The Teleological Argument is a sound argument for God's existence.

I look forward to a fruitful debate. I know that it is customary to attempt to refute an opponent's points in the order they were given, however I believe in this case it would be prudent to save addressing P1 until near the end of my response. Thusly, I will begin by addressing Premise 2, that "It is highly improbable that it [the universe] resulted from chance. " My opponent defends this premise by arguing that there is design present in the universe, as there are a host of requirements for a planet to be life-permitting and ours seems finely tuned to those very specific requirements. This argument fails to consider two different issues, the lesser being that it relies on "Carbon Chauvinism" and the larger problem being that it ignores the immense size of the universe. "Carbon Chauvinism" is the idea that the only form of life possible is the carbon based life we find on this planet. It is a false idea, for there are numerous types of life possible that would increase the range of life-permitting worlds considerably. For example, it is known that instead of carbon, silicone based life is also possible, as well as many other kinds. Unless my opponent can prove that carbon life is the only conceivable form of life, his range is not quite so exclusionary. . http://en.wikipedia.org... This, as I said, is a minor point. The greater problem consists of the fact that while there is a grain of truth to his argument, that while indeed it is unlikely that a singular planet would have the properties that would allow for life, it ignores that our universe alone consists of billions of galaxies each with billions of stars, the vast majority with multiple planets on it. To use an analogy, the chances of getting the Mega Millions jackpot is 1:175,611,536. It would seem unlikely that you'd win if you bought a ticket, but what if you bought 526,834,608 tickets? It then becomes likely that you'd win several times. Such is with the universe, given the range of CARBON life permitting properties, it is incredibly unlikely that no life would exist. He then quotes apologist Stuart C. Hackett who concludes that there is no rationally plausible explanation for the order we see. I would argue that this is nothing more than an opinion that states "I personally cannot see an explanation" and in no way shows that there is no such explanation. After Hackett, he quotes Julian Huxley as estimating very large odds against evolution occurring by pure chance. My opponent is absolutely right about this, but ignores the point that Huxley was making. The key phase here is "pure chance". Huxley was arguing that it would be almost impossible to produce a horse via random mutation without natural selection. If you were to begin reading from the last paragraph of the page previous to the one my opponent cites, this would be quite apparent. Evolution does not operate on random chance, but through random mutation filtered through natural selection. [1] My opponent then goes on to make a mistake he seems to repeat throughout his argument. He calculates the probability of something happening after it has already happened, in this case, human life. To demonstrate why this is bad reasoning, I have thrown together a webpage with some simple javascript: . http://www.honestdiscussioner.com... When you click on the link, your page will load a random number of almost one million digits. Please feel free to reload the page as many times as you'd like. Now, is each new random number a miracle? The chances of each individual result occurring is astronomical, and yet each time an astronomically unlikely result occurs. For a less tech-heavy example, wait until fall and sit under a tree. Wait for a leaf to fall to the ground. When it does, ask yourself, "is this a miracle"? The probability that that particular leaf would fall in whatever location it fell at the exact moment that it fell is astronomical. If the metaphorical dice had rolled differently, and human beings specifically did not come into existence, then an equally unlikely species would have emerged in our place. Once life began, there were innumerable permutations that could have resulted in an immensely varied forms of life than we find today, but that in no way implies a there must have been an intelligent force guiding us to this location, any more than there must have been a guiding force for each leaf that falls and each number generated by my web page. My opponent then goes into the "watchmaker" argument, which implies that anything designed must have a designer. This again is refuted by natural selection via random mutation. It is something that can produce things that appear designed without any designing force behind it. You see, the watchmaker analogy basically argues from intuition; since we know of no natural phenomenon that could produce watches, we then assume that it must have been designed. We do, however, know of a naturalistic phenomenon that can change the way life works to adapt to the environment. We can run simulations where various designs are created through this process without any human intervention, completely at random other than the influence of natural selection. To respond more directly to the version of argument my opponent gives from Paley, who points out that a watch has a purpose (to tell time) and is designed for such, I merely have to describe the a very simple example from evolution. A giraffe's neck. Would my opponent argue that the length of the neck must be an intelligent design feature as the length of the neck is clearly designed to reach high branches for food? What if we had, many many MANY years ago, a creature that looks a lot like a giraffe only it did NOT have such a long neck? It still ate leaves from branches, but could not reach very high. It did survive, because food at the time was plentiful, it did not require to reach the taller leaves. Then a drought hits, and suddenly there is not enough food to feed the entire population. Like with anything, some of these short-necked giraffes had slightly longer necks than others, and thus could get at leaves that others could not. Conversely, the ones with even shorter necks could get at even fewer leaves. Which is more likely to survive and pass on its genes? Clearly, the one with the slightly longer neck. At some point, a mutation occurs creating an offspring with a neck slightly longer than any other giraffe, and this one can thusly get at even further leaves, thus increasing its chances of survival. Now extend this over a VERY long time and what is the result? The giraffes of today. This is an overly simplified explanation, but it shows how no intelligence is needed to produce systems that appear designed. Thus, Paley's argument is invalid. Finally, I will go back and address my opponent's first premise, for it relies on an invisible assumption which, if unwarranted, would undercut nearly every point he has made. His first premise was as follows: The universe resulted either from design or chance. What is the invisible assumption here? My opponent assumes that this is the only universe that has ever existed. If there are more universes than this one, ones that have different properties than this one, then the entire basis for his probability argument goes out the window. Therefore, I would like to challenge my opponent to justify this assumption. If he cannot prove (which I doubt he can) that this is the only universe in existence, then there exists a third possibility where the universe did not arise by either chance or design, but rather an inevitability, or at very least, the chance of our universe coming into existence is much larger than my opponent would suggest. [1] Huxley, Julian, Evolution in Action, p. 45-46.