Proving God's Existence: The Teleological Argument by Carson
How do we know that God exists? Many people respond to this question with the answer, “Through faith”, or something like that. In reality, there are many ways that we can prove the existence of God through reasoning alone, without having the basis of religion! This means that if we review all the facts we know about this world, and all the things we have learned through it, we can conclude that there is a God. We can do this through four main arguments: The Teleological argument, The Cosmological argument, The Moral argument, and the Historical argument. All of these are based on the Law of Causality, which states: “Anything which begins to exist must have been brought into existence by something distinct from itself.”
Because discussing all of these arguments in detail would be way too long of a paper, I will briefly go over the others, and focus mostly on the Teleological argument. The Cosmological argument infers that from the movement of life in the universe, something superior created it. The Moral argument states that our conscience and nature proves and turns us to God. The Historical argument builds on the last one to say that all of the races are in unison in the fact that our consciences affirm that there is a God. Finally, what the rest of this brief paper is about, is the Teleological argument, which infers that through the unmistakable perfect order of the universe, something far superior to us, a master artist, must have created it.
Reason tells us that where there is order and planning, an intelligent being has been at work. We can see this everywhere, from pencils, to cars, to advanced machinery, or really anything humans have made. You think we’re impressive? Go somewhere in the earth that we haven’t already destroyed with our industrial crap and look around in nature. THAT is real beauty! If you’re not blind to it, you should be able to see that the natural things around us far surpass any achievements that humans have earned. Something great must have created it. If you have studied any subject, such as chemistry, astronomy, physics, mechanics, biology, botany, zoology, or really anything else, you can see this world was made by no accident.
The great philosopher Cicero once said, “If anyone supposes that this most beautiful and glorious world was made by the accidental coming together of the atoms, I do not understand why he should not suppose that the Annals of Ennius might be produced by pouring out on the earth the twenty-one letters of the alphabet in countless profusion”. I mean, “...that the universe just came into being, is like a print shop exploding and producing a dictionary”. (Paraphrased quote from Edwin Conklin.) Some actually tried to argue this, saying that if you poured letters out a number of times, that it was possible. Ridiculous! Order cannot be made from disorder, as the second law of thermodynamics states.
