Chapter 5 - The Existence Of God through Observation Flashcards
1
Q
What is Aquinas’ fifth way? Use quotes [3]
A
- ‘Things which lack knowledge […] act for a purpose’
- ‘They achieve their end by design and not by chance’
- From this he derived that the designer ‘which directs all natural things’ is God
2
Q
Who was Aquinas influenced by? Name the key difference, in the design argument, as well as evaluation of the thesis in today’s world.
A
- Aristotle is more concerned with how things fit together, while Aquinas is preoccupied with the notion of purpose, which he believed comes directly from the will of God
- An existentialist approach would not align with this
- This may not be plausible in today’s more secularised, pluralist and relativist society
3
Q
What did Paley’s design arguement support? What was it?
A
- It was supported by Paley’s design argument
- Paley basically said that a watch’s composition informs us that it has a maker
- The world and humans (i.e the eye) are intricate and serve specific purposes - they are too specific and intentional to not have been designed by someone
- The world is too complex and intelligent to have occurred randomly
4
Q
Evaluate Paley’s watchmaker [2 points]
A
This is not the most valid argument, since a watch is mechanical and is not naturally occurring - it is not made without our knowing, it is made to serve us, while humans and life are not mechanical, especially when considering how this idea directly contradicts the theory of evolution
- It also leaves many questions unanswered; is the designer still active - the watch maker makes the watch and leaves it, is that the case for us?, the watch is made definitively to tell the time - what were we made for definitively and why? Is the god involved in the universe now?
5
Q
Name 2 other philosophers, who supported Aquinas’s fifth way and how they did this.
A
- F.R. Tennant’s anthropic principle - the universe is so precisely fit for human life, it must have been planned
- This assumes that the universe is centred around humans, as opposed to humans being a byproduct of the universe
This is directly opposed by the Epicurean thesis - Richard Swinburne; simplicity and Ockham’s razor
- Ockham’s razor - the simplest hypothesis, explanation or solution is usually the best one
- Simple doesn’t mean correct, because there are often aspects of situations that are not seen on the surface or when adopting a simplistic approach
- A developed argument doesn’t lack validity - Swinburne’s approach was rather reductionist
6
Q
List 5 objections - in detail.
A
- Hume’s aptness of analogy - the model used by enlightenment thinkers that often shapes their argument; what we choose to say the world is like shapes the outcome of the argument.
- A cabbage has a purpose but does not have maker, in the same way that a watch does - is the universe any more like a watch than it is like a cabbage? Or is the world just a complex natural object?
- This can be easily refuted, since it still has a purpose, so it may have been created by God
- Hume’s utilisation of the Epicurean thesis
- Any world we are aware of has to fit together and any significant existence has to have a large degree of stability
- Given enough time, every possible combination of occurrence could give us the outcome we have now
- This is a very convincing argument, especially from a more scientific standpoint
- Hume’s Argument from effect to cause
- We cannot go from an effect to a cause greater than that needed to produce the cause - we haven’t seen God, so we can’t make the assumption that he exists; it’s a leap
- The problem of evil (brought up by John Stuart Mill) is also applicable since the world and universe are imperfect and humans are natural, but if we all serve our god-ordained purposes, surely unjustifiable crime like rape or terrorism wouldn’t occur
- Aside from evil derived from free will (moral evil), there is also natural evil - illness, plague, volcanoes, earthquakes etc, which are indicative of a faulty design
- This can be applied as an objection to Paley’s watchmaker analogy too, but when using it to evaluate, remember that a flawed God is still a God and higher power
- Modern biology suggests that not everything has a significant purpose - one could assert that the noun ‘purpose’ is indicative of a mental state, but not all natural things possess mental states. Aquinas’s example was that an arrow has no purpose, but rather the archer directing it assigns it one, but if not all can be explained, this compromises the validity of his fifth way
- Evolution allows us to trace the infinite regress to an extent
7
Q
Name Aquinas’ first 3 (of 5) ways, in order.
A
- The Prime Mover
- The First Cause
- Contingency and necessity
8
Q
What does Aquinas’ first way refer to? How does this differ to Aristotelian ideas?
A
- Things always move about in the universe, causing change
- To explain this, there must be an uncaused causer who initiates movement by a deliberate act of will
- According to Aquinas, this must be a consequence of a creative an of God
- This differs from Aristotle’s Prime Mover, who was indifferent and not involved with the universe
9
Q
What flaws are possessed by the first way? Evaluate.
A
- The chain could go back infinitely, since one could accredit the existence of the world as we know it to evolution and the rather coincidental big bang theory
- A Prime Mover would offer a simpler explanation, especially because there are so many complexities in the universe that it is hard to diminish its existence to chance, but there is a lack of empirical evidence
- Epicurean thesis refutes this
- The Prime Mover being uncaused doesn’t solve the perpetual chain of causes, it simply simplifies the chain to an extent
- If the prime mover has always existed, the infinite regress of causes still exists - so where does the prime mover come from?
- Perhaps one could assert that there is a gap between the complexity and omnipotence of God and the temporal, simplified and often reductionist nature of humans, which we simply cannot comprehend
10
Q
Describe Aquinas’ second way. Give one quote.
A
- Everything has a cause and effect - where did the universe come from?
- There must be a cause for everything in the universe
- This must be a God because nothing causes God because that would be a contradiction
- ‘Without a cause, there is no effect’
11
Q
Evaluate the objections relevant to the second way.
A
- Hume’s objection is rooted in his question surrounding the notion of causation
- According to him, causation is an intellectual puzzle and the reductionist ease with which we use the terms ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ disguise the complexity of the notion
- If I drop something on the floor, you could assume that I dropped it by accident, but you can’t know for certain
- We don’t see a cause, we assume it because we see an action that likely followed it. It is our mind’s way of understanding experiences by creating a cause for an effect
- Because of this, he says that instead of saying ‘x causes y’ we should say that ‘whenever x, y’
- This basically says that what we call causation is just statistical correlation and that correlation does not mean causation
- The Epicurean thesis can be used as an objection here also, but it doesn’t necessarily refute the existence of God - specific coincidental conditions could be regulated and managed by God - think about the timing
- EVALUATION: David Hume’s objection does weaken Aquinas’s argument since Hume’s objection of causation directly applies to Aquinas’s theory. Aquinas claims that God must deliberately and through his will cause change and motion in the world, however Hume’s objection suggests that God cannot be named as the cause of the existences of movement, motion and change, especially since God cannot be tested - his existence is assumed, not scientifically proven through empirical evidence.
12
Q
Describe Aquinas’ third way. Evaluate.
A
- Contingency refers to a dependance on something, in order to exist
- From this, Aquinas derived that there must be something upon which everything is dependent, but is in itself independent
- He assumes that there was a time which nothing existed, after which a God created the universe,but there is no reason to assume this
- He also ignores the possibility of an overlap of contingent beings, which in itself could lead to the previous point, since it further decreases the likelihood of the occurrence of a period of time where nothing existed
13
Q
Describe two issues with the third way. Include a quote.
A
- Prominent figures like Bertrand Russel have said that we can comprehend the concept of necessity when looking at necessary truths, e.g. a square has 4 sides, but we cannot see God or his attributes that are necessary; Aquinas does not mention what truly makes God necessary and the lack of empirical evidence makes it impossible to argue that we have any concept of a necessary being that we can attribute to God in the way in which Aquinas does
- The possibility of an infinite regress also exists; this applies to the whole argument
- In ‘Mens Creatrix’, Archbishop William Temple said that ‘it is impossible to imagine infinite regress [but] it is not impossible to conceive it
- ‘What this means is that while we can’t imagine infinite regress, we can comprehend it
- From this, we can learn that God is not necessarily the most reasonable explanation for how things came to be
14
Q
Describe Leibniz and his principle of sufficient reason. Evaluate and name a philosopher who agrees its him.
A
- Modern version of the cosmological argument
- Many philosophers like Paul Tillich have asserted that God alone allows us to explain what exists
- This line of thought was pioneered by Leibniz
- His principle of sufficient reason asserts that
- For any entity that exists,there is sufficient reason to explain its existence
- For every event, there is sufficient reason to explain its occurrence
- For every truth, there is a sufficient explanation for why it is true
- He doesn’t distinguish between cause and explanation
- This is seen with F.C. Copleston also
- Copleston said ‘there are […] beings in the world which do not contain in themselves the reason for their existence’
- The argument basically suggests that nothing happens without a reason and that God must be a rational designer, who must have created us and the universe with a purpose in mind
- Leibniz also claimed that God is guided by prudes and rationality and hence created this world, which is the ‘best of all possible worlds’
15
Q
Name the main objecting philosopher and his thoughts.
A
- Bertrand Russell believed that both were guilty of a logical fallacy or ‘the fallacy of composition’
- This is the assumption that if parts of something are true, the whole thing is true
- He also asserts that humans’ psychological preoccupation with finding an explanation does not mean that there truly is one; there is no proof, so one cannot sweat that there even ‘must’ be an explanation
