being through generation. But we know that the world has not been going on forever, and so the great puzzle is the existence of the first animals and plants in 4004 BC or whenever exactly it was that animals and plants began to exist. Since they could not have come about by natural scientific processes, and since they are very similar to the machines, which certain rational agents, viz. men, make, it is very probable that they were made by a rational agent – only clearly one more powerful and knowledgeable than men.” According to this version of the teleological argument, that entity more powerful and knowledgeable than man is God.The teleological argument whose version identifies regularities of co-presence is quickly dismantled with the introduction of Mr. Charles Darwin. “Complex animals and plants,” Swinburne argues, “can be produced through generation by less complex animals and plants – species are not eternally extinct; and simple animals and plants can be produced by natural processes from inorganic matter.” And in this simple language the logical validity of regularities of co-presence simply ceases to exist: something of a philosophical evolution. And like the very argument that dismantled regularities of co-presence, Swinburne’s argument evolves into a more complex version identified by regularities of succession. “Regularities of succession,” argues Swinburne, “are all-pervasive. For simple laws govern almost all successions of events. In books of physics, chemistry and biology we can learn how almost everything in the world behaves. The laws of their behavior can be set out by relatively simple formulae which men can understand and by means of which they can successfully predict the future. The orderliness of the universe to which I draw attention here is its conformity to formula, to simple, formulable, scientific laws. The orderliness of the ...
