PHILOSOPHY 100 (Ted Stolze)

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PHILOSOPHY 100 (Ted Stolze)
Notes on David Cunning, Everyday Examples,
chapters 5,7
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A 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.
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NOTE Philosophical arguments for the existence
of God dont rely on sacred texts like the Bible
or Quran but primarily on human reason and
experience.
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Arguments for the Existence of God

• First Cause
• Ontological Argument
• Religious Experience ()
• Moral Argument ()
• Intelligent Design

Not covered by Cunning
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The 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

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Objections 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?

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Anselms 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.

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Descartess Ontological Argument

1. There must be as much reality in a cause as in
   the effect of that cause.
2. I have an idea of God.
3. But my idea of God is only the effect of a prior
   cause.
4. Therefore, God exists not only as an idea but as
   a reality.

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Objections to the Ontological Argument

• God as a perfect being is not conceivable
• The Perfect Island counter-analogy

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The Argument from Religious Experience

1. There are widespread reports by persons across
   time and culture who claim to have experienced a
   transcendent, divine reality.
2. These persons couldnt all be mistaken or lying
   about their experiences.
3. Therefore, there exists such a transcendent,
   divine reality.

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Objections to the Argument from Religious
Experience

• Religious experiences arent the same as
  perceptual experiences
• Religious experiences have naturalistic
  explanations

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The 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)

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The Moral Argument

1. There is no guarantee of justice in this world.
2. The virtuous are not necessarily rewarded with
   the happiness that ought to complement their
   virtue.
3. But without some such future reward, there would
   be no motivation to act justlythe result would
   be a condition of moral futility.
4. Therefore, there must be a God-given guarantee of
   justice in the next world.

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Objections 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.

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Two Types of Intelligent Design Argument

• Best-Explanation
• Same-Evidence

William Paley (1743-1805)
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The Best-Explanation Argument

1. Either the wonders of nature occurred randomly,
   by chance, or they are the product of intelligent
   design.
2. Intelligent design explains the existence of
   these things much better than blind chance does.
3. Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
   explained as the products of intelligent design.

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The Same-Evidence Argument

1. We conclude that watches were made by intelligent
   designers because they have parts that work
   together to serve a purpose.
2. 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.
3. Therefore, we are entitled to conclude that the
   universe was made by an intelligent designer.

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Objections 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)

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Darwin 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.)

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Darwins Argument for Natural Selection

1. There is a geometrical increase in organisms.
2. The struggle for existence over survival leads
   to the emergence of variations in characteristics
   of members of a species.
3. There exists a heritability of characteristics.
4. Characteristics with survival value will be
   passed on to future generations.
5. Therefore, there exists a variation among and
   modification of species.

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A Darwinian Best-Explanation Argument

1. 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.
2. Evolution by natural selection explains the
   existence of these things much better than either
   chance or intelligent design does.
3. Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
   explained as the products of evolution by natural
   selection.

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Evolutionary 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.

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Darwins 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).