1.1 Teleological Argument - scholars Flashcards
(38 cards)
Paley: why attributing goodness to the designer is justified
would only be unjustified in attributing goodness to the designer if the world were an unbearable place, and ‘it is a happy world after all’
Paley: evidence that goodness outweighs suffering
‘happiness is the rule; misery is the exception’ eg we are shocked when we hear a friend is ill, but are not when we hear they are experiencing happiness
Schopenhauer: evidence misery outweighs happiness
‘compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other’ ‘we generally find pleasure not so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful’
Paley: why attributing omnipotence to the designer is justified
a being capable of creating this universe must have power infinitely beyond power we have experience of, and infinite power equates to omnipotence
how Ockham’s Razor supports Paley’s singular designer
it is a simpler and therefore preferable hypothesis that there be one omnipotent creator than numerous creators with finite power
Schlesinger’s Argument From Suspicious Improbabilities - attempt to formalise ‘fine-tuning intuition’
- if John wins an improbable lottery game, you would not assume that he, or someone on his behalf, cheated
- if John won the lottery game 3 consecutive times you would immediately be tempted to assume cheating as this event is ‘of a kind that is surprising in a way that warrants interference of design’
- that the universe is fine tunes for life is improbable in the same way John winning the lottery multiple times is
- if we are justified in inferring intelligent design in John’s lottery winnings, we are even more so in the case of the universe
weakness of Schlesinger’s argument from suspicious improbabilities: empirical background facts
in the case of John and the lottery:
- already know intelligent agents with capacity to manipulate results exist
- know from past event such situations are usually explained by deliberate agency of such agents
in case of the universe we do not know these
weakness of Schlesinger’s argument from suspicious improbabilities: lack of knowledge of the universe
- cannot prove life would not have arisen in different universe conditions
- physics speculates we are one universe in a ‘multiverse’ where all possible material universes are eventually realised (if this is the case, at least one had to have life, so does not warrant design that it is this one)
Swinburne: views on probability of design vs evolutionary process
more probable that god designed the universe than it came about through ‘pure chances of evolutionary process’
The God Delusion - Dawkins:
1. ‘natural selection is emphatically not…
2. ‘natural selection is the only…
- …a matter of luck’
- …workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested’
Dawkins’ ‘Climbing Mount Improbable’ parable
images the ‘appearance of design’ at the peak of a mountain with two ways to reach it: design, represented by a sheer cliff face; evolution, represented by a gentle slope
The God Delusion - Dawkins:
1. the idea of design ‘insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability…
2. ‘natural selection is a…
- …as a single one-off event’
- …cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability into small pieces’
The God Delusion - Dawkins: significance of ‘the power of accumulation’
design fails because it is ‘ultimately not cumulative’ while natural selection succeeds because it is ‘a cumulative one-way street to improvement’ in which small pieces are slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so, allowing very improbable end products when large numbers of such pieces / events are stacked in series
The God Delusion - Dawkins: solution to the problem of the origin of life
the anthropic principle ‘most decisively’ grants us ‘that initial stroke of luck’ to explain such one-off events
The God Delusion - Dawkins: why design fails to solve ‘the riddle of improbability’
- it regresses to the problem: ‘a God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual states of every particle in the universe … is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right’ - a designer therefore adds another layer of improbability to the issue, so ‘the higher the improbability, the more implausible intelligent design becomes’
Leslie’s firing squad analogy
imagines someone is to be executed via firing squad of 50 professionals. when the execution is to occur, all 50 miss. the person is only able to be amazed they are still alive because the squad missed, but this does not mean they are not right to be amazed and look for an external explanation - eg intelligent intervention
strong anthropic principle criticism: Adams’ intelligent puddle analogy
compares believing the universe was made for humans to an intelligent puddle considering how perfectly it fits the hole it is in and hence incorrectly concluding the hole must have been made for the purpose of the puddle filling it
tennant: the strong anthropic principle
states as we identify ‘the many accidents of physics … that have worked together for our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known we were coming’
how does Augustine’s ‘who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable’ illustrate aesthetic principle
suggests beauty must be created by something that knows beauty, and due to the existence of varying objects of ‘beauty’, beauty must have a common source
implications of Dawkins’ statement that works of Beethoven and Shakespeare would be sublime with or without god - they prove the existence of Beethoven and Shakespeare, not god
beauty proves the existence of beautiful things, not god. humans can create beauty, so beauty does not serve as an argument for god either
Collins’ Prime Principle of Confirmation
if observation O is more probable under hypothesis H1 than under hypothesis H2, then O provides a reason for preferring H1 over H2 - it counts as evidence in favour of H1
Collins: probability of universe having ‘fine-tuned properties’ under 1. The Design Hypothesis, 2. The Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis
- approaches (if not equals) 1
- very small
Evaluation of effectiveness of Collins’ Confirmatory Argument
- determines points that may count as evidence towards an argument, but alone is insufficient in in providing reason warranting confidence in preferring one hypothesis to another
Himma’s criticisms of confirmatory argument: ‘relies on an inference strategy that…
…presupposes that we have independent evidence for thinking the right kind of intelligence agency exists’
