The Teleological and Cosmological Argument

Question 1

What did Aquinas observe?

Answer 1

Aquinas observed that natural objects/beings do not behave randomly, but moved towards a certain goal or purpose (end/telos).

Question 2

What proves that natural objects are goal orientated?

Answer 2

Flowers can move in alignment with the sun throughout the day to get more sunlight. An acorn can grow into an oak tree. Water falls as rain and then evaporates as part of the water-cycle. The planets orbit the Sun.

Question 3

Why can objects not direct themselves and must be redirected by a greater intelligence?

Answer 3

This is because they are either non-intelligent or insufficiently intelligent. Such things cannot move towards an end unless directed by a being which does have intelligence. A thing cannot reliably move with a purpose unless an intelligent being had that purpose in mind and directed it

Question 4

How does God direct objects?

Answer 4

This is because they are either non-intelligent or insufficiently intelligent. Such things cannot move towards an end unless directed by a being which does have intelligence. A thing cannot reliably move with a purpose unless an intelligent being had that purpose in mind and directed it

Question 5

What is Paley’s design argument referred to as?

Answer 5

Paley’s design qua Purpose

Question 6

What is a summary of Paley’s design argument?

Answer 6

Paley’s argument that the combination of complexity and purpose, which we observe in natural objects/beings, is best explained by a designer.

Question 7

What is the analogy of the watch?

Answer 7

If you were walking on a heath and come across a rock, you could easily think that it had always been lying there. However, the situation is quite different if instead we came across a watch. It is composed of parts which are intricately formed so as to produce a motion which is so meticulously regulated as to point out the hour and minute of the day, being it’s purpose. Thewatch could not have come about by chance nor been there forever because it has Complexity & Purpose. This must mean it had a designer – a watch maker.

Question 8

How is the human eye similar to a watch?

Answer 8

The human eye is arranged to fulfil the purpose of enabling us to see.

Question 9

How does is Paley similar from Aquinas’ designer/God?

Answer 9

This designer must have a mind, because design requires a designer who has a purpose in mind and know how a certain arrangement of particular parts will bring about that purpose.

Question 10

Why is analogy a strength within design arguments?

Answer 10

When we cannot directly observe the cause of something, it is empirically valid to turn to analogy. If we can explain something similar, it is reasonable to expect the unobservable but analogous thing to have an analogous explanation.

Question 11

How does Hume criticise design arguments?

Answer 11

Even if we could claim an analogy between natural things and man-made things, for all we know there may be no analogy between their origin. Hume is pointing to how radically disanalogous the creation of the universe could be to anything else we know of.

Question 12

What is an advantage of both Aquinas and Paley’s argument of design?

Answer 12

They both accept that the design argument at most shows there is some designer of great power, but it doesn’t prove the Christian God in particular.

Question 13

What does McGrath say about Aquinas’ argument?

Answer 13

“A posteriori demonstration of the coherence of faith and observation” which shows the “inner consistency of belief in God”. The design argument shows that it is reasonable to believe in a designer.

Question 14

What is Humes “committee of Gods” objection?

Answer 14

Even if we had evidence of design in the universe, that would not support the claim that it was designed by the God of classical theism. There could be multiple designers – ‘a committee of Gods’. So, the design argument doesn’t justify monotheism.

Question 15

How does Swinburne’s use of ockhams razor object to the “committee of Gods”?

Answer 15

One God being responsible for the design of the universe is a simpler explanation than multiple. Swinburne also points to the uniformity of the laws of physics as suggesting a single designer.

Question 16

Why is Swinburne’s use of ockham’s razor insufficient?

Answer 16

Simply showing the logical consistency of God with observation is insufficient. If that strengthens faith, then that shows that faith is irrational.

Question 17

How does design arguments attempt to use empirical knowledge to counter arguments raised by scholars such as Dawkins?

Answer 17

Design arguments directly targets that position by attempting an inductive proof of God. They use a posteriori evidence as premises to inductively support the conclusion that God exists.

Question 18

How does Humes evidential problem of evil counter to design arguments?

Answer 18

A posteriori observation of the world cannot provide a basis to conclude that a perfect God exists because the world contains imperfections like evil. The use of the problem of evil against the design argument tends to focus on cases of natural evil

Question 19

What is Hume trying to prove about a designer?

Answer 19

A posteriori evidence cannot be used to show that the designer must be the God of classical theism.

Question 20

How does Darwin’s argument of evolution counter to the design argument?

Answer 20

By the process of natural selection showed that order in nature was not necessarily evidence of purpose and design but could instead be explained by natural scientific means.

Question 21

What is Richard Dawkins’ “the blind watchmaker”?

Answer 21

This is a reference to Paley. Dawkins is accepting that yes there is a watchmaker of the universe, but it is blind, meaning the mechanical forces of nature. What Aquinas and Paley called purpose, modern science can explain to merely be the result of blind evolution.

Question 22

What is Tennent’s aesthetic principle?

Answer 22

Suggests that evolution could not have produced humans without God’s interference with evolution. How can Darwinian evolution explain our perception of beauty? It doesn’t give us a survival advantage, yet it evolved. Only God controlling evolution can explain this.

Question 23

How can Tennent’s aesthetic principle be criticised?

Answer 23

Perception of beauty might serve some evolutionary function that we just don’t understand. Or it might be the biproduct of something which does provide survival, such as mate-attraction.

Question 24

What is Tennent’s anthropic principle?

Answer 24

Our universe has to be orderly and the order must be of a particular kind for evolution to have been possible and thus for us to exist. This suggests that our planet has been specially designed for human life to be possible.

Question 25

How did Swinburne and Tennant develop Aquinas’ theory through?

Answer 25

The strength of Aquinas’ approach, developed by Tennant & Swinburne, is the focus on temporal order.

Question 26

What does Paley rely too heavily on?

Answer 26

Paley’s problem was relying on spatial order, which is the order of objects in space. The human eye is an example of spatial order because it involves the complex arrangement of things in physical space. Spatial order cannot justify belief in God because it can be explained by evolution or Hume’s arguments that it could result from chance (spatial disorder).

Question 27

What is temporal order?

Answer 27

Refers to the orderliness of a thing’s behaviour over time due to physical laws. Temporal order is maintained by natural laws

Question 28

What is Hume’s Epicurean Hypothesis?

Answer 28

Hume pointed out that if Epicurus was correct, then a chaotic random universe, given an infinite amount of time, will by complete chance occasionally assemble itself into an orderly one.

Question 29

Why does Hume object to design arguments?

Answer 29

So, we ultimately have no basis on which to infer the existence of a creator from our universe. Hume concludes that the origin of the universe, “exceeds all human reason and enquiry.” The only rational thing to do is suspend judgement and admit that we do not know why the world exists as it does.

Question 30

what is the cosmological argument?

Answer 30

The typical version of the argument is a posteriori, beginning with observations of the world and then concluding that some first cause or necessary being is the only explanation of their origin.

Question 31

What is Aquinas’ first way of motion?

Answer 31

Following Aristotle, by motion Aquinas means any kind of change. Something can only change if it has the potential to change. So, we can understand change as the actualisation of a potential to change in a certain way.

Question 32

What is Aquinas’ 1st way?

Answer 32

Motion.

Question 33

What is Aquinas’ 2nd way?

Answer 33

Causation.

Question 34

What is Aquinas’ 3rd way?

Answer 34

Contingency.

Question 35

What is Aquinas’ 5th way

Answer 35

The teleological argument.

Question 36

What is motion?

Answer 36

There can’t be an infinite regress of motion. It cannot be that there is just an infinite chain of movers going back in time forever. There has to have been a first mover – a start to the motion we observe.

Question 37

What is causation?

Answer 37

There can’t be an infinite regress of causation – there can’t be an infinite chain of cause and effect going back in time forever.

Question 38

What is contingency?

Answer 38

We are contingent (dependent) on others, but there must be something which prevents the infinite regress on contingency.

Question 39

Why is Aristotles prime mover a better explanation to the cosmological argument?

Answer 39

Aristotle’s prime mover avoids the criticism that Aquinas’ argument doesn’t reach the conclusion that it is a particular God/ sentient God.

Question 40

What is a further criticism to Aquinas’ 5th way?

Answer 40

It argues the question of why infinite mustn’t exist, if it does not exist the first 2 ways collapse.
Similarly, why is God exempt from the rules of contingency and causation?

Question 41

What is the possibility of infinite regress?

Answer 41

There could be an infinite regress and therefore no first cause. The universe could simply have always existed in some form. God’s existence cannot be appealed to as the explanation of the origin of what exists if there was no origin.

Question 42

What is logical positivity?

Answer 42

Hume thinks an infinite regress cannot be ruled out a priori, since a finite regress can be denied without contradiction. The concept of ‘time’ does not seem contradicted by ‘infinite’, there is no obvious logical contradiction in it.

Question 43

What is the principle of sufficient reason?

Answer 43

Leibniz takes a similar approach to the infinite regress to Aquinas. He accepts it is possible, but still says a God would be required to explain any series of contingent beings, even an infinite one.

Question 44

What is the fallacy of composition?

Answer 44

The assumption that what’s true of a thing’s parts is also true of the whole. Experience shows that parts of the universe have an explanation (because they are contingent or have a cause/mover/explanation). To infer that means the universe as a whole must have an explanation commits the fallacy of composition.

Question 45

Why does Hume object to infinite regression?

Answer 45

Hume questions why motion needs to have a starting point - in other words why infinite regression is impossible. Surely if there can be an understanding of a prime mover there can be an understanding of perpetual motion?

Question 46

What is Ex nihilo nihil fit referring to?

Answer 46

‘Nothing comes from nothing’.

Question 47

What does Leibniz try to prove?

Answer 47

This is because an infinite series without a necessary being would have no sufficient reason for its existence. Each being’s reason for existence would consist something for which its reason for existence also consists in something else.

Question 48

How does Leibniz’s analogy of a geometry book correspond to the natural world?

Answer 48

Even if the world had always existed, we can still ask why it has always existed. There must be a sufficient explanation for every true fact, such as a universe existing, even if it’s infinite. That reason cannot be found in any of the contingent beings themselves. This is because since they are contingent, they require an explanation.

Question 49

What does Russel conclude with?

Answer 49

The universe is “just there, and that’s all”. It is neither necessary nor contingent. We have no basis for thinking the concept of explanation is even applicable to it, whether causal explanation or otherwise. An infinite regress of explanation may be impossible, but we don’t have a reason for applying the notion of explanation to the universe.

Question 50

Why does Hume reject a necessary being?

Answer 50

Arguably Hume isn’t technically saying a necessary being is impossible, just that it is impossible for us to conceive of or therefore know that such a being exists. The imagination is our only tool for knowledge of what is possible. This means the limits of our imagination are the limits of our ability to think about what is possible or necessary.

Question 51

What is metaphysical necessity?

Answer 51

Saul Kripke introduced the concept. This occurs when it’s not possible that the world could have been otherwise regarding a thing existing due to the kind of thing it is. Cosmological arguments only need to claim God’s existence is metaphysically necessary, not logically necessary.