Why Design Arguments Necessarily Fail

When he was a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge, with plans on entering the clergy, Charles Darwin was a huge admirer of the clergyman and philosopher William Paley. In his influential Natural Theology (1802), Paley famously describes walking across a heath and striking his foot against a stone. This, said Paley, no one would think unusual, as the rock certainly emerged through geological processes. But if one were to strike one’s foot against a watch, one would have to presume it had originated not by accident, but by purposive design.

Darwin, like most others at the time, held a creationist view of the natural world, whose intricacy suggested that there was an intelligent mind behind it all, just as the intricacy of Paley’s watch suggested a watchmaker. No other explanation existed for the diversity of living organisms until Darwin discovered natural selection. Gregor Mendel’s later work on genetics set the stage for the molecular basis of our understanding of evolution, which has accelerated through the twentieth century and beyond.

However, design arguments still exist and are popular in both classical philosophy of religion and modern religious ministries. Cosmological and biological arguments are advanced in both, and the creationist and ‘intelligent design’ movements remain influential among the religious. But there are always underlying problems with these arguments—problems which are insurmountable.

As it happens, July 2025 will mark 100 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial, in which fundamentalist creationist religion went into battle with modern evolutionary science. It seems appropriate, then, to look over the main challenges to design arguments. Taken together, they show that such arguments are always doomed to fail.

Locating the mechanism: Why the need for a God gene, God particle, or God molecule?

For religious adherents, one cannot draw a straight line from observations of the natural world to a particular god or gods. Because nature shows both beauty and brutality, the cruel and the kind, one can point to a benevolent god or a cruel one, as philosopher Stephen Law has pointed out. Therefore, religious arguments from design are incomplete on their own.

Going beyond the immediately observable and probing deeper into the molecular or subatomic world, proponents of modern design arguments have sought out a key cog within nature to buttress their case. One must ask why there is a need to find a ‘God gene’, ‘God particle’, or ‘God molecule’ when there is no warrant for it in any of the religious scriptures. Should Christians, for example, expect to find a biological mechanism compatible with their scriptures, and their scriptures only?

Arguing from ignorance

Much of the above can be boiled down to a ‘God of the gaps’ form of argumentation. That is, something is missing in our understanding; therefore, it can only be the product of a divine intelligence.

This is poor argumentation and has never fared well historically. It is also a method of arguing from ignorance. Just because science has yet to find an explanation does not mean that it never will or that the answer is forever destined to be beyond humanity’s reach, let alone that the answer must therefore lie in religion. The counterargument is that this defence is a faith position (‘science will one day find it’), but there is no good reason to presuppose scientific ignorance. Quite the opposite, given the astonishing march of scientific progress in recent centuries. One need not remain trapped between absolute faith in a deity and an absolute lack of it in humankind.

There is no positive case made at all in arguments from ignorance, but design arguments remain utterly dependent on them.

Scientific and technological advancement

As mentioned, design arguments also face the problem of the rapid advancement of science. Computational development, next-generation leaps in biotechnology and artificial intelligence, the expansion of research and global collaboration, industrial expertise, and competition have raised scientific development to unprecedented levels in recent decades. Now is not the time to doubt the ability of science to discover.

In fact, it would be more rational to feel optimistic about humanity’s technological future rather than suggesting that present areas of scientific ignorance will forever remain beyond our reach.

An argument from design will always appeal to something being so good, so clever, so intricate, or so perfect that it could never have occurred without divine input. But, while we can never possess enough knowledge to rule this out absolutely, we can also never say that a scientific answer is forever out of reach.

Wonder, not evidence

One sympathises with arguments from design because it is the most instinctive thing in the world to respond in awe to the majesty of nature. The reaction of wonder cannot be helped—it is as unavoidable as a leg reflex following a tap beneath the knee. So why not locate the argument there? Religious scriptures appeal to wonder and awe, not logical syllogisms. Many religious and philosophical writers make their case from wonder to worship, rather than spuriously appealing to scientific evidence, which is necessarily always developing and changing.

If a sunrise or a starry night brings one to the worship of a god, why go looking for a ‘God star’ or try to find him in a cellular process? Is wonder not enough? Seeing as awe leads to worship, shouldn’t awe be the finish line?

Bad design

Arguments from design appeal to generalisation: the deity behind the cosmos is also the deity behind the cell, unless one is a pantheist or a polytheist, where different gods hold different domains. If one is a monotheist or a deist, there is an all-powerful god or mind behind everything. There is a significant problem here: the existence of bad design.

Many features of nature and its creatures are suboptimal. There are many better ways that certain features could have been engineered, from a giraffe’s neck to the camera lens eye. Many genetic mechanisms are long and convoluted, and immune responses are not fast enough. Microorganisms and parasites are either so effective that they must have been ingeniously designed, or our systems are not designed well enough to cope with them—which one is it? It depends on one’s biases.

If the universe and everything in it are so intricate that they must have been designed, then why do we see such bad design everywhere? No system is perfect, but if the answer to the complexity of nature is ‘intelligent design’, then did the designer not finish top of the class? Does this make God a dunce? One doubts that this is the case the proponents of design arguments would like to make.

Given all of the above, design arguments are always doomed to fail. In short, design arguments are badly designed.

Related reading

The future of biology, science vs. religion, and ‘ideological pollution’ in science: Interview with Jerry Coyne, by Samuel McKee

Reality always wins: the perils of ideological science, by Samuel McKee

A farewell to Dawkins? by Samuel McKee

Bringing back the dialectic: interview with Stephen ‘Rationality Rules’ Woodford, by Samuel McKee