PHILOSOPHY 100
(Ted Stolze)
Notes on David Cunning,
Everyday Examples, chapters 5,7
A Working Definition of the
Concept “God”
In the Abrahamic religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity,
Islam) believers usually regard God as “an all-powerful, allknowing, all-loving being.”
NOTE: Philosophical arguments for the existence of God don’t
rely on sacred texts like the Bible or Qur’an but primarily on
human reason and experience.
Arguments for the Existence of God
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First Cause
Ontological Argument
Religious Experience (*)
Moral Argument (*)
Intelligent Design
*Not covered by Cunning
The First Cause Argument
1. Everything that exists must have a cause.
2. The chain of causes cannot reach back
indefinitely. At some point, we must come to a
First Cause.
3. The First Cause we may call God.
Watch a brief video overview of the argument:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0&sns=em
Objections to the First Cause
Argument
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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?
Anselm’s Ontological Argument
1.Define “God” as a being greater than which
none can be thought.
2.Assume that God exists only in the
imagination.
3.But it is greater for something to exist not only
in the imagination but also in reality.
4.Therefore, God is not a being greater than
which none can be thought.
5.But this contradicts #1.
6.Therefore, God exists not only in the
imagination but also in reality.
Descartes’s 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.
Objections to the Ontological
Argument
• God as a perfect being is not conceivable
• The Perfect Island counter-analogy
• Existence is not a predicate (Kant)
• Why think that a perfect being is a person?
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 couldn’t all be mistaken or
lying about their experiences.
3. Therefore, there exists such a transcendent,
divine reality.
Objections to the Argument
from Religious Experience
• Religious experiences aren’t the same as
perceptual experiences
• Religious experiences have naturalistic
explanations
The “Hiddenness of God” Objection
1. We live in a world in which people persist in disbelieving God
or having cruel views of God.
2. God does not appear to correct these views.
3. An all-good God would never allow a creature to seek God
without finding God in an obvious way.
4. Therefore, God does not exist.
(For a response, consider the plot of the 1950 movie The Next Voice You Hear:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxf9qS5PUk)
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 justly—the result
would be a condition of moral futility.
4. Therefore, there must be a God-given
guarantee of justice in the next world.
Objections to the Moral Argument
• But why would only a personal single God
bring about such a reward for virtue? (Why
couldn’t 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.
Two Types of Intelligent Design
Argument
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Best-Explanation
Same-Evidence
William Paley
(1743-1805)
The Best-Explanation Argument
1.
2.
3.
Either the wonders of nature occurred randomly,
by chance, or they are the product of intelligent
design.
Intelligent design explains the existence of these
things much better than blind chance does.
Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
explained as the products of intelligent design.
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.
Objections to
Arguments for Intelligent Design
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Could there be multiple designers (a polytheistic
objection)?
How orderly, harmonious, and beautiful is the
universe really? (David Hume’s objection)
Why think that a designer would be all-good?
(another of Hume‘s objection)
There is an alternative explanation for the
emergence of natural order and complexity.
(Charles Darwin’s objection)
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.)
Darwin’s 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.
A Darwinian Best-Explanation
Argument
1.
2.
3.
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.
Evolution by natural selection explains the
existence of these things much better than either
chance or intelligent design does.
Therefore, the wonders of nature are best
explained as the products of evolution by natural
selection.
Evolutionary Theism
1. Everything that exists within the universe—including
evolution by natural selection—is part of a vast system
of causes and effects
2. But the universe itself requires an explanation—why
does it exist?
3. The only plausible explanation is that God created it.
4. Therefore, to explain the existence of the universe, it is
reasonable to believe in God.
5. Therefore, to explain the existence of evolution by
natural selection, it is also reasonable to believe in
God.
Darwin’s 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).
“Super-Matter" and Unconscious
Intelligence
• Hume on the self-organization of thoughts /
association of ideas
• Cavendish on "fairies in the brain"
• Stefano Mancuso on "plant intelligence"
(www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence)
Heidegger on Being “In the Zone”
• Homo sapiens and Dasein
• How is the self given? (p.166)
• Unreflective skillful activity given prior to the
conscious "I"
• An example: using an automotive wrench (p.
171)
• Uncovering or disclosing worlds of meaning