Philosophy - Arguments For the Existence of God Flashcards
What type of argument is the design argument for the existence of God?
a posteriori
Where does the evidence to support the design argument come from?
The evidence to support the argument comes from the natural world as supporters argue the world displays clear evidence of order, purpose and design.
Is the design argument inductive?
yes
What is an inductive argument?
an argument that reaches a conclusion based on strong probability instead of conclusive proof
Cicero quote about divinity and superior intelligence
‘What could be more clear or obvious when we look up to the sky and contemplate the heavens, than that there is some divinity or superior intelligence?’ – Cicero (79 BCE – 51 BCE)
What are the design arguments 3 premises and conclusion
Premise 1: The world contains order, regulatory, purpose and beauty
Premise 2: By looking at an object containing these properties, we may infer that is was designed
Premise 3: The world is an object containing these properties
Conclusion: The world was designed and the designer we call ‘God’
What is a premise?
A premise is a statement or a preposition. You add premises together to reach a conclusion.
Examples of apparent order, regularity, purpose and beauty in the world
The sun setting, us sleeping, going to the toilet, the seasons, carbon cycle, water cycle
Challenges to the design arguments
Disability (if I have been given an eye but can’t see how it this showing designed purpose?)
Who was St Thomas Aquinas
13th Century Christian Scholar
Who was St Thomas Aquinas’ main inspiration
His main inspiration was Aristotle and his 4 causes
What book did St Thomas Aquinas wrote? Describe the pages dedicated o God’s existence
He wrote a book called the ‘Summa Theologica’, with 4 pages dedicated to God’s existence with 5 ways/proofs for God
What are St Thomas Aquinas’ 5 ways/proofs for God?
- Unmoved mover
- Uncaused cause
- Necessary being
- Moral
- Design
What does Thomas Aquinas argue regarding the archer
- He argues that intelligent objects (like the arrow of an archer), can only be aimed towards a goal (like the target of an archer), with the guiding presence of an intelligent being (like the archer). The intelligent being, he argues, is God.
What is Thomas Aquinas’ argument? What does this mean?
- He says this argument is a ‘design qua purpose’ argument because it seeks to show that the universe has direction and a goal (in other words it has a purpose) and that it is enabled by God.
How is Aquinas’ belief similar to that of Aristotles?
- Aquinas’ teleological belief makes use of a belief that Aristotle held, that everything in the universe has telos (purpose). Aquinas does not offer specific examples, but we can consider Aristotle’s example that ducks have webbed feet for the purpose of swimming faster.
What difference is there between Aristotle’s argument and Aquinas’ argument?
- But one crucial difference between Aristotle and Aquinas is that Aquinas did not think that this telos came about naturally, but rather Aquinas argued that there must be an intelligent being behind this purposefulness; someone who designed the webbed feet of the duck for the purpose of swimming.
Basically what is Aquinas’ argument?
- Basically, Aquinas argued that everything has a purpose (telos) and that a designer (God) designed us intelligently with the purpose of helping us reach our telos, just like how ducks were designed with webbed feet to help them reach there telos.
3 important extracts from Thomas’ Aquinas ‘summa theologica’ regarding his teleological argument
‘Therefore some intelligent being exists which directs all natural things to their end. This being we call God’
‘Achieve their end by design and not by chance’
‘Something without intelligence could not move towards an end’
Describe David Hume’s weak analogy argument
Cannot be assumed that it is obvious to everyone how the world, like a watch, is formed regularly and for a purpose. You can’t compare manmade objects to the natural world, they are completely different so we cannot draw the same conclusions regarding whether there was a designer or not.
Describe David Hume’s order does not prove design argument
Self-sustaining order could have come about by chance. Hume uses Epicurus’ idea of infinite time to argue that apparent design could happen at random. We have no worlds to compare our order to, maybe our world has very little order in fact. We have to have some order to survive, but we can’t prove this order came from God.
Describe David Hume’s not the christian God argument
We have a finite and imperfect world; there is no need to assume that there must be an infinite and perfect God behind it. We do not know, looking at the world, whether God is clever, or good, or loving. He could have been stupid and copying someone else’s ideas or stumbled upon this design after countless trials and errors.
Describe David Hume’s more than one God argument
The world could have been made by a committee or team of Gods (or maybe even demons). Many people work together to make machines – the analogy points to there being more than one God.
Describe David Hume’s universe is unique argument
The universe is unique, so we are unable to say what it is like, what it could have been like or how it came into being, because we cannot have experience of any other way that things might have been. In other words, we cannot assume that the universe has a designer because we have no clear evidence that the universe was designed (no one was there to witness the event).