Is the teleological argument for God completely refuted?

Question

Teleological arguments for the existence of God have a long history and straddle Greek Antiquity (Platos Divine Artificer), Islam (Averroes) and Christianity (Aquinas) and currently and most famously the intelligent design movement in the states.

They appear to have been comprehensively critiqued mainly it seems by the success of the two sciences - Physics which crafts a universe of unbending law and biology through it support of evolution.

Yet, it seems to me that these critiques are not impervious to attack. That is it appears simply the intellectual environment has changed such that these arguments no longer have any purchase. That is the basis for believing in these arguments were coherent with a number of positions, and when they fell - they all fell together.

Are there any philosophers have mounted effective challenges to these critiques of the teleological argument?

Answer 1

The teleological argument is effectively dead. The last gasp at it was by William Dembski and Michael Behe with "irreducible complexity" (the intellectual core of the intelligent design movement), and they simply failed to understand the actual problem and/or came up with handwaving to state that certain things were impossible, when in fact they were not only possible but there were examples of them.

That evolution provides the mechanism to produce all the complexity of life seen today is no longer in serious doubt; and that simple physical laws suffice to produce all the complexity of the universe is also no longer in serious doubt. The only area not completely nailed down is fine-tuning of universal constants, and that makes for an incredibly weak teleological argument since all we know about reality with different constants is that our familiar physics doesn't work. We cannot predict whether there'd be some other complex physical reality admitting evolution, so we can't tell if the numbers are actually finely tuned and thus whether we should be surprised by them.

I would go so far as to say that at this point there cannot be any effective challenges to these critiques without a radical re-evaluation of our scientific knowledge. That is to say, such challenges will not come soon, nor will they come through philosophy initially. If there are unexpectedly large flaws in the science, then there may be some wiggle room in which to attempt another teleological argument, but finding such flaws is a scientific endeavor.

Answer 2

Teleological argument as form of fine tuning isn't refuted.

In fact in an academic paper, Man Ho Chan has argued from mathematical analysis and systematic comparison of different hypothesis, and shows that as per current understanding, data strongly prefer theistic explanation.

From paper:

Among the available hypotheses, the chance-alone hypothesis, super-law explanation, and observation selection effect are not able to give a satisfactory explanation of the fine-tuning phenomena. Therefore, most of our discussions focus on the God hypothesis and the two multiverse hypotheses. By using the confirmation principle, we conclude that the God hypothesis has the largest value of P(T|E). On the other hand, by using another principle, inference to the best explanation, we still get the same conclusion. Therefore, we can conclude that the theistic worldview can offer the best explanation of the fine-tuning phenomena.

Source: https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1447&context=etd_oa

Author has also suggested that fine tuning is required as primary fine tuning, secondary fine tuning, global fine tuning which makes case more stronger and less susceptible to future discovery which can disappears fine tuning of some constants.

Additionally author has answered traditional objections like coarse tuning objection, zooming argument, argument from stenger etc, and shows that theistic explanation is best as per inference to best explanation.