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Aristotle - Coggle Diagram
Aristotle
Weaknesses
Aristotle's writing lacks clarity, and he dismissed Plato's beliefs of another world and about reality
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Aristotle’s Prime Mover is transcendent and disinterested, it does not interact with the world in a way many believers often talk of God’s activity in the world
The idea that the Prime Mover causes the universe and events in it through ‘thinking’ is vague and unclear
Aristotle’s Prime Mover can only think of itself – it seems unloving as it plays no part in our lives, would the cause of the universe be like that?
Is there really a final cause or purpose to the universe? Does there have to be a cause, can’t it just be there? (Bertrand Russell) – Dawkins would also dispute that the universe had a ‘purpose’ – there is nothing the universe is ‘supposed to do’
What about those things in the world that appear to have no purpose? Or a ‘negative’ purpose? E.g. what purpose does cancer serve? It could be argued that the purpose of cancerous cells is to replicate as quickly as possible.
Prime mover
If the PM is pure and responsible for everything, where did matter come from?
PM is not worthy of worship nor would there be any point in prayer, as it’s a static logical goodness + cant experience emotion
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An impassive PM seems more logical, this is because people are less likely to believe in a perfect form of a God
Its difficult to understand how a being can be described as perfect, yet have no knowledge of the world
Strengths
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The four causes can be readily applied to things that exist within the world as a way of explaining them
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Relies on the study of the natural world which we can experience - strong in comparison to Plato's forms which cannot be observed
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Causation
4 causes focus on purpose, which can enable us to determine whether something is good or not
Element of common sense in the 4 causes, most objects conform to this
Causes are essentiality empirical, its also a scientific empirical method
Our senses arent always accurate
Aristotle claims that every purpose is subjective, the purpose of an object may depend on someone's point of view
e.g. a books purpose may to be read, but could be used to balance a table
Key words
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Atheists: existence is a matter of chance and there is no purpose until we choose to give ourselves purpose
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