Title: PHILOSOPHY 100 (Ted Stolze)
1PHILOSOPHY 100 (Ted Stolze)
Notes on David Cunning, Everyday Examples,
chapters 5,7
2A Working Definition of the Concept God
In the Abrahamic religious traditions (Judaism,
Christianity, Islam) believers usually regard God
as an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving
being.
3NOTE Philosophical arguments for the existence
of God dont rely on sacred texts like the Bible
or Quran but primarily on human reason and
experience.
4Arguments for the Existence of God
- First Cause
- Ontological Argument
- Religious Experience ()
- Moral Argument ()
- Intelligent Design
Not covered by Cunning
5The First Cause Argument
- Everything that exists must have a cause.
- The chain of causes cannot reach back
indefinitely. At some point, we must come to a
First Cause. - The First Cause we may call God.
- Watch a brief video overview of the argument
http//www.youtube.com/watch?v6CulBuMCLg0snsem
6Objections to the First Cause Argument
- Buddhists reject the idea of a First Cause and
argue that the universe goes through innumerable
cycles (the concept of conditioned genesis) - Why think that a First Cause would be all-good?
- Why think that a First Cause would be a person,
as opposed to a non-personal consciousness or
force like Brahman or Dao? - Why worship a First Cause?
7Anselms Ontological Argument
- Define God as a being greater than which none
can be thought. - Assume that God exists only in the imagination.
- But it is greater for something to exist not only
in the imagination but also in reality. - Therefore, God is not a being greater than which
none can be thought. - But this contradicts 1.
- Therefore, God exists not only in the imagination
but also in reality.
8Descartess Ontological Argument
- There must be as much reality in a cause as in
the effect of that cause. - I have an idea of God.
- But my idea of God is only the effect of a prior
cause. - Therefore, God exists not only as an idea but as
a reality.
9Objections to the Ontological Argument
- God as a perfect being is not conceivable
- The Perfect Island counter-analogy
10The Argument from Religious Experience
- There are widespread reports by persons across
time and culture who claim to have experienced a
transcendent, divine reality. - These persons couldnt all be mistaken or lying
about their experiences. - Therefore, there exists such a transcendent,
divine reality.
11Objections to the Argument from Religious
Experience
- Religious experiences arent the same as
perceptual experiences - Religious experiences have naturalistic
explanations
12The Hiddenness of God Objection
- We live in a world in which people persist in
disbelieving God or having cruel views of God. - God does not appear to correct these views.
- An all-good God would never allow a creature to
seek God without finding God in an obvious way. - Therefore, God does not exist.
- (For a response, consider the plot of the 1950
movie The Next Voice You Hear www.youtube.com/wat
ch?vKRxf9qS5PUk)
13The Moral Argument
- There is no guarantee of justice in this world.
- The virtuous are not necessarily rewarded with
the happiness that ought to complement their
virtue. - But without some such future reward, there would
be no motivation to act justlythe result would
be a condition of moral futility. - Therefore, there must be a God-given guarantee of
justice in the next world.
14Objections to the Moral Argument
- But why would only a personal single God bring
about such a reward for virtue? (Why couldnt it
result from many deities or a nonpersonal cosmic
moral law like karma?) - Perhaps virtue has simply evolved.
- Perhaps virtue is its own reward.
- Perhaps moral futility is correct.
15Two Types of Intelligent Design Argument
- Best-Explanation
- Same-Evidence
William Paley (1743-1805)
16The Best-Explanation Argument
- Either the wonders of nature occurred randomly,
by chance, or they are the product of intelligent
design. - Intelligent design explains the existence of
these things much better than blind chance does. - Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
explained as the products of intelligent design.
17The Same-Evidence Argument
- We conclude that watches were made by intelligent
designers because they have parts that work
together to serve a purpose. - We have the same evidence that the universe, and
some of the natural objects in it, were made by
an intelligent designer they are also composed
of parts that work together to serve a purpose. - Therefore, we are entitled to conclude that the
universe was made by an intelligent designer.
18Objections to Arguments for Intelligent Design
- Could there be multiple designers (a polytheistic
objection)? - How orderly, harmonious, and beautiful is the
universe really? (a Humean objection) - Why think that a designer would be all-good?
(another Humean objection) - There is an alternative explanation for the
emergence of natural order and complexity. (a
Darwinian objection)
19Darwin on Paley and Intelligent Design
- Although I did not think much about the
existence of a personal God until a considerably
later period of my life, I will here give the
vague conclusions to which I have been driven.
The old argument of design in nature, as given by
Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive,
fails, now that the law of natural selection has
been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for
instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell
must have been made by an intelligent being, like
the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no
more design in the variability of organic beings
and in the action of natural selection, than in
the course the wind blows. Everything in nature
is the result of fixed laws. - (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, edited by
Nora Barlow NY Norton, 2005 (1958), p. 73.)
20Darwins Argument for Natural Selection
- There is a geometrical increase in organisms.
- The struggle for existence over survival leads
to the emergence of variations in characteristics
of members of a species. - There exists a heritability of characteristics.
- Characteristics with survival value will be
passed on to future generations. - Therefore, there exists a variation among and
modification of species.
21A Darwinian Best-Explanation Argument
- The wonders of nature occurred (a) by chance, (b)
as the product of intelligent design, or (c) as
the result of evolution by natural selection. - Evolution by natural selection explains the
existence of these things much better than either
chance or intelligent design does. - Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
explained as the products of evolution by natural
selection.
22Evolutionary Theism
- Everything that exists within the
universeincluding evolution by natural
selectionis part of a vast system of causes and
effects - But the universe itself requires an
explanationwhy does it exist? - The only plausible explanation is that God
created it. - Therefore, to explain the existence of the
universe, it is reasonable to believe in God. - Therefore, to explain the existence of evolution
by natural selection, it is also reasonable to
believe in God.
23Darwins Conclusion to On the Origin of Species
- It is interesting to contemplate an entangled
bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds,
with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling
through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from
each other, and dependent on each other in so
complex a manner, have all been produced by laws
acting around us. These laws, taken in the
largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction
Inheritance which is almost implied by
reproduction Variability from the indirect and
direct action of the external conditions of life,
and from use and disuse a Ratio of Increase so
high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a
consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the Extinction of
less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of
nature, from famine and death, the most exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving,
namely, the production of the higher animals,
directly follows. There is grandeur in this view
of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or into one and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved. (From Charles Darwin, On the
Origin of Species 1859, pp. 489-90) - A phrase Darwin added to the 2nd edition (1860)
and maintained through the 6th edition (1876).