operations of the gears and levers, versus that of teleology which would be interested in the machine-maker, and, as much as possible, any inquiry into his motives for manufacturing such a device.

Swinburne now proposes the set-up for perhaps the most powerful part of his argument, namely that of “powers and liabilities.” Power and liability may be seen as something like Leibniz’s conception of the monads (basic units of matter) in The Monadology in which the force (power) supplied by one monad takes precedence to the same degree that the force of the second monad is diminished (liability). The total force between Leibniz’s monads remains constant, the one’s increase proportionate to the other’s decrease so that the total amount is preserved. We could argue (though Swinburne does not) that it is likewise within keeping of the conservation of mass and energy in the laws of thermodynamics that all units in nature have basic powers (abilities to affect other objects) and liabilities (their ability to likewise be affected, which includes the necessity of their unleashing their powers under certain conditions, such as gunpowder necessarily exploding when brought into contact and ignited with flame: its contact with the flame triggers its liability that in turn unleashes its power). On a most basic level—namely that governed by the (inverse square) law of gravitational attraction—all material objects share a common sense of power and liability proportionate to their mass. Thus, whatever specific powers and liabilities a given object of one gram may possess, it at least (according to the law of gravitational force) contains a powers-and-liabilities force of ym¹/r² dynes, where y is the gravitational constant, m is mass, and r distance, measured from the object’s center of gravity. (Incidentally, its interaction with another object—their joint power and liability in terms of gravitational force—may be represented as ym¹m²/r², where m¹ is the mass of the first object, m² the mass of the second.)

Even more interesting, however, are the repercussions of this observation. For what makes gravitational force operable except mass? And what is mass except that which is constituted of fundamental particles, believed at present to be protons, neutrons, and electrons, or perhaps yet more fundamental particles such as quarks and antiquarks, the latter two elements (elaborating beyond Swinburne) electrical particles with one-third or two-thirds the charge of an electron. Baryons are believed to be made of three quarks and mesons thought to comprise a quark and antiquark pair. Quarks come in six types (called flavors), and each is paired with an antiquark; they are governed by one of three properties (called colors) that indicate their role in interactions. While Swinburne does not elaborate on these particles as explicitly as we have here, his point remains, for he speaks of the properties of electrons, positrons, and protons (obviously believed to be composed of particles themselves comprised of quarks and antiquarks) and notes their great regularity: for the vast array of material manifestations we find in nature, they are ultimately reducible to a compatibly minuscule number of basic “building blocks.” Specifically, Swinburne notes that all electrons have a spin of ½ (a lepton, itself a type of fermion), an elementary charge of -1 (electrons and protons form their own +/- unit of measurement by which other units of energy are measured, just as inches form a unit of measurement by which feet and yards may be measured), and a mass of ½ MeV/c², where MeV is a million electron volts and c is the speed of light in a vacuum, presumably from the Latin celeritas (“speed”). Positrons are identical, except that they have an elementary charge of +1; protons are identical to positrons, except that their mass is much greater: 938 MeV/c². These figures, though seemingly complex to the uninitiated, serve mainly to indicate for Swinburne that all the many forms we find in nature are reducible to a handful of elementary particles that are themselves subject to predictable physical laws.

What Swinburne is attempting to drive home, then, is the realization that his version of the teleological argument takes note of these constants throughout the totality of time and space, however many galaxies or light-years distant: for all the untold centuries in which the earth was void or in a process of generation by degrees, these constants have held and will (it is projected) continue to hold. These things can be explained meaningfully from a scientific account to a point, but each general law presupposes another yet more general law until eventually we run out of laws and are either forced to terminate our inquiries there or posit the existence of something—in this case a someone—who set it all into motion. Swinburne believes that the force of explanation sides most favorably with the latter hypothesis, though he first must explain why Hume’s skeptical character Philo, arguing as much for the sake of arguing as for any other reason, suggests to Cleanthes in the Dialogues that his single God could well be many gods. After all, since we are forming an argument by analogy—men create ordered things, the universe appears to be ordered, therefore we infer a Master Orderer—why do we not posit the existence of many gods. For one man cannot execute nearly as impressive feats of skill, strength, and engineering as can many men working together. Swinburne argues that the positing of a single God is not only cleaner, aligning itself with the supposition of Ockham’s razor (which incidentally Hume also notes, if not in so many words), but better fits the data. For if there were many gods, one might expect different laws operating in different degrees in different parts of the universe, like the architectural signatures builders leave in the very homes they strew across the city, some built to plumb, some a bit off center, and all varied, showing the marks of the individual carpenter and crew. Newtonian physics would never seem to govern and contain such a brotherhood of celestial craftsmen, unless of course (though Swinburne does not explicitly explore such a notion in the chapter under our current consideration) their own existences were derivative, in which case they would require an explanation of some sort: a something to which or a someone to whom they were alike answerable. But what we appear to find instead is a single pattern, repeated throughout all of time and space, however many billions of years or light-years distant: a smattering of elementary particles governed by predictable laws comprising all the vast complexity of objects.

A little further along in his chapter on the teleological argument, Swinburne also deals with the other skeptical aside uttered by Hume’s character Philo that if we are to argue by analogy: we might expect God to have a body. According to the teleological argument, we posit the existence of God because the world has apparently striking examples of ordered regularity and the agents on earth best known for the capability of producing such order are human creatures. Yet arguments by analogy are surely limited (for if they were not and were in every way similar, they would simply be the thing itself and would prove nothing) and consideration must be taken to align the parts that are like with the parts that are like and to recognize those parts that are not. When Hume’s character Philo wonders why the teleological argument should not from analogy reveal a corporeal God, Swinburne suggests that an agent can only be said to have a body if there is a specific region under his or her direct control, and, by the use of that region, controls all other things (including other bodies). If, however, there is an agent that performs a “basic action” such that all other things (including other bodies) are not controlled via the medium of any such region, then that agent cannot be said to have a body. God is believed to be such an agent effecting “basic actions” such that their consequence is immediate, not mediated by a body.

In other terms, men, limited by bodies, can only affect so much of the world at a given time (even, we might add, when taking into consideration the extension afforded them by their instruments, such as buttons, pulleys, levers, and cranes—nuclear bombs still do not have the magnitude purported to God). God, however, if He be the creator and sustainer claimed, would be able to effect universal (in the sense of universe-wide) changes that could not be explained corporeally, for such limitation would appear to render the hypothesis null or at least significantly weaken it. The analogy from teleology, then, is alike in that it argues that high levels of order are ever and always the result of intelligence and dissimilar in that the scope and magnitude of this order is vastly extended when we posit the creation of worlds such that the agent doing this creating could not, with any plausibility, be said to be embodied.

Having met these objections, Swinburne now posits his reasons why a scientific explanation ought not to be where our knowledge of the world terminates, at least not in terms of the collective information pool, however unnecessary further explication might be for the more narrowly focused pursuits of biology, chemistry, physics, or the like: an intricate knowledge of engines is not a requirement for the successful navigation of a motor vehicle, though most of us are nonetheless grateful such knowledge exists. Nevertheless, as Swinburne surveys the various classical arguments from successive (temporal) regularities, he recognizes that they do not make good deductive arguments. Deductive proofs work best when there is hard data from which to distill or deduce even harder data and an argument by analogy is generally not of this sort. Swinburne also distinguishes between types of inductive arguments, suggesting that there are P-inductive and C-inductive arguments: in the former of which the premises or data render the conclusion likely and in the latter of which the premises contribute to the overall probability of the conclusion, but do not directly, of themselves alone, make it probable. Swinburne believes that the teleological argument is of this latter, C-inductive kind. So then, we will briefly sketch in the ways in which he argues that it can be shown to be C-inductive and then offer a few final thoughts before closing.

What would allow the apparent regularity we find in the universe to be admitted as legitimate evidence of the C-inductive sort for our teleological argument? Primarily, answers Swinburne, C-induction would be valid if the orderliness we see in the universe makes it more probable that there is a God rather than less. Toward this end, he employs Bayes’ theorem; for our purposes at present, however, we do not need to resort to the formal application of probability theorems—we do not have enough space to treat the topic (interested readers may review his chapter directly). We need merely note Swinburne’s arguments in words while remembering that his argument is supported by a widely accepted method of calculating statistical probabilities.

When we look around us, we can clearly see that there is a high level of complexity: a great variety of organisms and objects, yet, as Swinburne has already suggested, these are comprised of a comparatively few fundamental forms that obey universal laws, laws it is probable to believe existed before the emergence of plant and animal life forms and that will continue to exist long into the future, regardless what may happen. If we stop with the scientific explanations of the particulars, there seems to be little to unify why there is this underlying foundation, nothing to suggest any necessary connection. Why should there be material bodies at all? If we can answer that, why should they not be merely passive rather than having powers and liabilities? Why are they uniformly comprised—for untold billions of years and distances of many, many light-years—of a handful of elemental particles? If our explanation stops with the observation of these apparent regularities, then coincidence or chance is about all that can be posited about them: we can only say that they happened this way, we know not how or why. If, however, there is a God with the properties theism affords him by definition—orderliness, purity, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnibenevolence—we would then have a unifying hypothesis that would reach further in our explanation of this order than if we have no such explanation. That does not prove that this God exists. It does suggest, however, that the teleological argument is not without merit and seems to accommodate the data of the material sciences in a meaningful way. The teleological argument by itself is still quite weak: by the laws of probability, it is only a C-inductive argument. However, throughout the rest of Swinburne’s book, he presents other arguments that begin to increase these odds, concluding that while we may never be able to demonstrate the absolute logical necessity of God, we can present some compelling evidence that makes the intentional creation and sustenance of the world a tenable hypothesis. There is no reason why we must deny the data from the various scientific disciplines: acknowledging all of their central tenets, we can construct plausible arguments for the existence of God.

The strength of Swinburne’s analysis is precisely the fact that he is not speaking as the theologian arguing from a canonical book but rather is speaking as a distinguished professor of philosophy from Oxford university, working well within the boundaries of his own discipline, which acknowledges the data of all the sciences, making it a relevant field of inquiry. The arguments we have glossed above do not necessarily sound that much different than those framed by various faith communities until we take into consideration that in the interest of space, we have left out a great deal of the statistical methods Swinburne has used to generate his hypothesis and said nothing whatsoever of his defense of why God, by definition, would likely be motivated in the creation of an orderly, or at least partially ordered, universe. Some of these points are particularly strong, but we simply do not have the space to treat the topic here.

Archive note: See also Swinburne on the discussion forum regarding this newsletter.

Swinburne does not claim the teleological hypothesis is itself any stronger than the laws of statistical probability allow. But he does show that based on the probability it does reveal, employing the standard and widely accepted standards of the sciences, the teleological argument should not be automatically dismissed as irrelevant, particularly when coupled with other forms of rational argument and apologetic (an argument Alvin Plantinga has eloquently framed as well). We may never know the final answer about the universe and its origins, but a thoughtful person will consider, as much as is possible, all the available data and the various means of organizing it, carefully weighing what he or she considers to be tenable and what is not. To reject a hypothesis out of turn does not display the kind of open-ended inquiry someone intent on the pursuit of knowledge does well to display, particularly when that hypothesis is shown to be more credible than has commonly been believed. We may ultimately reject it and other hypotheses that posit some kind of metaphysical explanation. But let us at least consider them seriously, willing to offer the reasons why we feel these hypotheses are inadequate, and, if possible, suggest better and more efficient ways of explaining the data.

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Richard Swinburne’s Teleological Argument