People have never failed to be awed by the seeming order of creation. For the Roman writer, poet and philosopher Cicero (106–43 bce), the wonder of the heavens was enough to convince him that there must be some kind of superior intelligence to explain the order and beauty that was presented before him. In a similar vein, Xenophon, in the fourth century bce, quotes Socrates as saying, “With such signs of forethought in the design of living creatures, can you doubt they are the work of choice or design?”

This is where the teleological argument (also known as the design argument) begins. When we look at our world and, even further, beyond our world to the stars in the heavens, we cannot help but be astounded by its order and beauty, so we are led to conclude that such intricate complexity must be designed in some way: it cannot occur of its own accord. The word ‘teleological’ comes from the Greek ‘telos’ meaning ‘purpose’ or ‘aim’, so it suggests that nature has been designed with some goal in mind. It was typical of the ancient Greeks to believe that there must be a purpose, of course, which, as we shall see, is a very different attitude to that of many contemporary thinkers who see the universe as purposeless.