To begin his essay,
Peter van Inwagen offers his version of the teleological argument. He states that the universe must have been fine tuned by someone, as the numbers which we ascribe to dictate the laws of the universe are so precise that if they differed much at all the universe would not be capable of maintaining life, let alone maintain rational animals such as humans. These numerical values seem to be rationally chosen in order to allow life. This is supported by a
Saint Thomas Aquinas quote which generally says that anything that has no knowledge but seems to be acting in such a way towards an end, has been directed by God.
All this is nice and all, according to van Inwagen, but he begins to object saying that this does not necessitate God, but just a designer or even group of creators. But what also seems interesting, are the chances our universe has of coming into existence, but this objection seems "silly." The odds are equal that a coin would come up heads twenty times in a row and that it would come out with some seemingly normal pattern. He says just because a fact may have a good explanation, it would be foolish to assume it needs no other explanation.
He then ties
Darwinian theory into all of this, by saying our universe happened to be the most fit for sustaining life out of all the universes. This could produce the appearance of design in the universe in the same way evolution makes it seem as though animals were designed. From this objections, he then concludes that since there is no way of perceiving of the universes as we are contained in our, we must either assume the universe is designed or part of a cosmic process of evolution - chance mixed with appearance of design.