Phones Don’t Create Themselves – The Teleological Argument (Simplifying Arguments for God’s Existence #2)

Approximate Reading Time: 9 minutes

The electronic device you’re using to read this is beyond most of our ability to create. Every aspect of it is designed with a clear purpose and each button has a function. The sheer amount of power within a phone, tablet, or computer is beyond what people could have imagined even decades ago. We take for granted how incredibly complex these things are.

Understanding all of that, imagine how you’d react if someone came up to you and said “I found this working iPhone washed up on the beach. I’m not sure, but I think it was created by lightning striking some sand, plastic, and bits of metal that were in the area. It even has some basic apps installed on it already!” Would you believe them? Would you even acknowledge that maybe, maybe it could have happened with nearly-impossible odds?

Mathematics tells us that, yes, it’s possible for it to happen. Given an infinite amount of time with very specific circumstances, a fully-working iPhone could randomly be created by nature. But in reality, everyone knows it will never happen. 

This brings us to our next argument for the existence of God. Just like last time, I’ll dig deeply into what this argument means, then give a simplified way to use it with people you’re talking to.

The foundation for the Teleological Argument

Last week’s Cosmological Argument dealt with creation, while this one argues God’s existence from design. This argument classically uses a pocket watch to show how irrational it is to think that a universe filled with such complexity and purpose could happen randomly. It goes something like this:

If you found a rock in the meadow, you could assume it got there by any number of natural reasons. However, if you came upon a gold pocket watch, no one would assume it just “got there” over a long series of time and events. Instead, we would conclude that this complex pocket watch, with all its gears and beauty, had a designer. Likewise, the universe is incredibly complex, and things within it have purpose, so we can only conclude that these things also had a designer.

Those who deny a creator will argue that something as complex as the eyeball could evolve over a long period of time. So could our brains, organs, veins, and everything else about our human body. They would argue that, given enough time, all the things in our universe could have happened without any sort of designer.

An obvious problem, of course, is that it requires believing that every animal, plant, and person was able to evolve with no guidance, yet were able to develop such incredibly complex systems. Just take a blade of grass in your yard:

• Why did material come together to form a plant-like structure?
• How did it survive before it could nourish itself?
• Why would it develop a circulatory system if it was surviving without one?
• How did it reproduce before developing something like seeds?
• Why do those seeds know to create more of the plant?

And that’s just a thing we cut down or feed to cows. More complex creatures require us to ask so many more questions about why its various systems would have developed if they didn’t have a designer, nor did they have any reason to change from what they were.

Some may point out things like “Survival of the Fittest,” where we’ve seen that creatures who develop traits that help them survive are more likely to live and pass on their genetic code to their offspring. It’s an easy and comforting answer because it seems like it stops a conversation about a designer.

Yet what this ignores is that a creature didn’t just spontaneously develop a digestive system – it would have taken generations for 

• a mouth to develop
• a stomach to be attached to it
• organs designed to extract nutrients
• a way for them to get rid of unused food parts so it doesn’t sit in their body. 

And while all of these things developed, they would have served no purpose until everything was working together – odds are even good that the creature would die from having extra stuff in its body as it became a creature who ate with a mouth before its system could catch up.

This is why scientists who study nature find themselves with no choice but to believe in a creator. There is an idea called “irreducible complexity” which basically means we can only break living organisms down so far before we have to conclude that they were designed. We see this in things like our digestive systems, but even at a microscopic level the explanations given by atheistic evolution simply can’t explain the apparent design of things like bacteria. 

Thus, we are left with one choice: a universe filled with so many complex things that are serve purposes could not have happened randomly, nor could certain things have developed without guidance. The only explanation is that there is a designer behind these incredible designs.

And that’s the Teleological Argument. It argues that when we’re looking at a pocket watch, we don’t marvel at the watch itself, but instead we realize what it says about the skill of the watch’s designer. Everything in that watch is not only intricate, but everything serves a purpose. 

Something so mechanical brilliant can’t possibly come from wind, rain, pressure, and a lot of time. Yet a pocket watch is only made of metal and glass – despite the years of training required to build and repair these watches, they are rather simple compared to the human eye, the bombardier beetle (this video even admits that scientists can’t adequately explain why it didn’t blow itself up during evolution outside of “well, maybe, over time…”), or a giraffe’s circulatory system that prevents its head from exploding when it bends down to drink water.

One final thing to consider is the idea of chaos. If you have kids, you know that things don’t just naturally order themselves. Without guidance or design, things don’t fall into order just because. Instead, chaos and disorder is the natural tendency of things. Throw a bucket of Legos into the air and figure out how many times you need to do it before they all fall into place in a perfect recreation of Buckingham Palace. We know that things in the universe, when left to their own devices, don’t drift toward complexity, but instead break down into more simple components. 

One complex thing might be explainable for natural evolution. Yet the more unique things we look at in nature, the harder it becomes to deny a designer behind them. Life isn’t something like a beautiful mountain range or a sunset that is lovely to behold but easily explained. Life is complex, unique, filled with purpose, and ultimately beyond the natural laws of the universe to exist without a designer behind them who chose to create them.

Simplifying the Teleological Argument for everyday use

I’ll give two ways to use this. One is usable right now, while the other will be useful the more you study God’s creation.

If someone asks you why they should believe God exists, just pull out your phone. Ask them how long it would take for the universe to create something like this without any intelligent interference. Show them the apps, play some music, make a phone call. Point out that it’s completely illogical to ever conclude that something like this designed itself, rather than acknowledge the obvious designer behind it. You can do this with almost anything in your pocket or purse, because even pocket change shows that anything with a hint of design had a designer. 

For extra credit, learn more about the incredible world your God created. Study the human body, learn more about fish, or just get familiar with how trees work. Take that handful of change from the previous paragraph and tell them to drop it on the table until it forms a perfect stack, then talk to them about the complexity of their very DNA. The more you choose to study, the more convinced you’ll become that these things didn’t just happen. And if you understand how these things work, you can point others to your incredible Designer.

Weaknesses of the argument

There are any number of arguments that can be raised against this. Here are the ones that are most convincing.

A common reaction you’ll hear is that these things aren’t impossible if given enough time under the right circumstances. We can just keep making the universe older and older, making room for the billions of years required to give a 1% chance that our tongues would randomly decide to develop taste buds. If someone wants to deny a designer, they can points out the infinitely small probability that all of this could probably exist on its own.

A similar weakness is called Occam’s Razor. This simply means “the simplest answer is probably the correct answer.” This means that if you’re on a farm in America and you hear hoofbeats, you should assume you hear horses and not zebras. From an evolution standpoint, this would argue that if the existence of everything can be explained by natural means, we shouldn’t add anything extra (like a designer) to the explanation.

And, of course, the best thing the Teleological Argument can prove is that there’s some kind of intelligence behind our universe. Is it God? Is it a series of gods? Are we just under the microscope of alien beings? There are an endless number of possibilities that this argument can’t answer.

Final thoughts

The Teleological Argument is actually a fairly simple one, because all it requires is that we recognize God for who He is. It strengthens the more we study God’s creation, and studying His creation leaves us with a greater awe at how amazing He is.

For You created my innermost parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, because I am awesomely and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You When I was made in secret, And skillfully formed in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my formless substance; And in Your book were written All the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.(Psalm 139:13-16)

Our bodies are wonderfully complicated. God could have chosen to make us in whatever way He chose, yet who we are is the result of His divine will. We, like the Psalm writer, can sing praise to God when we realize that everything we take for granted is an impossibly-complex system designed to keep us alive, let us learn, or give us the breath to glorify Him.

The heavens tell of the glory of God; And their expanse declares the work of His hands. (Psalm 119:1)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

My favorite thing about the Teleological Argument is that it’s a road to the gospel. James 2:19 reminds us that belief in God’s existence isn’t enough. We can’t just try to win an argument without pointing that person to the cross. The Teleological Argument is our way of reminding people that they can clearly see God in nature, and from there we can tell them about what Jesus Christ did on the cross to pay the penalty for their sin. 

So in the end, the Teleological Argument glorifies God in two big ways. It allows us to see how awesome our God is by better understanding what He’s created, and we can bring people to the cross once they begin to realize that if God is the answer to creation, He’s also the answer to their sin.