C grade knowledge Flashcards
(38 cards)
Copleston vs Russell
- Copleston argued that everything in the Universe relies on things outside themselves for their existence.
- Nothing in the universe can be the creator of the universe. Therefore the cause must be something external to it.
- The cause for the universe must be something self-causing = this is a necessary being. It must exist independently outside of the universe.
- God is different from contingent being as he is ‘his own sufficient cause’. Explaining why there is a universe is important.
Aquinas’ Teleological argument
‘The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world.
- We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.
- Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly.
- Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer.
- Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.’
— St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Article 3, Question 2)
Freud’s challenge to the moral argument
- Freud distinguished between three components of the human psyche (mind):
- ID – basic instincts and primitive desires e.g. hunger, lust etc.
- EGO – perceptions of the external that makes us aware of the ‘reality principle,’ one’s most outward part and personality
- SUPER-EGO – the unconscious mind which consists of:
- the Ego-ideal which praises good actions
- The conscience which makes you feel guilty for bad actions
- For Freud, our moral awareness cannot be of divine origin because of the differing opinions on ethical issues – if it were morality would be absolute and we would all come to the same moral conclusions. Rather, our conscience or moral awareness is the super-ego of the mind, a ‘moral policeman’ developed during child hood (more specifically the third stage which is known as the phallic stage between 3 and 6 years old).
- If conscience is the voice of God as Kant believes you would expect it to be consistent. Kant’s concept of an absolute moral code enforced by God does not explain the Yorkshire Ripper who claimed to follow voices in his head(?) or the differing views on issues such as euthanasia and abortion. Conscience is not truly objective and therefore has a human not divine origin.
- [Fromm – conscience comes from society]
omnipotence,
- Omnipotence = All-powerful
- This is a quality of God the creator, telling people the limitless power of God.
- God also lays the foundation of earth, governing the night and day: “Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know it place” (Job 38: 12)
- Gen.1 shows God’s complete power over creation. This is shown by Isaiah 40:22-23 “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers…; who brings princes to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing”.
- God’s power is present throughout the creation; the signs are present.
‘Intelligent Design’ and ‘Irreducible Complexity’;
Michael Behe
- A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning
- An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway
- Mousetrap analogy
- Eye was previously thought to be IC – but now we can explain it
- Primordial soup – the complexity of RNA
Descartes Ontological Argument
[Meditations]
- Descartes wanted to doubt everything; Imagined an evil demon was trying to fool him; Only thing he could prove was ‘I think therefore I am’; Needed to prove God to show that the external world exists.
- God is a supremely perfect being.
- A quality of perfection is existence.
- Therefore God exists.
- God’s existence is a truth like Maths – it makes no sense to deny it
Kant’s Moral argument [critique of practical reason]
- Humans have a moral awareness (an obligation to bring about the summum bonum [via virtue])
- The summum bonum must be possible to achieve (ought implies can).
- It is not possible for humans to achieve the summum bonum alone.
and
- Happiness must be the reward of virtue
- Virtue does not always lead to happiness in this life
- There must be an afterlife where this happens.
- Therefore*
1. There must be a God who makes it possible.
omnipresence;
- Omniscience = All-knowing, All-seeing
- All knowledge of everything; past, present and future.
- He knows the intention of people better than they themselves know. E.g. when Eve eats the fruit of the tree he knew.
- God has limitless knowledge of creation and its functions.
- Job 38-39 shows omniscience = “…Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (Job 38: 33)
Paley’s Teleological argument
- Things are complex (Paley)
- This cannot arise by chance [probability and winning the lottery]
- Therefore it must have been made intentionally
- Example of finding a watch on a heath
the imagery of God as a craftsman;
- God is the skilled builder of the world. In Job 38 God is seen as the designer who laid the foundations of the earth.
- In Gen.2 God making Adam from the dust is likened to a potter shaping the clay.
- This is a human-like image of God = Anthropomorphic.
- God relates to mankind, there is a relationship between man and God that allows him to reward or punish them.
- This is different from the sterile power seen by the Greeks.
the concept of ‘creatio ex nihilo’.
- Meaning = Creating out of nothing.
- Believed that God created the whole universe, along with everything existing, out of nothing.
- The belief comes from both Genesis and Job.
- This belief replaced the implied idea from Gen.1 that God crafted an order from a pre-existing mass, this raises a question which is biblical? Pre-existing mass or ex nihilo?
- The Creatio ex Nihilo = appealing as it fits with Big Bang.
the Theodicy of Augustine
- Problem of evil = how can God be omnibenevolent, ominscienct, and omnipotent – if bad stuff happens.
- Augustine defined evil as the privation (lacking something) of goodness, just as blindness is a privation of sight.
- Instead, evil comes from free will possessed by the fallen angels and humans, who turned their back on God.
- Augustine reasoned that all humans are worthy of the punishment of evil [original sin] and suffering because we are “seminally present in the loins of Adam” (this means we all are from Adam as he is the father of man).
The Euthyphro dilemma
- Either*
1. Goodness is liked by the god(s) because it is good - or*
1. Goodness is goodness because it is liked by the god(s)
the relation between concepts and phenomena;
- Concept = idea (beauty)
- Phenomena = the experienced (something beautiful)
- The cave
- The forms
Creationism
- Literal’ interpretation of Genesis
- Young Earth creationists. [4,000BC]
- Scientific Creationists
- Gap theory Creationists
- Progressive creationism (combining evolution and creationism – quote from Augustine)
Darwinism’s criticism of the TA
- The world not a result of intelligent design, but a result of chance/natural selection.
- Natural selection = the survival of the fittest. He found that things adapted to their environment to survive.
- The world just appears to be designed, but what actually happens is the weak die and strong live – this needs no external designer.
- Some don’t believe that the deaths of people are designed. In this way Darwin saw no reason to believe there was a first design that should be necessary.
the Big Bang theory
- Observations that things in the universe are moving away from each other (blue/red shift)
- Extrapolate from this that everything was at one time in the same point
- There is evidence of an ‘echo’ from the big bang. – it seems to be supported by further evidence
- This seems to provide an alternative explanation for the creation of the universe.
Theodicy of Irenaeus;
- Irenaeus argued that God created the world imperfectly so that every imperfect being could develop into a ‘child of God,’ in God’s perfect likeness.
- For Irenaeus, God could not have created humans in perfect likeness of himself because attaining the likeness of God requires the willing co-operation of humans.
- God thus had to give humans free will in order for them to be able to willingly co-operate.
- Since freedom requires the ability to choose good over evil, God had to permit evil and suffering to occur.
[no pain, no gain]
Anselm’s second argument (response to Gaunilo)
- Anselm’s second argument counter’s Gaunilo’s response by saying you can’t compare God with an Island, as an island = contingent whereas God = necessary.
- Contingent = things that come in and out of existence and are dependent on something for their existence.
- Necessary = things that must exist.
- Anselm argued that his initial argument wasn’t to prove the existence of contingent island etc, but was to show the greatest thing ever = God.
- God cannot be compared to an island, because God has necessary existence but islands don’t.
- Therefore his first argument still applies to God, but not contingent things.
J S Mill’s criticism of the TA
- Response to Paley’s argument
- Bad/disordered stuff is evident in the world – wars, disease, men’s nipples
- The world isn’t good/ordered anyway.
- It can only imply a disordered God
Hume’s response to the Cosmological Argument
- Can be seen as a response to the Cosmological argument
- When we say ‘A causes B’, all that we have a right to say is that, in past experience, A and B have frequently appeared together or in rapid succession, and no instance has been observed of A not followed or accompanied by B.
- However many instances we may have observed of the conjunction of A and B, that gives no reason for expecting them to be conjoined on a future occasion, though it is a cause of this expectation.
- (Two clocks, both running next to each other, but one is a second behind the other. One goes hourly bell chimes a second after the other, but there is no reason to believe that one causes the other.)*
1. [there appear to be particles which just pop in and out of existence]
Aristotle’s four causes
- Material cause (a table is made of wood)
- Formal cause (a table is shaped liked a table – has legs and a table top)
- Efficient cause (a carpenter made the table)
- Final cause (the purpose of the table is to place your food on to eat)
Darwinism and various developments of evolutionary theory
- Things reproduce
- Mutations
- Natural selection (survival of the fittest)
- No designer needed
- People used to think that certain things were irreducibly complex – such as the eye – now they are explained