Component 1: Philosophy Of Religion And Ethics: Section A: Philosophy Of Religion

Question 1

Epistemology

Answer 1

The study of rationality and justification of belief.

Question 2

The concept of God as infinite.

Answer 2

Having no beginning nor end.
- Why is it difficult to understand this concept?
It is difficult to picture something having no beginning as everything we know about in this world has one, including ourselves.
- Karl Barth:
Karl Barth argued that humans who are finite cannot understand the infinite.

Question 3

Key attributes of God.

Answer 3

He is a perfect, personal being who is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-loving), and eternal and omnipresent (everlasting) through time.

Question 4

Omniscience.

Answer 4

Having perfect, full and complete knowledge of everything that is ever possible to know. God exists as the most perfectly possible being, and he knows all.
- Free will:
However, we need to consider that there are things that cannot fall under the umbrella of omniscience, such as letting humans have free will, because as omniscient God would know in advance what evils people will commit. This type of meaning is outside the scope of the meaning of the word omniscience.
- Is God’s knowledge knowledge like ours?
Another thing to consider is whether God’s knowledge is the same as the way we think and know about things, or does God have a different way of thinking and knowing?
- Thomas Aquinas?
For Thomas Aquinas, God did not use language because his knowledge was complete and he didn’t need to find a way of expressing it with language and symbolism as we do. Not all philosophers would agree with this notion, as to not have language or symbolism would mean there is something that God does not know.

Question 5

Eternality.

Answer 5

God is not affected by time and space and has neither beginning nor end.
- God changing through time?
In early religion, he was often regarded as completely transcendent and unapproachable, but with the rise of Christianity, God became more compassionate and would answer prayers. This could suggest that our infinite being does indeed change with time (or could we view this as simply developing our understanding of God over time: portrayals of God changing, not God himself).

Question 6

Omnipotent.

Answer 6

God can do whatever is logically possible, he is all-powerful.

Question 7

Omnibenevolence.

Answer 7

God is all-loving, all-good, merciful and morally perfect.

Question 8

Omnipresence.

Answer 8

God is everywhere and can act everywhere. The entire universe and its contents are dependant on the activity of God. God was there at creation, although he was separate from it.

Question 9

A priori

Answer 9

relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.

Question 10

A posteriori

Answer 10

relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from observations or experiences to the deduction of probable causes.

Question 11

What is the A priori argument for the existence of God?

Answer 11

Ontological argument.

Question 12

What are the A posteriori arguments for the existence of God?

Answer 12

Cosmological argument and Teleological argument.

Question 13

Who was Anselm?

Answer 13

Saint Anselm of Canterbury was born in 1033 and died in 1109. He was a Benedictine monk and archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. He came up with the first and most popular ontological argument in the eleventh century A.D.

Question 14

Anselm’s ontological argument.

Answer 14

God must exist because if not, it would be impossible to conceive of a ‘greater being’. He takes the view that the atheist has to be mistaken, because anyone who can state the word ‘God’ exists has to believe that God exists, otherwise they would have no concept of a God and could therefore not state the word, because they would not know what the word ‘God’ meant.
Anselm: ‘[God is] that than which no greater can be conceived’. If we define God as the greatest thing that we can conjure in our minds, the only thing possibly better would be if he existed, and as nothing is greater than God, he must exist.
- Summarised argument:
God is the greatest thing we can think of. Things can exist only in our imaginations, or they can also exist in reality. Things that exist in reality are always better than things that exist only in our imaginations. If God existed only in our imaginations, he wouldn’t be the greatest thing that we can think of because God in reality would be better. Therefore, God must exist in reality.
- Guanilo:
Fellow monk argued against Anselm’s claims saying his logic could be used to claim absolutely anything imaginable as true. - You could use the exact same structure of Anselm’s argument to prove literally anything exists. - doesn’t actually prove it’s existence.

Question 15

John Wisdom’s parable of the invisible gardener.

Answer 15

Person A and person B return to a garden after a long absence, and notice the plants still thriving. Person A says a gardener must have been tending the garden while they were away. Person B doubts this and agrees to wait around to see if this is true. Time passes and no gardener shows. Person A says they must be invisible. They set traps and bring bloodhounds to catch him, however they do not find a gardener. Person A claims the gardener must then be intangible aswell as unsmellable. Person B says, ‘What is the difference between an invisible, intangible, unsmellable, entirely undetectable gardener… and no gardener at all?’

Question 16

Guanilo’s criticism of Anselm’s ontological argument.

Answer 16

• Who was Guanilo?:
  The earliest critic of the ontological argument was a contemporary of Anselm’s, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutier who lived in the eleventh century.
• Guanilo’s argument:
  Guanilo argued that there must be something wrong with Anselm’s argument, because if there wasn’t, we could use its logic to prove all sorts of other things.
• Perfect island analogy:
  He came up with the analogy of a ‘perfect island’ which was purely fantasy and exists only in the mind. He argues: if it is possible to construct an ontological argument that purports to prove the existence of the perfect island, the perfect island has to exist, for an existent one. The structure of Anselm’s argument can prove the existence of this island we know doesn’t actually exist.
• Not a valid way to prove the existence of God:
  Because the argument works for the island then it is not a valid argument for the existence of God, because we have used it for something that we know does not exist. So, unless a theologist can come up with a difference between Gaunilo’s argument for the island and Anselm’s argument for God then we must refute the ontological argument as invalid.

Question 17

Anselm’s reply to Guanilo

Answer 17

He was not thinking about islands which exist in time and space, but thinking of ‘the greatest things that could not be thought of’. God, for Anselm, is not the same as a physical island but in a different category.

Question 18

Guanilo’s overload objection.

Answer 18

Guanilo’s objection of the perfect island is known as an ‘overload objection’. It doesn’t intend to show where or how the original argument goes wrong, but simply argues that if the original argument is sound then so are many other arguments about things which we don’t want to accept. This would overload the world with an extremely large number of things like perfect islands, perfect cats, perfect people, perfect books, and so on.

Question 19

Criticisms of Guanilo’s argument.

Answer 19

1. What does Guanilo mean by the word ‘perfect’? What is a perfect island for one might be completely different to what constitutes a perfect island to another.
2. In terms of the word ‘island’ all islands are perfect - the definition of an island is that it is surrounded by water. Therefore, every island is perfect as it conforms completely to this definition.
3. The possibility of a perfect God is not incoherent - aspects such as power, knowledge and goodness are not material qualities, so we cannot relate a physical island to God because they just aren’t the same.

Question 20

Who was Kant (1724-1804)?

Answer 20

The most influential criticism of the ontological argument is the argument of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who was a German philosopher and is considered to be a central figure of modern philosophy. He wrote Critique of Pure Reason published in 1781, in which he argues against the ontological argument of Anselm.

Question 21

Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument.

Answer 21

• Kant thought that because the ontological argument rests on the judgement that a God exists is greater than a God that does not, it rests on confusion. This is because:
  1. If something exists in your mind and if it also exists in reality then the reality is no better than what is in the mind.
  2. God cannot possess or lack existence.
  3. For Kant, existence isn’t a property that a thing possesses but it is a concept that corresponds to something in the world.
  4. Therefore, it is not a matter of a thing possessing a property, existence, but a concept corresponding to something in the world. So, for him existence is a concept not a property.
• Kant: ‘It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us… should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof…’
• So, it is impossible to compare a God that exists to a God that does not exist in terms of greatness. In Kant’s view a God that exists and a God that does not are identical. If you say that a God exists and he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, then a God that does not exist must be the same.
• Note that Kant does not specifically deny the existence of an external reality; his argument is mainly that humans cannot transcend the limitation of the mind so we cannot know any reality other than of phenomena (the realities that our minds can make sense of). We can only assume the reality of something outside of the phenomena through faith, because there is no satisfactory argument to prove it exists.

Question 22

Who was Paley (1743 - 1805)?

Answer 22

• William Paley (1743 - 1805) was an English clergyman and philosopher with an interest in natural theology.
• He believed that the design of the universe existed for a specific purpose and this formed the basis of his book, Natural Theology, which was published in 1802 .

Question 23

Paley’s teleological argument.

Answer 23

• His perspective was that of ‘intelligent design’, and he postulated the famous theory of the watchmaker.
• In Natural Theology Paley says: ‘…In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there’ I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I think the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have been there… There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehend its construction and designed its use…’
  1. The argument starts with the empirical object (in this case the watch)
  2. The object has a design in order to fulfil a purpose
  3. Because the object has a design, there must be an intelligent designer using the materials that already exist in the Universe to form it.
  4. The watch has a use that someone would find useful or valuable.
  5. The watch has to have exactly the right parts in the right order so that it can work. If the parts are not the right size, one is missing, or the arrangement is different, it will not work.
• In this way, Paley infers that, as the world and nature are incredibly complicated and its parts work together, they must have been designed with a specific purpose in mind.
• Furthermore, the complexity of the universe showed that it was impossible that this could happen by chance therefore it was proof that the designer of the universe was intelligent because the way that function and design fit together fulfil a specific, and very complicated and finely-balanced purpose.

Question 24

Paley: Creator of the universe more intelligent than the watchmaker.

Answer 24

Paley also states that because the universe is far more complex than the watch, the creator of the universe must be far more intelligent than the watchmaker.

Question 25

The two parts of Paley’s argument.

Answer 25

The two parts of the argument which link design and function are considered as aspects of purpose and regularity.

Question 26

Paley: Design qua purpose

Answer 26

• This states that everything within the universe has been designed with a particular form in mind to enable it to fulfil its stated purpose.
• For example, the design of a human eye to allow sight, the fact that some animals and plants live in a symbiotic relationship, fish have fins for swimming and birds have wings for flying.
• If it is not created in a a specific way it cannot fulfil its purpose; a bird with fins would be useless.

Question 27

Paley: Design qua regularity:

Answer 27

• the second part of his argument, and it can be found by observing the Universe itself. We see the regular movements of the stars and planets, and this happens as a result of certain, unchangeable, physical rules which hold the universe together.
• For Paley this is evidence of a mechanical universe because the working of the universe was in accordance with the physics.
• For example, the force of gravity which held the planets in their places was put there by a designer and if it was not quite correct it would have resulted in universal chaos.

Question 28

Paley: Teleological argument.

Answer 28

• Paley’s argument is known as the teleological argument because it looks at the purpose of creation (telos is Greek, meaning purpose).
• It is also referred to as the design argument because it looks for the evidence of God in designing the universe.