Arguments based on observation

Question 1

Explain Thomas aquinas’ design argument

Answer 1

• The teleological argument (a.k.a Design Argument) is concerned with the reason why the world functions in an orderly manner.
• Design arguments were used by Aquinas in his ‘Five Ways’, which were five ways of demonstrating the existence of God through inductive argument, based on observation and evidence.
He views the knowledge of God can be reached in two different ways:
o Through revelations, where God chooses to reveal the truth to people.
o The other is through human reason (which Aquinas thought was given to us by God for this very purpose). He explained if we apply reason to the evidence that we see around us, we can reach valuable truths.
• Aquinas presented ‘Five Ways’ of showing that God exists as he was sure that while the existence of God isn’t self-evident, it could be demonstrated with logical thought. He wrote about these Five Ways in his book Summa Thelogica.
• Aquinas said that nature seems to have an order and a purpose to it. Objects without innate intelligence work in a way that achieves the best possible result as they are designed that way. He used the analogy of an arrow, the reason the arrow reaches its target is that an archer directs it there.
• Because objects in our world work defiantly (as they were designed that way) it proves there is a God as he is the intelligent designer behind the world.
• For a watch, if any of the parts had been shaped differently or put together in another order than the watch wouldn’t work. All the parts of the watch, he concluded, has been designed and assembled in the right order by a watchmaker for the purpose of keeping time.

Question 2

Explain William Paley’s design argument

Answer 2

• He used the analogy of someone coming across a watch on a heath. The person realises how well the watch worked in order to tell the time and would conclude that someone must have made the watch.
• Paley argued that a watch was similar to looking at the world and noticing how it all works. He went on to say that the world itself was more impressive than a watch in its workings.
• He argued that not only is everything clearly designed but it’s designed for a purpose; and it’s designed to an infinite degree of care. Even on the smallest scale, despite the no. of different things in the world, the same care seems to have been taken with the design of watch.
• He concluded that this was not only evidence of intelligent design, but of God’s care. If God cared enough about each insect he wouldn’t design it with such attention to detail then obviously God will care for them too.

Question 3

Explain David Hume’s design argument

Answer 3

• He was a sceptic who disagreed with Aquinas’s argument as he believed comparing God to anything on Earth isn’t a valid analogy.
• He believes our world is actually a prototype because it’s imperfect, because we live on Earth and don’t know anything else then how do we know this is an example of a perfect world?
• Humes also argued that order in the world doesn’t means that someone had the idea of the design. We don’t know that all order comes about because of an intelligent idea.
• Our universe may not be the perfect product of a divine author. Like machine that go wrong, they are either abandoned or altered until they work. He states maybe there are worlds outside of Earth (or even Earth itself) that are flawed.
• Arguing from the natural world, Humes says that suffering in the world might mean that the designer of the universe wasn’t a loving personal God. But instead someone who ‘has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold or drought above moisture’. Because we have a finite and imperfect world- there is no need to assume that there must be an infinite and perfect God behind it.
• Humes used the example of a pair of scales, with one end hidden from view. We don’t know how much weight it holds. So he is trying to say that we don’t know by looking at the world whether God is clever, good or loving.
• With certain objects there is more than one person behind its creation, Humes suggest maybe there are more than one god who has created the universe.

Question 4

Explain Aquinas’ cosmological argument

Answer 4

o Aquinas said: ‘nothing comes from nothing. The universe exists, so something must have made it. That can only be God’.
o The cosmological argument looks at the universe around us and seeks an explanation for its existence.
o Thomas Aquinas developed an argument that ancient Greeks used for the existence of God. He began in the natural world of the senses and reasoned form it, making this an a posteriori argument.

Question 5

Explain Hume’s criticisms of Aquinas

Answer 5

o David Hume was an empiricist who considered Aquinas’ argument, starting with the existence of the universe. Whilst accepting the universe exists, Hume’s asked if it had to have a beginning.
o Just because everything in our world is governed by cause and effect, that doesn’t mean the universe had to have a cause. Could it not be infinite?
o Hume suggested maybe there wasn’t one Prime Mover, could there not be several acting together like a committee?
o Hume asked why the Prime Mover has to be identified with the Christian God, he suggested a world created by male and female gods who are born and who will die?
o Hume challenged the idea of cause and effect, saying that it might be the case that what we perceive as causation is simply statistical conjunction.
o E.g. a person goes up to somebody and pushes them over. What we see is a person walking up to another person and pushing them. We also see the second person fall over. Because we have seen such things before, we interpret the action to mean the effect of pushing is to cause another to fall over.

Question 6

Explain Aquinas’ 3 ways of argument

Answer 6

1. First way: motion.
   Evidence: everything in existence is in motion or has the potential to change, e.g. humans develop, grow old and eventually die. Wood has the potential to be made into something or to be burnt. Aquinas said all change is caused by something. Because nothing can move of its own accord, there has to be a Prime Mover. That must be God.
2. Second way: causation.
   Evidence: cause and effect are natural in our world. Whatever happens is caused by something else. It would be illogical to say something can cause itself as that means it was there before it began, there needs to be a first cause. That is God.
3. Third way: a necessary being
   Evidence: nothing in our world is permanent. Everything is contingent; it exists but could equally well not exist. That means it’s possible there was a time when nothing existed. Since we know it’s not possible for nothing to come from nothing that means there had to be something in existence. There must be necessary being, which all the contingent beings came from. That is God.

Question 7

What does Gottfried Leibniz say?

Answer 7

o Gottfried Leibniz raised the question: ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ and ‘why anything does exists at all?’
o In order to address his question, he offered a form of the cosmological argument, which he based on his ‘Principle of sufficient reason’.

Question 8

Explain Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason

Answer 8

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason:
–If something exists, there must be a reason why that thing exists.
–If a statement is true, there must be a reason why that statement is true.
–If something happens, there must be a reason why that thing happens.
o Whether or not we know the reasons why something exists, or is true, or happens, there still must be a reason, known or unknown.
o Leibniz argued that it made no difference whether something was eternal or not- we still need a reason for it. If it exists eternally, we still need a reason for is eternal existence.

Question 9

How persuasive are a posteriori arguments?

Answer 9

• -Teleological arguments start from the observation that the natural world seems orderly and purposive; we are led form this observation to the suggestion that a divine author might be the best explanation for the order we observe.
• -But theological arguments are only persuasive if we agree with the observation being made. We might think that the natural world is purposeless so this argument is not persuasive.
• -A persuasive a posteriori argument offers hypothesis which seems to give the most plausible explanation to account for the observation. A good piece of hypothetical reasoning is often considered to be one which:
• -Introduced the fewest extra assumptions in order to explain the phenomenon.
• -Is plausible; it fits best with what we already know often happens, from previous experience.
• -Matches other evidence we have available.

Question 10

Can teleological arguments be defended against the challenge of ‘chance’?

Answer 10

• -In his book ‘The origin of Species’, Charles Darwin challenged the design argument and provided an alternative explanation for the design of the world without referring to creation by God. He purports that over time the species of the planet have adapted and evolved to their surroundings rather than have been created perfectly in God’s image. He explained that order, purpose and regularity in the universe wasn’t the result of design at all. It was merely nature that brought it about. Qualities or characteristics of a species which were best able to cope in the struggle for survival would have better chance of producing more offspring so passing on those characteristics on the next generation. This view means that there is no driving force behind evolutionary change.
• -Darwin attacked the first premise of the teleological argument that the world had signs of design by suggesting that the apparent design was the result of a long process of natural selection.
• -Some argued God caused evolution, but Darwin rejected the idea of micromanaging God as it would make him responsible for all the gruesome features of nature.
• -When comparing the hypothesis ‘God made it’ and ‘chance made it’, they need to be considered to see which is the more persuasive. The principle of Ockham’s razor leads us to the conclusion that ‘chance’ is a better explanation than God; if we decide that chance can account for apparent order and design.

Question 11

Do cosmological arguments simply jump to the conclusion of a transcendent creator, without sufficient explanation?

Answer 11

• -Hume’s criticism with the cosmological argument is that there are other possible explanations for the existence of the universe, and for the apparent design within it. It could’ve been created by a stupid God who only created the world after countless failed attempts; or it could have been created by a committee of gods, or demons. While he didn’t believe in these possibilities, he used them to demonstrate that ‘it could have been God’ isn’t the same as proving that it couldn’t have been anything other than God.
• -However, Aristotle and Aquinas disagree and urge the importance of a transcendent God. They draw attention to the need (as they see it) for there to be an Uncaused Cause, an Unmoved Prime Mover, capable of bringing cause and effect and motion without being affected. Thus a Being would have to have a special kind of existence, a ‘necessary existence’, where it wasn’t dependent on anything else and wasn’t itself caused but was ‘self-existent’.

Question 12

Do arguments from observation present logical fallacies which can’t be overcome?

Answer 12

• -Arguments from observation (a posteriori) are different from arguments which rely on reason (a priori). They don’t depend on logic, but on experience, and are about finding an explanation which best fits the experiences we share.
• -But even if an a posteriori argument for the existence of God seems to be questionable, the argument doesn’t fail on the grounds of logic.
• -A posteriori arguments can’t be ‘invalid’ in the way that a priori arguments can, and therefore they can’t be logical fallacies, only improbabilities.