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ALevel RS > Design Argument > Flashcards

Design Argument Flashcards

1
Q

Who said ‘With such signs of forethought in the design of living creatures, can you doubt that they are the work of choice or design?’

A

Socrates

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2
Q

The design argument is also called

A

The teleological argument

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3
Q

The basic argument for design goes something like

A
  • The universe has order, regularity and a sense of purpose to it.
  • The complexity of the universe shows evidence for design.
  • Such design could only have been designed by a designer.
  • The designer of the universe is God.
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4
Q

What is Design Qua Regularity?

A

The order and regularity that is evident in the universe is evidence for a designer.

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5
Q

Example of order and regularity in the universe.

A

A formal garden shows evidence of a designer because of lack of order (weeds) and regularity (arrangement of flowers). It came about through the work of a gardener, not by chance.

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6
Q

What is Thomas Aquinas’s fifth way?

A

He stated that everything is directed towards an end and as inanimate objects have no rational powers then they must be directed to this purpose by some external power.

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7
Q

What does Aquinas argue from in his fifth way?

A

Design qua regularity.

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8
Q

Why didn’t Aquinas believe the existence of God is self evident?

A

Because no human being could hear, touch, feel, smell or taste God. Our natural senses did not help us discover God.

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9
Q

Which two things in nature, taken together, does Aquinas think imply design?

A

The first is order (‘things act always, or nearly always, in the same way’).
The second is that the order in nature seems to be beneficial.

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10
Q

What is Design qua purpose?

A

This aspect of the design argument looks at design in relation to the ways in which the parts of the universe appear to fit together for some greater purpose.

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11
Q

What part of design does Paley argue in his watch analogy?

A

Design qua purpose.

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12
Q

What was Paley’s analogy about the watch?

A

That someone would know a pocket watch had been designed by a watch maker or designer, just from looking at the watch.
The universe is even more complex and there is even more order in the universe than a watch so there’s even more chance of a designer.

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13
Q

What was Paley’s analogy about the eye?

A

It is designed for the purpose of seeing, the various parts function in complex ways to produce sight.

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14
Q

What does Paley’s second argument argue from design?

A

Design qua regularity.

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15
Q

What was Paley’s second argument?

A

He used evidence from astronomy and Newton’s laws to say that the planets obeying th same universal laws couldn’t have happened by chance and an external agent must have imposed order.
Slight irregularities would have resulted in chaos.

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16
Q

What did Arthur Brown argue?

A

The ozone layer’s purpose, to filter out ultra-violet rays to protect life, couldn’t have happened by chance. ‘A wall which prevents death to every living thing’.

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17
Q

What does David Hume say the universe could have been designed by, rather than the classical theistic God?

A
  • Several lesser gods.
  • An apprentice god who has moved on to create better worlds.
  • An evil god.
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18
Q

How did Hume criticise the design argument? (quote)

A

‘The world is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard’

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19
Q

Hume’s challenges to design.

A
  • Human’s don’t have enough knowledge of creation to know there’s only one designer.
  • It’s not a good analogy to compare the universe to a vast machine - the universe is something that grows of its own accord not made by hand and suggests many gods.
  • Creation can’t be discussed in human terms because God transcends human understanding
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20
Q

Hume’s challenges from design.

A
  • Even if the world was designed it can’t be proven the designer is God.
  • If the world is ordered it could be because of chance - Epicurean analysis
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21
Q

What is the Epicurean analysis?

A
  • The initial state of the universe was chaotic but gradually formed an ordered system.
  • The universe is eternal so in unlimited time it was inevitable that order would develop.
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22
Q

John Mill’s challenge to the design argument

A
  • Argued that the Design Argument points to God not existing.
  • Evil and suffering do not point to an all-loving, powerful, knowing God.
  • At least one of the attributes must be missing so it goes against the theistic God.
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23
Q

‘But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse our deaf world’

A

C.S. Lewis’ response to John Mill’s challenge.

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24
Q

Immanuel Kant’s challenge to design

A
  • Our minds make sense of chaos and believe it to be ordered when it’s not.
  • Asks ‘who designed the designer’
  • We can’t find God with our senses and observable knowledge is the only truth.
  • However said it was the ‘oldest, the clearest’ argument.
25
Q

Natural selection gives the appearance of design so people mistakenly think there’s a designer.

A

Dawkins using Darwinism to challenge design

26
Q

What does Dawkins say in his book The Selfish Gene

A
  • The function of genes is to replicate.
  • Organisms, inc. humans, are just vehicles/packaging for the ‘replicators’.
  • Family etc. is just an environment created to ensure the survival of genes.
27
Q

What are memes?

A

Cultural inheritance and ideas and comes from the Greek for ‘something imitated’

28
Q

What is the Anthropic Principle?

A
  • The universe is constructed for the development of intelligent life.
  • If there was just a tiny change in values for example the charge of an electron, no life would be able to develop on earth.
  • created by Brandon Carter.
  • they deny that a chain of coincidences led to the evolution of human life.
  • Accepts that evolution is part of God’s plan for the development on intelligent life.
29
Q

Who said that the creator has given creation the freedom to b itself so it’s not that obvious to see God’s presence and activity in the world. He uses the Anthropic Principle to back it up.

A

John Polkinghorne

30
Q

What does Tennant say about design?

A
  • The universe isn’t chaotic.

- Evolution created an environment in which intelligent life could exist.

31
Q

What is the aesthetic argument?

A
  • Tennant said the universe is not just ordered but is beautiful.
  • Humans can enjoy art, literature, music even though it’s not necessary for survival.
  • Therefore it can’t be the result of natural selection alone.
32
Q

What did Swinburne reformulate the design argument?

A

Darwinism undercuts the classical design argument, but evolution and religion can have common ground.

33
Q

What is reformulation from temporal order?

A
  • The world once might have been chaotic and Darwin might have got it (mostly) right.
  • The fact the world now has regularity and order is not chance, God made sure it came about.
  • evolution explains events using scientific laws.
  • scientists cannot explain why these happen
  • thinks it comes down to probabilities: is it more probable that order is due to random chance or design?
34
Q

What is Occam’s Razor?

A

The simplest explanation is probably correct..

35
Q

How does Swinburne use Occam’s Razor?

A

For reformulation from temporal order: God made the world is the simplest explanation so is the most probable.

36
Q

What is argument from spatial order?

A
  • Evolution only occurred because the conditions were right.
  • The initial conditions from the big bang had to be just right for the universe to evolve in a way to produce a life supporting planet.
  • God made sure it was all right and everything was designed to pdevelop the way it did.
37
Q

Strengths of the design argument.

A
  • Very scientific: science and religion work together means it is based on real evidence which can be looked at and tested.
  • The order in the world suggests it wasn’t created purely by accident (anthropic principle
38
Q

Weaknesses of the design argument?

A
  • Although the world is ordered and there might have been an intelligent designer involved, there’s nothing to prove it was God.
  • If we question why we exist, what stops us questioning why God exists? We could be here by fortunate chance.
39
Q

What did Aquinas say to illustrate his arrow analogy for his fifth way?

A

‘as an arrow is directed by an archer… an intelligent being exists that directs all natural things.’

40
Q

Who says that the universe shows a manner of design that ‘exceeds all computation’

A

William Paley

41
Q

Conspiration

A

The way many things have combined to make the world what it is. Tennant uses this as evidence of design.

42
Q

Conspection

A

What we can observe scientifically points clearly to design according to Tennant

43
Q

A posteriori

A

The design argument is because it’s based on external evidence

44
Q

‘The number of teats in a species bears proportion to the number of young.’

A

Paley’s argument from the lacteal system

45
Q

‘the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker’

A

William Paley

46
Q

Tennant

A

Uses aesthetic argument.
Says world isn’t chaotic.
Says evolution created an environment where intelligent life can exist.

47
Q

Dawkins arguments against design

A

Overwhelming evidence for evolution.
Only purpose is of DNA is to replicate.
Natural processes seem cruel.
No evidence for a designer.

48
Q

Bayes’ theorem of probability

A

It is far more probable that God not science is an explanation for design

49
Q

Weak anthropic principle

A

Life was not inevitable from the beginning but just happened to have occurred.

50
Q

Strong anthropic principle

A

Conditions for the development of human life were intrinsic to Big Bang, the purpose of the design was that intelligent life would develop on earth.

51
Q

“If every time we turned a rock over we saw the message Made By God on it, then I guess everybody would have to assume that we did live in a universe of his design”

A

Paul Davies accepts there is a reason for organisation in the universe and that someone designed it.

52
Q

Who uses the a priori argument that without God the existence of the world would be very improbable

A

Swinburne

53
Q

To say the universe was created by chance is ‘irrational to the point of absurdity’

A

Swinburne

54
Q

‘Telos’ means

A

End or purpose

55
Q

“The principle of natural selection.. Is absolutely compatible with a belief in God”

A

Samuel Bishop

56
Q

What is Swinburne’h machine-making machine analogy

A

If a robot made cars, you could tell the robot is intelligent to intelligently design complex ordered things

57
Q

Nature is not just beautiful in places, it is saturated with beauty

A

Tennant: aesthetic argument

58
Q

‘They achieve their end designedly’

A

Aquinas

59
Q

How can anything that exists from eternity have a cause

A

Hume

ALevel RS (8 decks)

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