‘The world was created by chance, not God’s design’ – Discuss
40 marks
OCR A-level religious studies
Teleological arguments look at the end results of creation – the world around us – and use it to draw
conclusions about the nature of God. These are a posteriori arguments, pointing to God as the
explanation for our experience – by observing the complexity and order of the world we can deduce
a God; the world is too complex to have arisen by chance. However, developments in science have
led to theories such as the theory of evolution which prove that there is no place for God in the
creation of the universe, and order and complexity has arisen as a result of trial and error naturally
over billions of years.
Aquinas thought the natural world provided lots of evidence for God. He was inspired by the works
of Aristotle and wanted to see how they were compatible with christian thought. Like Aristotle, he
was a strong believer in telos, where everything exists with a purpose. He used the Analogy of the
40 marks
OCR A-level religious studies
Teleological arguments look at the end results of creation – the world around us – and use it to draw
conclusions about the nature of God. These are a posteriori arguments, pointing to God as the
explanation for our experience – by observing the complexity and order of the world we can deduce
a God; the world is too complex to have arisen by chance. However, developments in science have
led to theories such as the theory of evolution which prove that there is no place for God in the
creation of the universe, and order and complexity has arisen as a result of trial and error naturally
over billions of years.
Aquinas thought the natural world provided lots of evidence for God. He was inspired by the works
of Aristotle and wanted to see how they were compatible with christian thought. Like Aristotle, he
was a strong believer in telos, where everything exists with a purpose. He used the Analogy of the
