test 3 FOF Flashcards
(40 cards)
what it means to be a contingent being
contengent beings require an explaination outside of themselves for both their original existance and there continueing existance
cosmology
the branch of philosophy dealing with the origin and general structure of the universe
conditions that could indicate a contingent being if the being met any one of the conditions
- It is restricted by time and space.
- It can be changed by something other than itself.
- It has a beginning in time.
- It needs things other than itself to continue existing.
- Its attributes, whether essential or accidental, are to some extent influenced by other things.
two basic types of contingent existance
- A bringing into existence.
2. A continuing in existence.
difference in what it means to be self-caused and what it means to be uncaused
- To be self-caused means that I would have to had to exist prior to my own existence in order to bring myself into being. This is clearly absurd.
- A being that is uncaused is said to have “necessary existence” which is what theists mean by God.
self-caused
To be self-caused means that I would have to had to exist prior to my own existence in order to bring myself into being. This is clearly absurd.
uncaused
A being that is uncaused is said to have “necessary existence” which is what theists mean by God.
qualities of a non contingent being
- It is self-existent.
- It is eternal since it could neither come into existence or pass from existence.
- This being would not only explain a single contingent being but every contingent being (including the universe itself).
- This being would also be omnipotent and omnipresent with the ability to cause every contingent thing.
two kinds of casual series
- transitive causal series
2. intransitive causal series
transitive causal series
has to do with sequential cause and effect and origination of existence. i.e. a cat producing a cat who produces a cat, etc.
intransitive causal series
has to do with foundational cause and effect and continuation of existence. i.e. a stone is moved by a stick that is moved by a hand and so on.
what theists belive
they do not believe that everything must have a cause, but that every effect must have a cause
what athiests believe
they believe that the universe itself could be without cause but believe that it is irrational to believe that God is without cause.
what athiests believe about theists
that they commit the fallicy of composition
contingency
to infer from the contingency of things and events taken individually, that nature as a whole is contingent and thus dependent on another.
it is impossible to find
information context (as in a cell) without an informer or to find communication without a communicator, a program without a programmer.
the law of biogenesis
life comes from life- our uniform experiance is that such information as is contained in cells always alway comes from intelligent beings.
Carl Sagan
the information content from a single cell has been estimated around 10 to the 12th power bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Sagen believes
that a single message from outer space would mean intelligence is there but does not see the information he has about a cell indicating intelligence here.
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe state
“books in a library contain inforation. Yet we do not think of a book as intelligence.”Just the brain of Shakespere was necessary to produce famous plays so prior information was necessary to produce a living cell.”BUT INFORMATION FROM WHERE?
Varghese sugests
that there are five phenomena, evident in our immideiate experiance that can only be explained in terms of the existance of God. Know them.
Athieism seems to have its roots in
the 5th and sixth centuries
we live in a what?
moral shpere
what can men be in the moral sphere?
- Honest
- Charitable
- merciful
- truthful
- or fail to be such
