Teleological argument - Part 2 Flashcards
What does Darwin say about design?
This world looks well designed due to natural selection and survival of the fittest. A lucky, chance mutation of genes enables some living organisms to have advantageous features which enables them to survive. They pass this advantage onto their off spring. Thus everything will always look well designed for its environment. Nature is the designer, not God.
What was Tennant’s Anthropic principle?
The cosmos is constructed for the development of intelligent life. If there had been just a minute change, then any life at all would have been unlikely to develop.
What does Tennant say about analysing the world?
The fact that the world can be analysed in a rational manner points to a divine designer.
What does Tennant say about sustaining life?
The way that the inorganic world has provided the basic necessities required for sustaining life points to a divine designer.
What does Tennant say about evolution?
The progress of evolution towards the emergence of intelligent human life points to a divine designer.
What was Tennant’s aesthetic argument?
The universe is not only ordered but beautiful at all levels. Humans can appreciate this beauty but this appreciation is not necessary for survival or development of life. This points to a divine designer.
What does Behe say about evolution?
Intelligent design and irreducible complexity. Human eye could not have evolved. If you take a part away it would not work. All the parts have to have come together at the same time for the eye to work and that needs an intelligent designer.
How does Dawkins respond to Behe?
There is no such thing as irreducible complexity. Evolution can explain the eye. It existed in the past in a much simpler form e.g. light sensitive cells and over millions of years, evolved to be as it is today. All different stages of the evolution of the eye can still be seen in the animal kingdom e.g. snail’s eye vs human eye.
What does Hume say about cause and effect?
Hume says that we cannot make assumptions between cause and effect. We can see the world (the effect) but we cannot conclude anything about the designer God from the effects.
how does Professor Polkinghorne respond to Hume?
Gave the analogy that if you were rowed up in front of a firing squad and they all aimed and missed, you would never conclude that this was chance.
How do believers respond to suffering in the world?
There may be a good reason why God designed suffering. Hick and Irenaeus would argue that it is to develop humans and their virtues.
How does Craig respond to Hume?
Infinity doesn’t make sense. this is because you cannot add to infinity e.g. if you have a library with infinite books and you add a book, you still have infinite books. If the universe was infinite, you could not add events to it but we do. Therefore, it is not infinite and so there is no such thing as infinite time. The Epicurean hypothesis fails.
How does Tennant criticise evolution?
“The survival of the fittest presuppose the arrival of the fit” - there is a jump from moving from a description of how natural selection operates upon existence, to the assumption that natural selection also provides the explanation for that existence.
