Arguments based on observation

Question 1

Aquinas quote on the fifth way

Answer 1

‘the fifth way is taken from the governance of the world’

Question 2

Christopher Hitchens

Answer 2

Said “some design, huh?” regarding the sheer suffering of evolution

Question 3

Dawkins

Answer 3

The watchmaker is a blind watchmaker of evolution with “successful mistakes”

Question 4

FR Tennant

Answer 4

Aesthetic principle — how can evolution account for our appreciation of beauty? It gives us no survival advantage

Question 5

Emile Barel

Answer 5

Infinite monkey theory

Question 6

Swinburne

Answer 6

Why are there laws of nature? Why are they unchanging? How are they so perfect for human life? — because of fine tuning, without which we wouldn’t exist. Science explains what these laws are but why

Question 7

Immanuel Kant

Answer 7

We naturally categorise and order experiences in our head. How can we even be sure that order exists in the world?

Question 8

Bertrand Russell

Answer 8

Supports fallacy of composition w/example of human race’s mother

Question 9

Michael Palmer

Answer 9

Having followed the teleological argument, is theism as a concept actually the simplest concept? Surely it raises so many more questions?

Question 10

Neal Gillespie

Answer 10

“natural selection effectively demolished William Paley’s classical design argument”

Question 11

JL Mackie

Answer 11

• Why should people accept that God is the necessary being mentioned in the cosmological argument?
• Could be a permanent “stock of matter’