design argument

Question 1

aquinas book

Answer 1

summa theologica

Question 2

paley book

Answer 2

natural theology

Question 3

hume book

Answer 3

dialogues concerning natural religion

Question 4

dawkins’ book

Answer 4

the blind watchmaker

Question 5

line of argument in aquinas’ 5th way

Answer 5

1. observed from order in the universe
2. natural bodies lack knowledge
3. yet natural bodies act for an end/goal
4. to obtain the best result would be to fully actualise your telos
   =things that dont have knowledge must be guided by something that HAS knowledge eg a seed is not conscious but grows towards its telos.

Question 6

aquinas’ 5th way is what type of argument

Answer 6

teleological, a posteriori

Question 7

example given in aquinas’ 5th way

Answer 7

eg the arrow in mid flight is directed by the archer and has a target = the unintelligent must be directed by a knowledgeable entity.

Question 8

paley’s design qua purpose argument summary

Answer 8

analogy of the watchmaker
the complexities of the world suggest that it was created perfectly by an intelligent mind: God.

Question 9

paley’s design qua regularity argument

Answer 9

evidence from astronomy and newton’s laws that the rotations of the planets obeyed universal laws. things like gravity cannot come about by chance. everything exists in an order and harmony, any different and it would not function - an external agent must have imposed this: God.

Question 10

paley’s watchmaker analogy

Answer 10

if you were walking and saw a stone on the floor - you would dismiss it and it would not be absurd to say it had lain there forever. if you came across a watch on the floor you would infer that all the parts fitted together for a purpose and has not come into existence by chance. its complex mechanisms and design infers there is an intelligent creator. in the same way we can look at the world and infer there is a creator. eg the eye is incredibly complex to be able to produce sight - the eye was designed for the purpose of sight and that this complex design implies there is an intelligent creator.

Question 11

hume how many years before paley

Answer 11

23 years before

Question 12

hume criticism 1 - questions over the nature of the designer

Answer 12

• since evil exists, what does this say about the creator? since they are responsible for the suffering and inequality in the world.
  -the world is far from a perfect design, hume jokes the universe ‘is only the first rude essay of some infant deity’ , not a perfect designer

Question 13

hume critique 2 - the use of the analogy

Answer 13

-there is no reason to assume this is the work of a monotheistic God, there is jsut as much evidence that there were many Gods involved in creation (none)
-using an analogy of a man-made machine makes the analogy guilty of ‘smuggling the conclusion into the premises’. we already know machines have creators so it is easier to arrive at the answer Paley is arguing

Question 14

hume critique 3 - the epicurean hypothesis

Answer 14

question of whether a stable universe could randomly arise. in infinite time a huge number of particles freely move around, if one combination happened to represent a stable order, then it must occur. =>hume predicts evolution

Question 15

hume critique 4 - cause and effect

Answer 15

-we cannot go form an effect to a cause greater than needed to produce the cause. gives example of set of scales where one pan is up - we have no idea how much heavier the other pan is or what each contains.
you cant find the cause of an effect by jsut using a greater cause, this cannot be proved
-Empiricists know knowledge of cause and effect is due to experience - a watchmaker has built a watch as we have seen watches being assembled. we cannot make the ‘necessary connexion’ betwee God and the creation of the universe

Question 16

Paley’s comeback to Hume machine wrong

Answer 16

-even if the machine went wrong, we would still know it had been designed
-we do not need to know the purpose of the machine to deduce that it has been designed?
-Paley is not trying to prove a modern omni-benevolent God such as the Christian god, but that the world commands enough complexity to prove its design

Question 17

when was darwin’s theory of evolution

Answer 17

1859

Question 18

dawkins on design 1 - evolution

Answer 18

although evolution could theoretically be traced back to a creator, Dawkins rejects any design in the world could be caused by random mistakes in the world and he argues advantageous variations in the world were caused by random mistakes in DNA. genes are replicators and are of a blind process of selection. he describes humans as ‘bytes and bytes of digital information’. = this ordered and functional design is the product of millions of years of brutal survival performed by the strongest and able creatures - who have exploited and killed the weakest to pass on their genes to the next generation.

Question 19

criticisms of dawkins 1 - peter williams

Answer 19

‘DNA exhibits too much design work to be the product of mere chance’

Question 20

criticisms of dawkins 2 - Michael Behe

Answer 20

‘if you focus your research on the question of how molecular machines - the basis of life - developed
, you find an eerie silence’ = there is an absence of how such complex beings developed and originated.