Argument from Design for the Existence of God

It simply falls apart upon close examination

Many Christians like to use the argument from design to claim that there must be a supernatural and sentient Designer or Creator who designed the universe with specific purposes in mind. One important purpose is to make a suitable dwelling place for human beings.

I think the best conclusion is that the universe exists for us and we are the center of it (ontologically not physically). ✒️Michael Puleo, Feb 12, 2023

The argument from design is not new. It can be traced back to Thomas Aquinas, a 13th-century Catholic scholar. This argument is not foreign to the Bible either. A few verses such as Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1:19–21 can be read as precursors to this argument.

But does this argument hold water?

In the rest of this article, I shall list a few criticisms to show that this argument is inadequate at best. It certainly fails to prove the necessity of a Designer.

1. Designed for what exactly?

The most common answer to this question is human beings. Christians claim that the universe is designed for human beings to live and flourish. Genesis 1 portrays the creation of humans as the climax of the creation story.

But if that were true, why would God create trillions and trillions of other planets without any life forms on them? It seems excessive and unnecessary.

To get my point across, let me use an analogy. Suppose there is a factory that produces barrels, tens of thousands of them every day. Upon examination, all of those barrels are empty. After fifty years, one day, one barrel that gets pushed out of the factory is found to be filled with crude oil. This is the only barrel produced in this factory that is not empty. Now, what would you say is the purpose of this factory? To produce empty barrels or to produce barrels filled with crude oil?

It does not take a college graduate to figure out that the purpose of the factory is to produce empty barrels. The one filled with oil may just be an anomaly that indicates something went wrong in the production line.

In the same way, if one must say that the universe has a designer, it makes more sense to say that the production of lifeless planets or hot and burning stars (or even black holes, which are more numerous than planets with life forms as far as we know) is the purpose of that design, than to say that human beings, who only came into existence about 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang and inhabit only one out of 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy (of which there are about 100-200 billion in the universe), is the reason for the creation of the universe.

But is that the kind of Designer that Christians have in mind? Probably not.

Some Christians argue that the reason for the creation of the vast universe is so that human beings can observe and be in awe of the power of the Creator (Do you see the pattern here? Apparently, it’s all about us human beings.) But if that were the case, wouldn’t it be strange that God did not endow humans with the ability to find out how big the universe is, until very recently? For the longest part of human history, our ancestors thought that the twinkling stars were pretty small. Even Jesus did not bother to correct their misunderstanding, describing stars as something that can fall (e.g. Matthew 24:29).

2. The imperfect designer

Even if we leave aside the vastness of the universe for a second, and just focus on the Earth, it is obvious that the environment on the Earth is not especially friendly to human survival. We can’t live in the water, even though water covers 70% of the surface of the Earth (but many animals and plants can). Even on land, some parts of the world are either too hot or too cold to live in.

On top of that, diseases, parasites, predatory animals, famines, and other natural disasters threaten the survival of the human species since homo sapiens first appeared on the scene. For thousands of years, the average lifespan of individual humans is just around 30 years. You need a large dosage of confirmation bias to ignore all those factors to think like this person I interacted with recently:

[E]verything in the created order, has been designed to benefit one organism on this planet: the one organism that is claimed to be made in the IMAGE of it’s [sic] Creator.” David W Litwin, Feb 24, 2023

In short, even if there were indeed a Designer who created the Earth for the dwelling and flourishing of the human species, that Designer certainly is not very intelligent, which renders the argument from design weak and unconvincing.

Some conservative Christians blame “the Fall” for the hardships I mentioned above. They say the sin of Adam and Eve effectively changed the natural world so that survival becomes much more difficult (See the pattern again? It’s all about human beings. Even if there is something wrong with the natural order, it is our fault!). In that case, the whole argument from design becomes self-defeating. Christians can’t have their cake and eat it too. Either the present world is designed for human flourishing, or it is not.

3. Who says complex things must be designed?

People who use the argument from design often assume that complex stuff cannot exist randomly, but must be designed deliberately. They may use Paley’s Watchmaker as an example. Yes, some complex things have designers, but it does not follow that all complex things are designed.

Research in biology has demonstrated that complex life forms and ecosystems can evolve naturally through random mutation and natural selection after simple life forms appeared on the Earth. No intelligent Designer is needed to account for their existence.

Given that there are examples of complex things that can be formed naturally, the notion that “complex things must be deliberately designed” falls apart. Yes, it is still possible that the entire universe could be designed, but one cannot prove the existence of such a Designer by merely appealing to the complexity of the natural world.

Now, some Christians may oppose the examples I gave above. They say that macroevolution cannot happen naturally and assert that the human species and some other species are examples of Intelligent Design. The next point is written with this kind of people in mind.

4. You have not thought it through

If it requires special intervention in the natural world for life in general or the human species in particular to appear, can it still be said that the universe is specially designed for human beings?

You can’t have it both ways.

Either you believe that God designed nature and natural laws such that humans can appear in the world naturally, or you believe that this world is not designed to make the existence of human beings possible, thus supernatural intervention is required.

Furthermore, if the notion of “complex things require designers” is to be applied consistently, why don’t Christians ask who designed their God? God is infinitely more complex than natural laws or the physical composition of human beings, so why doesn’t God need a designer? The excuse Christians give is that God, by definition, is not created.

That’s just lame. It’s a blatant application of special pleading. More seriously, by using this excuse, they contradict themselves by admitting that not all complex things require designers after all.

Most Christians have not thought through the implications of the argument from design. They just grab whatever rhetoric that could be used to rationalize their faith.

Conclusion

The argument from design is at most a conjecture, a guess, or a hypothesis (and a bad one). Sure, it can be a starting point for further research and exploration, but it should not be treated as if it constitutes evidence in itself. This should be our attitude if we truly want to seek truth, not just the comfort of our soul.

Do you agree or disagree with my criticisms and assessment? Please leave a comment to let me know.