Arguments based on observation Flashcards
(21 cards)
What type of argument is the teleological argument?
A posteriori
What is Paley’s first argument?
Design qua purpose
(analogy of the watch)
What is Paley’s analogy of the watch?
‘crossing a heath’
stone,
it had lain there for ever
But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground
put together for a
purpose
Paley quote
‘Every maifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature’
Human eye, wings of birds, fins of fish
- are these comparable to a watch though?
the complexity of nature in the entire universe requires the greatest of all designers (god)
What is Cicero’s argument?
nothing is more ‘obvious’ that there is ‘some divinity’ when we ‘look up to the sky and contemplate the heavens’
‘Design qua regularity’ (Paley’s second argument)
Astronomy, newton’s laws of motion, gravity - shows design in the universe
e.g. the rotation of planets obey the same universal laws
an external agent must have imposed this order on the universe
Aquinas
Everything operates as to a design. This design is God
What is Aquinas’ Fifth Way
design qua regularity
Explain the Fifth way + give the analogy
objects follow natural laws (telos)
objects perform their jobs efficiently since they were designed thus way
everything that is designed must have a designed
natural world does not think for itself but is directed by an intelligent being (like the arrow and the archer) (regularity of succession)
Dawkins quote from ‘The Blind Watchmaker’
No purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference
Hume’s book (BEFORE PLAYEY)
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Hume’s five criticisms?
Why is God the designer?
Why just one God?
Fallacy of composition (as found in the cosmological argument)
Problem of evil (Paley tries to say a broken watch doesnt mean there wasn’t a designer)
World isn’t like a machine, it is organic (dissimilitude of analogy)
What argument does HUME EMPLOY?
Epicurean hypothesis
at the beginning of time, particles were in random, chaotic motion
overtime, these evolved into an ordered system
apparent design does not = designer
Darwin’s natural selection
survival of the fittest (healthiest species pass on genes, the rest die out and cannot pass on)
- not design, but mutations over thousands of years
Dawkins and the female digger wasp
lays her egg in a caterpillar so the lava eats the insides
wasp stings caterpillar, so it is paralysed but alive whilst it is being eaten
Stephen Fry
‘stupid God’, ‘bone cancer in children’, ‘utter maniac’
Irish tv show ‘The Meaning of Life’
children only an emotive, adults also get it
Anthropic principle
the world was designed so that evolution could happen so intelligent life could exist
Dawkins book?
The Selfish Gene
our appreciation of beauty is part of our survival mechanism
memes - units of cultures - people band together to be safer
The Goldilocks argument
earth is approximately 92 million miles from the sun
“just right” for life
BUT, millions of universes, with planets or stars, eventually chance would allow this distance
Arthur Brown development of The Goldilocks argument
only planet with an ozone layer - specifically filters ultraviolet light
- could say this is chance- BUT when do you stop relying on chance and see design?
