Arguments For Observation Flashcards
“Assess the teleological argument” essay
A: Aquinas faith way is successful in proving there is a creator. Everything has a purpose, even things that have no intelligence. Design qua purpose. Universe must have a direction or goal. Arrow cannot hit the target without having an archer.
CA: Darwin&Dawkins evolution that has lead to animals having these characteristics
E: Tennant, the fact evolution happens can point to the fact God set physics and allowed this to happen
A:Paley’s watch. Things are too complex to be made by chance. Design qua regularity. Designer due to constant order
CA: Hume, epicurean design. Everything was made by chance. If there was disordered we wouldn’t be able to observe it
E: Paley - more chance in here being a designer. Throwing a watch in the air you wouldn’t expect it to land into place
“Assess the cosmological argument” essay
A: Way two - the argument from cause, Aquinas. Everything must be a product of a succession of cause. Nothing can be it’s own cause. Took inspo from Aristotle. Kalam everything has a cause
CA: Hume& Russell, the universe just exists, no need to ask questions “it’s a brute fact”
E: Anscombe would argue that as humans we always have ti ask why. We cant assume there is no cause. What is te cause of the universe is a valid question
A: Aquinas’ third way. Argument from contingency, everyone comes from something . Leibniz, why is there something rather than nothing. Convincing as like a baby relys on a mother.
CA: Hume believes that infinite regress could be possible. Mackie, series of hooks. Just cause aquinas finds it difficult does not mean it cannot be true
E: Infinite regress is impossible to verify. Cannot be proved or disproved by observation.
We collect observations from the past. Although not certain, through empirical evidence. This is how we live
Scholars and arguments against the teleological argument
Against Aquinas’ fifth way:
- Modern biology suggests that it is not true that everything has a purpose. Evolution suggests that most is a result of chance.
- The arrow used in Aquinas’ analogy doesn’t have a purpose - can inanimate objects actually have a purpose?
- even if everything has a purpose it doesn’t follow that everything has a good purpose - is there a good purpose to mosquitos
- doesn’t explicitly point towards the Christian God : logical fallacy
John Stuart Mill:
- Must be a faulty designer due to the amount of evil in the world (& Anthony Kenny as well)
Hume (was not responding directly to Paley):
- Aptness of analogy: if we saw a cabbage we would not infer that there was a cabbage maker. By choosing a machine Paley has already determined the result they want
- Epicurean hypothesis : the world happened by chance. If there was infinite time, infinite particles.. all combination might happen at one point. - monkeys on a type writer
- A cause must be proportional to its effect: if there is a designer it would be a faulty God.
- Design is normally a product of teamwork: possibility of more than one God - weighing scale analogy.
- attacks the design argument’s empirical validity. Hume argues that inferring the existence of a think from the existence of another requires experience of the thing that is is made conjoined with it’s designer. Or experience of similar things being made and heir designer - the universe is a unique case which ‘exceeds all human reason and enquiry’
- Criticising anthropomorphism challenges our attributes of God such as all loving
HOWEVER: reduction ad absurdum: absurd conclusions to show that it was invalid. His conclusion are less valid
Darwin
- Theory of evolution - Birds in the Galápagos Islands
Against Swinburne and Ockham’s razor:
- we could ask whether God is a simple answer
C.Hitchens
evolution is just proof of an imperfect God if anything. After describing details of suffering and extension he remarked “some design, huh?”
“Paley’s teleological argument successfully defends the existence of God” Essay
A: Paley argues that the regularity of the planets orbiting the sun. Passing of seasons must come from a designer. Design qua regularity.
CA: Dawkins: blind watchmaker - no purpose to natural selection. Evolution is random.
E: Tennant - shows that there is a God
A: Watch is too complex to be not made by a God/ designer. Everything has a purpose. Birds wings
CA: Poor design, some things dont seem to have a purpose. E.g. appendix. Flawed creator. Hume: epicurean design
E: still proves there is a designer - threw watch parts in the air wouldn’t just land in place.
Ockham’s razor: the most simple explanation is usually the correct one. Swinburne: God did it
The teleological argument
Aquinas’ fifth way (design argument):
- everything seems to have a purpose
- there must be some intelligence behind them that directs them to their purpose
- an arrow cannot achieve it’s target without an archer
- God must be directing these things
Paley’s watch argument:
- influenced by the enlightenment
- looked at how our brains were designed as well as the fin of a fish or the wing of a bird
- if you were to stumble across a watch, could not be made by chance
- must be a watch maker: if we had never seen a watch before, obvs different from a watch
- even if the watch did not work perfectly, like the world, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence of design
Modern versions of design arguments:
- F.R. Tennant: Anthropic principle - God created the precise environment in which evolution would take place. We are. Perfect distance from the sun
-Richard Swinburne: Ockham’s razor. The simplest solution would be that God planned it.
Aquinas’ cosmological argument & scholars for
Way one - argument from motion: whatever is moved must be moved by another. There cannot be infinite regress
Way two - the argument from cause: The universe is result of a succession of causes. Uncaused causer. There can not be an infinite regression of causes.
Way Three - argument from contingency: everything in the universe is contingent - it can exist or not exist. There must have been a necessary being that bought things into existence. (Aseity - God)
- Liebniz: imagine books, copied from the previous book. There is no explanation for the books. Why was there a first book? Must be a necessary being who contains the reason for existence itself
- Kalam: everything has a cause of existence, the universe began to exist, the universe has a cause of existence
Anscombe: as humans we always ask ‘why?’ or ‘what caused it?’ Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat - we do not believe there is no cause of the rabbit. Similarly asking ‘what is the purpose of the universe ‘ is valid’ (against universe brute fact)
Coppleston:Everything in the universe is contingent. The contents of the universe cannot contain the cause of the universe. The cause has to be external & self-causing, a necessary being. We should seek an explanation.
Scholars for the teleological argument
For:
- Aquinas: Aquinas’ fifth way in summa theological: how things work in the world so perfectly seems to be governed. There are non-thinking but living things such as the heart that pumps things around the body. This cannot happen by chance. Uses the analogy of an arrow - must have an archer directing it to a target. Must be an intelligent mind directing. Everything has a purpose
- McGrath: describes Aquinas’ natural theology as “a posteriori demonstration of the coherence of faith and observation” which shows the “inner consistency of belief in God”
-William Paley: Design qua purpose: watch argument in ‘natural theology’ - points to the complexity of the human brain. In the same way a human eye or the fin of a fish. If you were to stumble across a watch you would not believe that it was something that would come about by chance. If we had never seen a watch before so different from a watch. Even if the watch didn’t work properly still enough design . Similarly if there were parts of the watch’s functions we couldn’t work out
- Tennant: Anthropic principle - the world is so exactly right to create the precise environment that it must have been designed/planned. HOWEVER_Tennant seems to assume that the whole universe was made for thee sake of earth which a spec in a vast universe_
-Swinburne: Ockham razor - he was interested in the simplicity of the universe - the simplest explanation would be that God planned it. ‘Temporal order’ - the fact that objects throughout the universe have some general powers identical to those of other objects/ uniformity of the laws of physics - HOWEVER is God the most simple explanation?
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Scholars against the cosmological argument
Hume:
- Cause and effect: Hume claims that inductive reasoning - collecting data from observations can only lead to a probable rather than a completely certain conclusion. “How will we know the sun will rise tomorrow”. Therefore even though we may have observed cause and effect in nature does not mean that we can extend that principle to everything in the universe - inductive leap. it is also possible that cause and effect are just correlations.
- fallacy of composition: just because parts of the universe has a cause does not mean that as a whole the universe has a cause. Example of twenty particles: can explain the reasons of each of the 20 particles are in place, but we don’t need to ask ‘what is the whole cause’
- logical fallacies: if God is the unmoved mover or uncaused causer what is the cause of God? Could the universe be its own cause? Could the universe be necessary not contingent.
- It may not be the God of classical theism.
Mackie:
- why not accept the concept of infinite regress? Example of infinite hooks, each linked to the previous one in an infinite chain.
Bertrand Russel:
Against Way Three - does it make sense for a being to be necessary? If nothing else but God is necessary, it is impossible to argue for the concept of necessity.
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William Temple:
“it is impossible to imagine infinite regress but it is not impossible to conceive it”. ‘Infinite’ does not contradict ‘regress’. Just because it is out of the limits of imagination, does not limit things.
