Argument to prove the existence of god Flashcards
Potential questions
Arguments for the existence of GOD
-Gaunilo and kant
-Hume
-Design as an AO2
Religious langauge
Falsification AO2
Responses to these challenges:
eschatological verification with reference to Hick
language as an expression of a Blik with reference to R.M.Hare
religious language as a language game with reference to Wittgenstein.
Miracles
Significance of these views for religion AO2
Differing understandings of ‘miracle’
realist and anti-realist views AO1
violation of natural law or natural event. AO1
Religious experiences
The challenges to religious experience from science.
Religious responses to those challenges.
Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony.
david hume background info
David Hume addressed the Design Argument in his famous book, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). The book was published after Hume’s death, because attacking religious beliefs was considered a sensitive subject.
The book takes the form of a play, in which three characters debate religion.
CLEANTHES supports natural religion (using a posteriori arguments to prove God’s existence rather than appealing to the Bible) and puts forward the Design Argument
PHILO is a sceptic who argues against the Design Argument (but doesn’t go so far as to say God doesn’t exist)
DEMEA is the other character who offers a different support for religion but these views aren’t important here
what is cleanthes augment
Cleanthes sets out the Design Argument as an analogy:
P1 The world resembles a finely tuned machine
P2 All machines we know of are created by intelligence
C The world must also be caused by intelligence - but an intelligence greater than any human intelligence
At the end of the book, Hume claims that he thinks Cleanthes has won the argument, but he’s probably being disingenuous. Readers agree that the best arguments belong to Philo - who offers Hume’s own views. By crediting Cleanthes with winning, Hume is showing respect for religious sensitivities, while setting out the reasons why he thinks they’re wrong.
hume cleanthes on a small part of the universe resembling the universe in its entirety
Philo argues that the Design Argument doesn’t work as an analogy. The analogy between machines and the universe is weak. Even if one part of the universe resembles a machine, the universe as a whole is so enormous, we can’t be sure if the analogy extends everywhere.
quote from cleanthes on the faulty analogy
A VERY SMALL PART OF THIS GREAT SYSTEM, DURING A VERY SHORT TIME, IS VERY IMPERFECTLY DISCOVERED TO US; AND DO WE THEN PRONOUNCE DECISIVELY CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF THE WHOLE? - PHILO
philo on we have we have no experience of world making
Philo explains that we have no experience of world-making, whereas we know how machines are made. Perhaps it is perfectly normal for universes to look like this, or perhaps this universe is an oddity. But we can’t know just by looking at things that humans have made.
TO ASCERTAIN THIS REASONING, IT WERE REQUISITE THAT WE HAD EXPERIENCE OF THE ORIGIN OF WORLDS; AND IT IS NOT SUFFICIENT, SURELY, THAT WE HAVE SEEN SHIPS AND CITIES ARISE FROM HUMAN ART AND CONTRIVANCE - PHILO
Hume is pointing out that for an analogy to work two things have to be SIMILAR. But we just don’t know enough about universes and how they are made to be able to tell whether it’s similar to a “ship” or a “city”.
The analogy between the universe and a machine does not work because it is not an analogy between two separately existing things, but between the universe as a whole and certain parts of the universe. An analogy between a machine and the universe might be like trying to figure out how an entire man develops by looking at how a single hair in his head grows.
Fom being a result of reproduction and not design
Philo claims it isn’t true that all order in the world is the result of intelligence. We know that living creatures have the form they have because of reproduction, not design. So why suppose that the universe is like a man-made machine? The universe might be more like a big vegetable than a big machine.
Finally, Philo attacks inductive reasoning. We can do this when we repeatedly experience causes followed by effects. But God is a unique cause and the universe is a unique effect. Philo concludes that the argument from design is not so much inductive reasoning as a whimsical conjecture.
Philo on anthropomorphising God
Philo goes on to attack the idea that the Design Argument’s conclusion - the God of the Bible - is a valid one. He does this by showing how anthropomorphic it is. “Anthropomorphic” means treating something non-human as if it was human. The Design Argument, especially in the analogy form used by Cleanthes (and Paley), compares God to a human designer, but with more power. Philo shows how disastrous this is.
Philo starts of arguing that our universe could be a lot better than it is. It might be a very poor universe compared to what it could be.
THIS WORLD, FOR AUGHT HE KNOWS, IS VERY FAULTY AND IMPERFECT, COMPARED TO A SUPERIOR STANDARD - PHILO
Even if this universe is the best possible universe, the designer might not be a perfect designer. Perhaps he got lucky, or he copied it from other designers, or else this was a final successful attempt after a string of failures.
[THIS WORLD] WAS ONLY THE FIRST RUDE ESSAY OF SOME INFANT DEITY, WHO AFTERWARDS ABANDONED IT, ASHAMED OF HIS LAME PERFORMANCE - PHILO
In this famous passage, Philo suggests wild conclusions that could be drawn from the Design Argument. If not an “infant deity”, how about an incompetent one who gets laughed at by the other gods?
IT IS THE WORK ONLY OF SOME DEPENDENT, INFERIOR DEITY; AND IS THE OBJECT OF DERISION TO HIS SUPERIORS
Or if God isn’t a baby or an idiot, couldn’t he be old or even dead?
IT IS THE PRODUCTION OF OLD AGE AND DOTAGE IN SOME SUPERANNUATED DEITY; AND EVER SINCE HIS DEATH, HAS RUN ON AT ADVENTURES, FROM THE FIRST IMPULSE AND ACTIVE FORCE WHICH IT RECEIVED FROM HIM
Hume isn’t seriously suggesting that God has died and left the universe to run on without him. He’s pointing out a flaw with the Design Argument that these sil
gaunilo critic ontological argument
One problem with Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God is that it invites parody. Parallel arguments purporting to prove the existence of any perfect thing at all can be constructed. This objection was first raised by one of Anselm’s contemporaries, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who constructed an ontological argument for the existence of the perfect island in his On Behalf of the Fool.
1. Gaunilo invited his readers to think of the greatest, or most perfect, conceivable island.
2. As a matter of fact, it is likely that no such island actually exists.
3. However, his argument would then say that we aren’t thinking of the greatest conceivable island, because the greatest conceivable island would exist, as well as having all those other desirable properties.
4. Since we can conceive of this greatest or most perfect conceivable island, then it must exist.
Gaunilo argued that this line of argument was no less absurd than Anselm’s orginal argument.
Whats is Kants critic of the ontological aruement
Immanuel Kant criticised what he first termed the Ontological Argument at the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Focussing on the argument as presented by Rene Descartes, which suggested that existence is a perfection and thus a necessary attribute of God, who is a supremely perfect being, in the way that having three sides is a necessary property of a triangle or having valleys is a necessary property of being a hill – Kant concluded that the argument was “so much labour and effort lost”. For Kant, existence is not a perfection and is wrongly used as a predicate. He used the example of a sum of money – the difference between a real and imaginary sum is not that the real sum is worth more, just that the real sum might be in my pocket. Existence is not a predicate and does not describe the properties of an object, it just informs me whether there is such an object in the real world. Bertrand Russell developed this point, using the example of the claim “the present King of France is bald”. Russell pointed out that although the claim seems sensible, as if it is referring to the properties of the King of France’s head and might be either true or false, in actual fact, the claim is meaningless because there is no present King of France for the claim to refer to and thus no way that the claim is either true or false. Existence is not a predicate, it is not just another property that the present King of France does or does not have, it is the ground of meaning on which all sensible claims must be made
