The teleological argument for God's existence is simply the old argument for design,
and the cutting edge of current discussions of the design argument concerns the so called
fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Now what is meant by that? What scientists have
discovered in the last half century or so is that the initial conditions of the universe,
given in the Big Bang themselves, were fine-tuned to an extraordinary, indeed,
incomprehensible precision for the existence of intelligent interactive life in this universe,
and therefore the whole question about biological evolution has really been circumvented by the
discovery of the fine-tuning. For the evolution of biological life-forms to take place anywhere
in the cosmos, you already have to have this elaborately set table in advance in these finely
tuned conditions of the universe, and Dawkins discusses this form of the teleological argument
in chapter four of his book under the anthropic principle, and what does he respond? Well Dawkins
doesn't deny the fact of the fine-tuning of the universe, quoting the astronomer royal Sir Martin
Rees, he agrees the universe exhibits this almost miraculous fine-tuning for intelligent interactive
life. Moreover, he repudiates the explanation of this fine-tuning that it's physically necessary.
Again he quotes Sir Martin Rees to say that there is no physical necessity that the
constants and quantities that are finely tuned for existence have to be that way; this is physically
contingent. We can easily imagine universes governed by constants and quantities that would
make our existence impossible. So Dawkins has to argue that this is simply the result of chance,
and he recognizes that the chances of this occurring just by accident are so astronomically
inconceivably improbable that they cannot reasonably be faced if this is the only universe
there is, and so he finds himself forced to recur to what is called the many-worlds hypothesis,
or the world ensemble hypothesis, that is to say, there is an infinite number of randomly ordered
parallel universes, and our universe is just a random member of this world ensemble, and by
chance alone somewhere in this ensemble there will appear finely tuned universes like ours,
and lucky us, we happen to inhabit one such world. Now Dawkins is acutely sensitive to
the objection that this world ensemble hypothesis is what he calls an unparsimonious extravagance,
that is to say, isn't it much simpler to explain the fine-tuning of the universe to posit a single
intelligent designer of the universe rather than this extraordinary hypothesis of an infinite
number of randomly ordered parallel universes for which we have no evidence whatsoever? Well
Dawkins struggles mightily to defend that this is not an unparsimonious extravagance,
and it leads to what he calls the central argument of its book, this is the heart of his book,
and namely, let me repeat that, this is the heart of his book, and the objection is this; if you
say that there is a designer of the universe, then you are forced to answer the question who
designed the designer? And on this basis he thinks that the world ensemble hypothesis,
though admittedly weak and unparsimonious, is preferable to the hypothesis of a cosmic designer.
Now this is a terrible objection to the design hypothesis. It is predicated upon an assumption
which is patently false, namely, in order to recognize an explanation is the best, you have to
have an explanation of the explanation, and that is clearly false. Imagine that astronauts were to
find a pile of machinery on the dark side of the moon. They would clearly be justified in inferring
that this is the result of an intelligent designer even if they had absolutely no idea
who this designer was or where he came from or how that machinery got there. In order to recognize an
explanation as the best, you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation. In fact adopting
that principle would obviously immediately lead to an infinite regress of explanations. Before you
could have an explanation you need an explanation of the explanation, but before you could have
an explanation of the explanation, you need an explanation of the explanation of the explanation,
and so on to infinity so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So
Dawkins' whole objection is based upon a patently false principle. Whether or not the designer has
an explanation can simply be left as an open question for future inquiry, but the fact that
an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe I think is
clearly evident and superior to the unparsimonious extravagance of the world ensemble hypothesis.