Arguments based on observation

Aquinas' teleological argument - the fifth way

looks at the purpose of something and from that he reasons that god must exist - we achieve our purpose due to god

  • things that lack knowledge act for a purpose/end
  • this acting for an end will always lead to the best result
  • this must happen not by luck but by design
  • anything that lacks knowledge needs something with knowledge to guide it
  • e.g. like an arrow needs an archer to get to its target
  • therefore there is an intelligent being that directs all natural things to their end - this is god

arguments from analogy

it is the same way that the archer guides the arrow to where it is meant to go, god guides natural bodies to where they are meant to go

the natural body needs to get to its purpose just like the arrow needs to get to its target - the arrow needs an archer and the natural body needs something to direct it - this is god

some argue that arguments from analogy are weak - they can only suggest something probably shares a characteristic - they can be useful in illustrating a complex argument but on their own are not sufficient

is it valid to compare the relationship between humans and god to the relationship between an arrow and an archer?

Paleys teleological argument

Design qua regularity

  • paley observed that complex objects work with regularity
  • e.g. the seasons of the year happen with order, the planets rotate with order, gravity works with order
  • this order seems to be the result of the work of a designer who has put this regularity and order into place deliberately

Design qua purpose

the way things work seem to have been put together deliberately with a purpose

e.g. the eye seemed to Paley to have been constructed deliberately with the purpose to see

this all points to a designer who is god

the analogy of the watch

  • imagine walking in a heath
  • if i were to come across a rock i could explain its origins reffering to natural causes
  • if i were to come across a watch there couldnt be a natural explanation
  • the watch is made up of cogs and springs and so on and this design couldnt have come about by chance
  • there must be a watchmaker who designed it with purpose of telling the time
  • the world is even more complex than a watch in how it is put together so there must be a creator = god

even if the watch is broken there is enough design to suggest a watchmaker - not commenting on the quality of the design

even if we didnt fully understand the watch we would still identify design

Aquinas' cosmological argument

starts with the observation about the way the universe works and from these try to explain why the universe exists

first way; the unmoved mover

the way in which things move or change must mean that something has made that motion take place

everything is both in a state of actuality and potentiality

all things that are moved are moved by something else - things cannot move themselves

the mover is itself moved by something else which is in turn moved by something else and so on

this cannot go on to infinity because otherwise there would be no first mover and so nothing would have started moving at all

there must be a first mover - the first unmoved mover is what everyone understands to be god

the second way; the uncaused causer

nothing can be its own efficient cause because it cannot have existed before itself

things that are causes must themselves be caused, otherwise the effect would be taken away

we cannot go back to infinity because that would mean there was no first cause of everything and so all later effects and causes wouldnt have happened

therefore there must be a special case a first efficient cause that is not itself caused

this first uncaused causer is what everyone understands to be god

the third way; contingency and necessity

everything in the universe is contingent - it relies on something to have brought it into existence and also things to let it continue to exist

in nature there are things that are possible 'to be' and 'not to be'

these things could not always have existed because they must have not existed at some point because they rely on something for their existence

if we trace this back then we get to a point where nothing existed but then nothing would have begun to exist as nothing can come from nothing

therefore there must be a type of being that is not contingent - a necessary being

perhaps a necessary being could have their necessity come from another being

you cannot go back infinitely with necessary beings being given their necessity by other necessary beings

therefore there must be a being that has of itself its own necessity with causes other beings - known as god

Humes challenges

we cannot meaningfully speak of the design of the world or the creation of the universe because we do not have sufficient experience of either to draw conclusions - the situation and discussion are too unique

he also felt that arguments such as these can only ever say that the conclusion is probable because they work on the general evidence we have now and not all possible evidence in the future

e.g. we might discover something that does not have a cause

criticisms of the teleological argument

challenged analogies as a way of argument

  • it is not necessarily true that the world is like a watch
  • it might be true that a watch looks as if it is designed but it is harder to say that the world has these characteristics - hume therefore is rejecting the idea that the analogy is suitable
  • in fact the world could be said to be more like a vegetable that has characteristics of intricacy rather than a machine like a watch
  • 'the world plainly resembles more an animal or vegetable than it does a watch' - Hume

our world is finite and imperfect - why should god be infinite and perfect?
example of pair of scales - one side is hidden - just because we know one side of the scales is heavier than the other we dont know the exact weight of the other side
just because we might see evidence of a designer we do not know anything about its nature
there could be a number of designers
the designer could be immoral - just because a watch is perfect doesnt mean the designer is

criticisms of the cosmological argument

Hume questioned whether it is possible to make the jump from what aquinas observed and the christian god - the effect cannot immediately point towards a particular cause

the causation is a psychological concept and we cannot make links between cause and effect that is beyond our experience

it is not necessary to suppose that everything has a cause at all which rejects the whole approach of aquinas

fallacy of composition - we cannot make the jump from the idea that just because everything in the universe has a cause or reason to exist then the entire universe must have a cause or reason to exist

the challenge of evolution

evolution challenges the teleological argument as it presents an alternative explanation as to how the world could exist at is does now - there seems no need for a designer if evolution is accepted

yet many religious believers feel that evolution can work alongside belief in god because they see it as a tool that god used to make things as they are

Charles Darwin wrote 'the origins of species' - evolution by natural selection - things exist as they are because of natural methods selecting what will survive and what will not - suggesting no space for god - supported by discoveries on genetics

aspects

inheritance and reproduction - this places the emphasis not on the designer god but on what is going on in the world

mutation - changes in different species therefore do not happen because of designer but naturally by chance

survival of the fittest - brutal nature is responsible for how we see the world around us

adaption - this removes the guiding nature of a god who is intricately involved with his creation

extinction - difficult to understand why the god aquinas describes allowa such waste of species or would design fallible ones

logical fallacies

a logical fallacy is an error in logic - those who criticise the arguments for the existence of god have often pointed towards errors in their logic that mean the arguments collapse

assumption - the assumption that all things are moved or have a cause or are contingent or have a purpose can be argued to be a logical fallacy because it is just that - an assumption

infinite regression - aquinas maintains that things cannot go back to infinity - arguably things can go back to infinity - however this still does not answer the fundamental question about why there is anything in the first place

the jump to a transcendent creator - we have seen that hume does not accept that we can move from the observation in the world to the idea of a creator who is the god of religious faith - the conclusions of aquinas' ways seem to move from a very narrow observation to a declaration that the uncaused causer is the christian god