" It is a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, presented by its advocates as " an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins " rather than " a religious-based idea ".

The argument from irreducible complexity is a descendant of the teleological argument for God ( the argument from design or from complexity ).

" Darwin's theory of evolution challenges the teleological argument by postulating an alternative explanation to that of an intelligent designer — namely, evolution by natural selection.

Thus, while the probability might be extremely small that any particular universe would have the requisite conditions for life ( as we understand life ) to emerge and evolve, this does not require intelligent design per the teleological argument as the only explanation for the conditions in the Universe that promote our existence in it.

William Paley gave a well-known rendition of the teleological argument for God.

A teleological or design argument is an a posteriori argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe.

The teleological argument suggests that, given this premise, the existence of a designer can be assumed, typically presented as God.

In the Middle Ages, the Islamic philosopher Averroes introduces a teleological argument.

Later, a teleological argument is the fifth of Saint Thomas Aquinas ' Five Ways, his rational proofs for the existence of God.

The teleological argument was continued by empiricists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who believed that the order in the world suggested the existence of God.

Many philosophers and theologians have expounded and criticized different versions of the teleological argument.

From the 1990s, neo-creationism and intelligent design have presented the teleological argument while avoiding naming the designer with the aim of presenting this as science and getting it taught in public school science classes.

) presented an early teleological argument in De Natura Deorum ( On the Nature of the Gods ), arguing that divine power can be found in reason, which exists throughout nature.

Thomas Aquinas ( 1225-1274 ) presented a form of the teleological argument in his Summa Theologica.

He sums up his teleological argument as follows.

David Hume, in the mid-18th century, presented arguments both for and against the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

The character Cleanthes, summarizing the teleological argument, likens the universe to a man-made machine, and concludes by the principle of similar effects and similar causes that it must have a designing intelligence.

Philo is not satisfied with the teleological argument, however.

A modern variation of the teleological argument is built upon the concept of the fine-tuned Universe.

The natural law was inherently teleological and deontological in that although it is aimed at goodness, it is entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions, rather than the consequence.

In the 1850s Owen began to support an evolutionary view that the history of life was the gradual unfolding of a teleological divine plan, in a continuous " ordained becoming ", with new species appearing by natural birth.

Xenophon however, like Plato and Aristotle, was a follower of Socrates, and his works show approval of a " teleological argument ", while Machiavelli rejected such arguments.

Nonetheless, such a teleological ( goal-oriented ) reading of Karl Marx, supported by Alexandre Kojève before the Second World War ( 1939 – 45 ), was criticized by Louis Althusser in his discussion of “ random materialism ” ( matérialisme aléatoire ), in which he said that such a teleological reading rendered the proletariat as the subject of history ; therefore, such an interpretation was tainted with Hegelian idealism, with the “ philosophy of the subject ”, that had been in force for five centuries, which he criticized as the “ bourgeois ideology of philosophy ”.

For example, against the charge that Gaia was teleological Lovelock and Andrew Watson offered the Daisyworld model ( and its modifications, above ) as evidence against most of these criticisms.

Rather than a discussion of the Gaian teleological views, or " types " of Gaia Theory, the focus was upon the specific mechanisms by which basic short term homeostasis was maintained within a framework of significant evolutionary long term structural change.

When H. A. L. Fisher in 1928 gave the Raleigh Lecture on The Whig Historians, from Sir James Mackintosh to Sir George Trevelyan he implied that " Whig historian " was adequately taken as a political rather than a progressive or teleological label ; this put the concept into play.

For example, Schneider admitted that the ' suffering of society ' was a ' totally subjective ' and ' teleological ’ criterion for defining psychopathic personalities, but said that in ' scientific studies ' this could be avoided by operating by the broader statistical category of abnormal personalities, which he believed were always congenital and therefore largely hereditary.

Ancient naturalists such as Aristotle, on the other hand, had no need for substance dualism because their conception of nature was teleological rather than mechanistic, and was compatible with a robust sense of human freedom.

Marx's theory of Historical Materialism was teleological, i. e. society follows through a dialectic of unfolding stages from ancient modes of production to feudalism to capitalism to a future communism.

This term was however strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the Active Intellect ( also known as the Active Intelligence ).

The term was invented by Christian theologians not to discredit theism but rather to point out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence.

Teilhard, who was a Jesuit Paleontologist who played an important role in the discovery of Peking Man, presented a teleological view of planetary and cosmic evolution, according to which the formation of atoms, molecules and inanimate matter is followed by the development of the biosphere and organic evolution, then the appearance of man and the noosphere as the total envelope of human thought.

In ethics, he was broadly utilitarian ; however, he preferred the term " teleological " since the term " utilitarian " suggested that all goods were instrumental and he believed ( with, e. g., H. W. B.

He does this by returning to the tradition of Aristotelian ethics with its teleological account of the good and moral persons, which was originally rejected by the Enlightenment and which reached a fuller articulation in the medieval writings of Thomas Aquinas.

After doing particularly well in his final exam questions on Paleys ' books, Darwin read Paley's Natural Theology which set out to refute David Hume's argument that the teleological argument for " design " by a Creator was merely a human projection onto the forces of nature.

In one 1860 letter to Gray, Darwin expressed his doubts about the teleological argument which claimed nature as evidence of god, though he was still inclined to vaguely believe in an impersonal God as first cause:

Gould wrote that Eimer was a materialist who rejected any vitalist or teleological approach to orthogenesis and explained that Eimer's criticism of natural selection was common amongst many evolutionists of his generation as they were searching for alternative evolutionary mechanisms as it was believed at the time that natural selection could not create new species.

Plato's teleological perspective is also built upon the analysis of a priori order and structure in the world that he had already presented in The Republic.

Augustine of Hippo ( A. D. 354 – 430 ) presented a classic teleological perspective in his work City of God.

David Hume presented a criticism of the teleological argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Typically, the analogy is presented as a prelude to the teleological argument and is generally presented as: