Arguments for the existance of God

Question 1

What are the 3 main arguments for the existance of God?

Answer 1

-Design
-Cosmological
-Ontological

Question 2

A priori

Answer 2

Arguments based on reason alone (logical argument)

Question 3

A posteriori

Answer 3

-Arguments based on experience
-Using evidence in the world (sense experience)

Question 4

What are the two types of proof?

Answer 4

Inductive = A set of premises that move towards a conclusion that is not logically necessary, but is only probable. The conclusion of the proof is not contained within the premises, making it synthetic.

Deductive = A set of premises that move towards a logically necessary conclusion. It does not conclude anything that is not already in the original premises, making it analytic.

Question 5

What is the Design Argument?

Answer 5

-Inductive, a posteriori, synthetic, teleological, analogical.
-Paley’s watch = the watch is complex and has a purpose, meaning it must have a designer + the world is complex and has a purpose, meaning it must also have a designer (God).
-The designer of the world is metaphysical and transcendent.

Question 6

Define inference.
Define analogy.

Answer 6

Inference = conclusion reached through evidence and reasoning.

Analogy = an inference where information or meaning is transferred from one subject to another.

Question 7

Strengths of the Design Argument

Answer 7

-Simple explanation - “Simplicity is always evidence for truth” (Swinburne).
-FWD agrees that evil may be unavoidable in order for God to bring about good.
-Compatible with evolution.

Question 8

Weaknesses of the Design Argument

Answer 8

-All-powerful God of Christian theism is a greater cause than needed to account for the design of the universe.
-Existence of evil.
-Hume argues the universe is more like a vegetable than a machine (evolution rather than design).
-Hume argues we have no experience of universe-making meaning our ideas are anthropomorphic.
-Nature can design itself so the universe probably designed itself in the first place.

Question 9

Anthropomorphic

Answer 9

We lift ideas from our own limited experience and impose them on the universe.

Question 10

Hume’s main arguments

Answer 10

-Even if we grant that the universe was designed, there is no evidence that this was the God of Christian theism. A lesser being could have designed the universe.
-The existence of evil and imperfection in the world suggests a limited designer.
-The way the universe works is incomparable with the way machines work.
-Design Argument is anthropomorphic

Question 11

Aquinas’ 5 ways

Answer 11

1) The argument from motion - everything in the world is moving, nothing can move/change by itself, therefore God is the Prime Mover.

2) The argument from causation - everything in the world has a cause, nothing is the cause of itself, therefore God is the first cause.

3) The argument from contingency - everything in the world is contingent (can exist or not exist), there must be something that brought things into existance, this necessary being is God.

4) The Argument from Degrees of Perfection - things in the world vary in degrees of qualities like goodness etc, there must be a perfect standard of these qualities by which all other things are measured, God is this standard.

5) The Argument from Design - this way argues that the order and purpose in the universe imply an intelligent designer who created it, God is the designer.

Question 12

What is the Cosmological Argument?

Answer 12

-Aquinas
-Links to his first 3 ways: motion, causation and contingency.
-Mostly contingency: everything is contingent, meaning at some point there must have been nothing that existed.
-Nothing can come from nothing meaning there must be a necessary being that exists. This being is God.

Question 13

Russell’s criticisms

Answer 13

-Aquinas’ 3rd Way commits the Fallacy of Composition (inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true for part of the whole).

-Rejects the claim that any being can be necessary. Saw the argument for a cause of the universe as having little meaning/significance. Argued it it a “question that has no meaning”.

-Argued the universe exists as a ‘brute fact’. “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all” (Russell)

Question 14

What is the Ontological Argument?

Answer 14

-Anselm
-A priori + deductive
-God is a necessary truth, not a contingent one.
-God is “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”.
-If God existed only in the mind, we could think of something greater, namely a God who existed in reality also.

Question 15

Gaunilo’s criticism of Anselm

Answer 15

-Used a parody of Anselm’s argument
-Gave an Ontological Argument for the existance of a ‘perfect lost island’, claiming it makes little sense because we know such an island cannot exist.
-Suggested Anselm’s argument can be used to prove the existence of an endless number of perfect objects.
-We can show that the perfect island does not exist, so Anselm’s argument does not work.

Question 16

How does Anselm respond to Gaunilo?

Answer 16

-“God cannot be conceived not to exist - God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived - That which can be conceived not to exist is not God.”

-Anselm claimed that the island cannot be perfect unless it is an island ‘than which no greater can be conceived’.
-The island would have to exist necessarily, but islands are contingent so they can’t exist necessarily.
-Therefore the logic of the argument relating to a perfect island does not apply to God.

Question 17

Kant’s objection

Answer 17

-Existence is not a real predicate, because it adds nothing to the concept of a thing.
-Kant therefore objects to Anselm’s a regiment as he argues there is no difference between our concept of God and our concept of a God that exists.
-Uses the example of Thalers (like coins). Each predicate adds to our concept of the Thalers, but saying ‘they exist’ adds nothing.