The above arguments were all nondeductive. However, John Haldane (Smart and
Haldane 2003) has given a deductive Thomistic teleological argument. In the history of
our universe, we see that on at least several occasions, a qualitatively new thing such as
life or mind has developed, and a qualitatively new thing by definition could not have
arisen gradually. Moreover, if a cause is to explain the coming into existence of such a
positive quality as life or mind, it must itself either formally or eminently have that
quality, to use Descartes' terminology, where to have F “formally” is just to be F and
where to have F “eminently” is to have this quality as an idea in one's mind in the sense
of its being an intentional accusative of one of its thoughts. (Saint Thomas already used
this principle in his argument that the first cause of all contingent beings must be at least
as perfect as the sum total of all the perfections of creatures: see Aquinas 1969, part 1,
question 4, article 2.) Thus, randomness will not explain the coming into existence of
qualitatively new things, such as life or mind. Nor will one explain the existence of life or
mind by positing an infinite series of living or mindful things, each descended from the
next, since it will still not be explained where the positive quality came from in the first
place.
Therefore, one must either come to a necessary being that has life or mind, and whose
having of life or mind is a consequence of its essence, or to a person who has life
eminently and mind both eminently and formally (it being impossible to have any quality
eminently without formally having mind). In either case, we can conclude the existence
of an intelligent first cause for the existence of mind. The Paley-type arguments merely
gave us a God of the gaps: should science discover new naturalistic explanations of
things, these arguments would fall through. But like Swinburne's lawlikeness argument,
Haldane's argument gives principled reasons for the claim that an intelligent being is
needed for the explanation of the phenomenon in question. Therefore, Haldane does not
need to worry as each new issue of Nature comes out that a naturalistic challenger to his
argument will be found. The argument as stated above is abductive: a theistic-type
explanation is the only one possible, and hence true. To make it into a fully deductive
argument, one needs to add the principle of sufficient reason as an explicit premise. For
then, there is an explanation, and hence the only possible explanation must be the
explanation. And of course, the Achilles heel of this Thomistic argument is the
controversial metaphysics of qualitative difference behind it.
Finally, note that teleological arguments face the same kind of gap problem as infect
cosmological ones. Just as there is a gap between being a first cause and being God, there
is a gap between being a very powerful and intelligent designer and being God. The most
serious part of the gap concerns the goodness of the designer, due to the fact that there is
a lot of apparently unjustified evil, where an evil is unjustified if it would preclude the
existence of God because no morally exonerating excuse would exist for permitting it. To
close the gap, the teleological arguer, like the cosmological arguer, must find a way of
neutralizing the problem of evil, either through constructing a theodicy that gives God a
justification for permitting these evils or by showing that a theodicy is not needed. Thus,
we see the need to do the philosophy of religion in a global manner.
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