The Existence of God - Arguments from Observation

1) motion 2) cause 3) contingency

the teleological argument - paley and evolution

the cosmological argument

the teleological argument - Aquinas' fifth way

a posteriori arguments

efficient & final causes

Aquinas' five ways are all a posteriori as he did not beleive in priori argument (an argument based purely on logic or deduction) for God would be valid

these have a prominent place in the philosophy of religion

based on observation

Aristotelian-Thomistic scholars (working in the tradition of Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas) say that efficient causality is unthinkable without final casuality

efficient causes change things or bring them into existence (eg heat is the efficient cause of the melting of ice and phosphorus in a match head is the efficient cause of the flame on a match)

final causes are just the outcome of these causes - the water/theflame. when we talk about telos, we mean these final causes

Aquinas' fifth way

uses the observation that non-intelligent organic life acts in certain ordered, cyclical and purposive ways

eg given the right conditions, acorns always grow into oak trees and not wombats or the moon has a regular 29 and a half-day cycle

acting for goals & intelligence

the fact non-intelligent things (like acorn and plankton) always act in certain ways for certain goals implies that they were given those goals by intelligence because only intelligent beings can assign a purpose to things and move that thing towards its purpose

archery example

aquinas gives the example of arrows fired by an archer to hit a target

a simplified version of the argument might say that the order and purpose we see in the universe needs an explanation in terms of a guiding intelligence

without the archer giving the purposive direction, the arrow would remain in the quiver

the argument can be put like this

the natural world obeys natural laws

natural things flourish as they obey these laws

things without intelligence can't direct themselves

therefore, things without intelligence require something with intelligence to direct them to their goals

this goal

William paleys design argument

if someone found a rock in the ground, they would not need to ask how the rock got there - they would assume natural causes

but if someone found a watch on the ground, the previous answer would not work - that the watch had always been there. they would assume a designer

this is because of the complexity and inherent purpose of the watch - it has been put together in a complex manner to tell the time

the universe is much more complex and ordered. so the universe must have a designer

counter-teleological arguments

both teleological arguments 'beg the question'

Hume said that analogy can only compare similar things. the watch is not similar to the universe. as the universe seems organic, why not compare something organic, like a cabbage?

Paley gives the example of a watch, something which we know has been designed, as an analogy for the world, whose design is the thing in question

Aquinas assumes all things need a designer to conclude that God designed everything

the universe is not like all the other things we can experience

a watch has many designers actually - why not the universe?

the universe could have come about randomly and still look designed, given enough time. Philo's Epicurean Hypothesis (the world is the chance arrangements of atoms) is relevant

the presence of evil and suffering in the universe prompts us to ask what kind of designer it has

eg Dawkins' Digger Wasp example (a particularly cruel example of suffering in the natural world)

evolutionary challenges to the Design Argument

suffering in evolutionary processes

no need for a goal

compleity and order are natural

so there is no need appeal to a divine intelligence to account for complexity and 'order'- they arise 'naturally' from the processes of evolution and natural selection

random changes can lead to order and complex systems can be self-arranging - this is the upshot of the nature of evolution, in which organisms which adapt to their environments can pass on their genes more effectively than ones that can't

Dawkins and Atkinspoint to profound suffering suffering and cruelty in the processes of evolution

for example, the female digger wasp lays her eggs in a caterpillar so that the larva can eat the insides as they grow. she also stings it to paralyse it so it is alive as they are eating it

evolution challenges the Aristotelian account of causation which includes telos or purpose as it shows that natural processes can be explained without the need to refer to a goal

Aquinas' second way

Aquinas' third way

Humes criticisms

Aquinas' first way

three of Aquinas' five ways

the classic formulations of the cosmological argument can be found in the first three of Aquinas' five ways. but these have their roots on Aristotelian philosophy

all things are potentially moving (ie. they can change into something else) -> an acorn can change into an oak

to move from one state to another, all things require something actual to move them from their state of potentiality -> a stick is potentially on fire and only becomes actually on fire when an actual flame is applied to it

things cannot move themselves from a state of potential to actual. this means everything requires something else to move it. but you must have a first mover that is not moved itself to cause the movement of other things. if you did not, there would be no explanation for the movement of the things which are currently in motion because you cannot keep going backforever in the chain of movement

the first mover that imparts motion onto other things without being moved itself is called God

all things are caused by other things

nothing can be the cause of itself

you cannot keep going back in the series f causes forever, or you would have no things now - if there was no initial cause, there could be other causes

there must e a first cause itself uncaused, which began the causes

this is what people call God

if there was nothing once, there would be nothing now

there must be something that is necessary (impossible not to exist)

everything that is necessary is either caused by anther necessary thing or not

you cannot have an infinite series of such causes

there must be an uncaused necessary being

this is what people call God

if time is infinite , there must have been a point when there was nothing

all things can possibly not exist (all things are contingent)

criticisms of it

Hume - we have no experience of universes being made, so we cannot claim to know what caused this one

it may be that an infinite regress is possible. this relates to the oscillating universe hypothesis - our universe alternates between the Big Bang, ours can be the first of many possible universes

why assume that the necessary thing is a being, or even a being called God?

it may be that the universe itself is necessary

of the teleological argument

problems with man-made analogy

unsound analogy

imperfect & immoral God

the world is composed of organic and mineral matter, so it is not like a machine and more like an organism

in the case of the design argument, Hume claims that the world and the watch are very unlike each other

analogies are stronger the more alike two things being compared are

one of many argument

there might not even be one supreme governing principle but many, each in charge of their own domain

the analogy of a man-made thing is bound to lead to the conclusion that the universe was designed. but H points our that we already have experience or knowledge of watches/ houses being made, and so this just begs the question when it comes to the universe

the Analogy of a man-made thing also implies a human-like God (like effects imply like causes), but this causes problems as God is meant to be infinite in His qualities

a perfect God cannot be inferred from the state of the universe

as H says: "The world is very faulty and imperfect, and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity who abandoned it"

analogy leads to an immoral God

one should judge the craftsman on the quality of the work they produce - earthwuake and illness do not imply a just God. there could be two Gods or forces: a good and an evil. that would explain far better the state of the universe

H says that the governing principle of the world could be one of many - such as generation or gravity - and that these would work equally as as well as intelligence

of the cosmological argument

the fallacy of composition

against sufficient reason

reality of the 'whole'

H attacked the principle of sufficient reason on which it is founded

this principle states that there should be a total explanation rather than a partial one for any phenomenon

H argues that you cannot move from saying individual elements of the universe require an explanation to the whole universe requires one

this is to commit fallacy of composition. this is to assume that Jude because all the individual members of a group of things have a certain property, the group itself has that property

for instance, just because all the tiles on a floor are square, does not mean that the whole floor has to be square - it could be many other shapes

limitations of it

so the question is whether contingency is more like the shape or colour in the floor tile analogy. it difficult to see, if everything in the universe is dependent on other things for existence, how the universe as a whole could not also be dependent on something else for existence

but it is not formal nor does it always hold

if you substitute colour for shape in the floor tike example, the fallacy doesn't; t work (if every floor tile is red, then the whole floor WILL be red)

H questions the reality of the 'whole' that people refer to, saying that 'whole' things are usually created by "arbitrary acts of the mind" eg when we unite several countries into one kingdom, this has no influence on the nature of things, it is simply a human perception

'universe'

could just be a convenient term for our ow perceptions rather than referring to reality

modern physics seem to provide some support for this - with the view of 'pocket universes' which exist larger ones. to look for a 'whole' gets very difficult in this view

no cause/always existed

H says that it is not inconceivable that the world had no cause or just always existed

he says "it is neither intuitivileu nor demonstratively certain" that every object that begins to exist owes its existence to a cause

like causes produce like effects

eg parent rabbits produce baby rabbits

so as many things in the universe seem to be the offspring of two parents, why shoukd we assume that there is one male 'parent' of the universe - wouldn't it make more sense to postulate a male and female creator

causation - psychological effect

to base an argument on causation is foolish as we never be sure that causation is anything other than a psychological effect

in fact, it is ore foolish in the case of the universe, because as we lack past experience of formation of universes, we haven't even got anything to base our 'habit of mind' on

existential propositions

so the term 'necessary being' makes no sense a posteriori - any being claimed to exist may or may not exist

in H's own words: "all existential propositions are synthetic"

any being that exists can also not exist, and there is no contradiction implied in conceiving its non-existence. but this exactly would have to be the case if its existence were necessary

1) motion 2) cause 3) contingency

Strengths

Weaknesses

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of Aquinas' Fifth Way

it is correct that an arrow needs an archer to direct it. in the same way we could argue that it seems reasonable to assume natural things are also directed towards their purpose

Aquinas is right that we need an explanation for purpose - purpose is a sign of a conscious mind that plans an end within its design. God is an explanation that works

there are example in nature of non-thinking beings that act to achieve a purpose: a sunflower always turns to face sunlight

this was a consequence of the epistemology (theory of knowledge) that he had inherited from Aristotle

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