Explain the main points of the Design Argument for the existence of God.

The Design Argument for the existence of God suggests that, due to the unexplainable complexity of the world around us, there must have been an intelligent 'designer' who created it. The argument is well explained by Aquinas' Fifth Way, which suggests that everything in our world has a purpose and an end function. The idea here is that the world has a function and a purpose and that in order to have this it must have been created by a sentient being who can decide what this function and purpose is. The argument is supported more recently by William Paley with his analogy between the design of an eye and that of a watch. Paley believes that the complexity of a watch leads a viewer to believe that it cannot just exist by coincidence but must have been designed by a watchmaker. In the same way, Paley explains that the world is too complex to have occurred independently but instead its complexity suggests that there must be a 'world-designer' behind it to explain this complexity. Most recently, William Dembski, supported by Michael Behe, used the theory of irreducible complexity to suggest that removing a single part from a whole completely destroys its function and so it must be that the parts of a whole are chosen and put together by an intelligent designer. These are three of the main points of the design argument for the existence of God as an intelligent designer.