1C: Challenges To Inductive Arguments Flashcards
Who was David Hume?
- Scottish empiricist philosopher who made an extensive contribution to philosophy
- he critiqued the CA + TA in ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’ (1779)
What were Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument?
1) Fallacy or Composition
2) meaningless
3) evidence objection
4) which God?
Criticism of CA - fallacy of composition:
- just because everything in the universe has a cause doesn’t mean we can apply it to things outside the universe. Just because everything in the universe has a cause doesn’t mean to the universe has a cause
- Bertrand Russell: ‘Just because every human has a mother does not mean the whole of humanity has a mother’
- maybe the universe has an infinite number of causes - this idea is supported by ‘Oscillating Universe Theory’
Criticism of CA - meaningless:
- humanity can only have knowledge about things we have direct experience of. Thus humanity cannot possibly know what or who created the universe because we have no direct experience of it
- for Hume, we cannot even possibly know anything about ‘who or what’ created the universe
- Immanuel Kant supported this
Criticism of CA - evidence objection:
- Hume argued that CA doesn’t have enough evidence to support the conclusion that God created the universe. He believes it doesn’t empirically prove that God exists.
- everything in the universe has a cause can be empirically verified. However the rest falls into guesswork
Criticism of CA - which God?
- even if God is the cause, there is no evidence to suggest what type of God.
- Aquinas and Craig wanted to illustrate the God of Classical Theism however Hume argues that the CA doesn’t illustrate such a God.
What are Hume’s criticisms of TA?
1) problems with analogies
2) is the universe designed
3) more than one God
4) absent designer
Criticism of TA - problems with analogies:
- Hume firstly criticises the use of human based analogies to demonstrate the fact that the universe is designed. However just because watches/houses are complex and therefore needs a designer, it does nit mean that we can infer that the complex universe also needs a designer
- a watch and the universe are too different to draw similarities between the two.
- therefore Hume believes any TA that tries to compare the universe to a human construction is completely wrong because you are not comparing like with like.
- Hume adds further that living organisms do not need a designer they just need natural things such as sunlight and water. This suggests that if the world is like a living organism it too does not need a designer because it formed naturally.
Criticism of TA - is the universe designed?
-Hume argued that the universe may be in chaos. If this is true there is no need for a designer God.
- ‘Epicurean Hypothesis’ - states so-called order in the universe is nothing more than the current random configuration of atoms. These atoms randomly re-organise infinitely.
- therefore the universe may seem designed, however this is only as a result of random atom movement and will not stay like this.
- this is supported by Robert Devaney’s ‘Chaos Theory’
Criticism of TA - more than one God?
- Hume argued that if human analogies are going to be used to prove the teleological argument, then it is more usual for manufactured goods to be designed and made by many people: not one.
- Hume then adds if you are going to compare the design of the universe to manufactured goods, this would suggest many Gods made the world, not one.
- therefore Hume makes the assumption that the TA is right to suggest that the universe was designed. However it just doesn’t prove the existence of God of Classical Theism.
Criticism of TA - absent designer:
- Hume adds that after a house or watch has been built has been completed the designer moves to other projects.
- perhaps once God had created the universe he moved on to build others (perhaps bigger and better universes elsewhere)
What are examples of scientific challenges?
- Big Bang Theory
- Theory of Evolution - Charles Darwin
What is the Big Bang Theory?
- the ‘Big Bang’ is a scientific argument for the development of the universe. Theory argues that the universe originated approximately 13.7 billion years ago from a violent explosion of a very small agglomeration of matter
- universe was formed as the matter expanded.
- therefore the big bang that suggests the universe formed naturally purely through the laws of science. Therefore there is no need for a causer God to have started the universe
- the big bang theory is a potentially strong theory as it is an empirical/a-posteriori argument
Who contributed to the ‘Big Bang’ theory?
- Edwin Hubble: may point to him as the creator of the theory. In 1924 he noted that other galaxies were gradually moving away from our galaxy - he concluded that it must have been because the universe was gradually expanding
- Stephen Hawking:
What is the Theory of Evolution?
- discovered by Charles Darwin during end of 19th century
- Darwin found that members of a species whose characteristics best enabled them to survive, went on to breed and thus survive. Those not suited to their environmental gradually died off: ‘survival of the fittest’
- therefore our so called perfectly designed world was not designed by a God to perfectly fit humans but instead our species best adapted to this world and therefore survived and dominated it
- therefore Darwin illustrated that ‘a God’ has nothing to do with the design of the Earth but is a result of a random evolution. Therefore the TA is completely wrong.
