PHILOSOPHERS

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PHILOSOPHERS
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WHO IS GOD?
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• What is God?
• Have you ever wondered whether God exists? Most
  people have.
• But have you wondered whether Gods existence can
  be proven?
• Is there evidence, I mean real hard-core
  scientific evidence, that God exists?
• Are there any good reasons to think that God does
  not exist?
• How many of you here believe that God exists?
• How many of you think that Gods existence can be
  proven?

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• The question, "Do we have any good reason to
  think that God does (or does not) exist?", is
  equally important in the Philosophy of Religion.
• There are four main positions with regard to the
  existence of God that one might take
• Theism - the belief that God exists.
• Weak atheism - the lack of belief in any deity.
  
• Strong atheism - the belief that no deity
  exists.
• Agnosticism - the belief that the existence or
  non- .existence of God is not known or cannot
  be known.
• Most of Philosophy of Religion involves
  determining which of these positions is most
  rational to take. However, this assumes that the
  existence of God can be debated and proved or
  disproved.

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• The existence of God is a metaphysical question
  central to a branch of philosophy called the
  Philosophy of Religion.
• As the name implies, this area of philosophy
  applies philosophical methods to the study of a
  wide variety of religious issues, including the
  existence of God.
• Philosophy of Religion should be distinguished
  from a type of theology called revealed theology.

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• Theos is the Greek word for God, so
  Theology literally means the study of God.
• Revealed Theology is a type of theology that
  claims human knowledge of God comes through
  special revelations such as the Bible or Quran
  or through visions or other types of direct
  revelations from God.
• St. Thomas Aquinas said that revealed theology
  provides saving knowledge that is, knowledge
  that will result in our salvation.

St. Thomas Aquinas
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• Another kind of theology, called Natural
  Theology, has to do with the knowledge of God
  that is possible based on the use of natural
  reason that is, reason unaided by special
  revelations.
• St. Thomas says that this sort of theology can
  provide us with some knowledge of Gods nature
  and can demonstrate that God exists, but it
  cannot provide saving knowledge because, after
  all, even devils know that God exists.
• Natural theology is sometimes called rational
  theology or philosophical theology. As this last
  name indicates, this kind of theology is more
  closely related to the Philosophy of Religion
  than is revealed theology.

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• Both natural theology and the Philosophy of
  Religion they solely on the use of human reason
  in their attempts to discover something about the
  divine.
• They do not assume the truth of some special
  revelation they allow only what reason can
  prove.
• Natural Theology has as its professed object to
  vindicate our belief in God, and to deal with the
  manifold objections, which from a wide variety of
  standpoints have been urged either against His
  existence or against His infinite perfections.
• Sometimes Revealed and Natural Theology overlap
  on issues.

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• Thomas Aquinas said that if it an issue in which
  there is disagreement between the two, then faith
  (revealed theology) takes precedence over reason
  (natural theology).

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• One thing it's important to understand is that
  the Philosophy of Religion is far more subtle in
  its study of such arguments than some critics of
  religion suppose.
• It recognizes that religious beliefs are a
  complex interaction of ideas and to suppose that
  a single argument could ground them all is not
  only unreasonable but contrary to the way in
  which we decide questions in everyday life.
• Thus the modern justification of belief is
  cumulative and complaining that a particular
  argument fails to make the case for the entire
  network of beliefs is to miss the point.

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• Indeed, although there is general agreement that
  the five main arguments fail to prove the
  existence of God, some philosophers of religion
  claim that this is not what should be aimed at
  instead, their combination makes it more likely
  than not that God exists.
• If we were to believe because of arguments, or
  even if we could show that the existence of God
  were certain or rationally justified, there would
  be no room left for faith.

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• Religious belief is to be taken not as something
  that can be proven or disproven but instead as a
  boundary condition or principle through which we
  interpret life and our experiences.
• There must be some measure of considering the
  evidence and arguments for and against and
  deciding on the balance of probabilities.
• It is also suggested that God would not make it
  unreasonable for us to believe in Him, so there
  must be some value in the proofs of His
  existence, whether or not we find them
  convincing.

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• Recall that Kierkegaard identified subjective
  truths as those things which I believe are true
  for ME.
• William James noted that truth is what works
  for you.
• Belief is not objective rationality (or we would
  not call it faith) but belief in the unseen
  (and yet important to us) things shape and give
  meaning to our lives.

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Theistical Systems

• The philosophical systems which assert the
  existence of God fall into three classes deism,
  pantheism, and theism.

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Deism teaches that God created the world, but
that having created it, He leaves it to the
guidance of those laws which He established
at its creation, abstaining from further
interference.

• He acts thus, it holds, both in regard to the
  physical and moral order.
• There is no such thing as a personal providence
  nor does prayer avail to obtain His special
  assistance.
• The externality, not to say the remoteness, of
  God in relation to the world is fundamental in
  this system.

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• Pantheism goes to the other extreme. It denies
  that there is any distinction between God and the
  universe.
• Nothing exists, it contends, except God.
• The universe is, in fact, simply the Divine Being
  evolving itself in various forms.
• By this it means that they deserve a religious
  reverence.

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• Theism holds a middle position between these.
  Like deism, it maintains the doctrine of
  creation, affirming that finite things are
  fundamentally distinct from their Infinite Maker.
  
• But it rejects the teaching which makes God
  remote from the world.
• It asserts, on the contrary, that God is, and
  must be, ever present to every created thing,
  sustaining it in existence and conferring upon it
  whatever activity it possesses - that "in Him we
  live and move and have are being."
• And further, Theism says that He exercises a
  special and detailed providence over the whole
  course of things, interfering as He sees fit, and
  guiding all things to their respective ends.

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"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your
life, what you will eat or what you will drink
nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not
life more than food and the body more than
clothing?...why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow
they neither toil nor spin and yet I say to you
that even Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes
the grass of the field, which today is, and
tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not
much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
(Matt. 625-30)
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• Theistic philosophies and religion are not
  exclusively western. The Hindu Brahman is a
  god-figure of sorts, but certainly the ultimate
  reality.
• NONTHEISTICAL SYSTEMS
• Nontheistic philosophies, such as Buddhism and
  Taoism are not overtly concerned with the issue
  of Gods existence even though they have been
  concerned with the nature and existence of some
  ultimate reality.
• Two other forms of nontheistical philosophies are
  agnosticism and atheism.

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• Agnosticism (from the Greek words, Anot and
  gnosisknowledge) admits to the middle ground of
  uncertainty between a belief in a God or some
  ultimate reality and a rejection of belief in a
  God or some ultimate reality.
• An agnostics identification means that he
  literally does not know.

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The ONE THING that an Agnostic DOES KNOW is that
he DOESNT KNOW
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PURE AGNOSTICISM
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LIGHT SUMMER READING FOR AN AGNOSTIC LIVING IN
COLUMBIA, SC DURING AUGUST
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• Atheistic philosophies, while claiming not to
  believe in the existence of God, nevertheless
  often spend a great deal of time devising
  rational proofs designed to prove that the
  theistic proofs for the existence of God are
  irrational or at least logically unsupportable.

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Q Who died and made YOU God?
GOD DID !
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Agnosticism Atheism Compared
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HOW CAN I KNOW GOD?
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How Can we know God?

• If He is ineffable or indescribable, then how is
  it that people have sought to give accounts of
  Him within religious texts throughout the years?
• One answer is to say that we can take a negative
  approach and only say what God is not.
• To some (like the Jews), God is even too holy to
  be named and perhaps He is beyond human language
  and its limits?
• Others suggest that God could be known from His
  effects, hence talk of His being all-powerful,
  just, all knowing, as well as the converse of
  these.
• More recent answers include regarding religious
  texts as a myths, perhaps giving timeless
  insights into the human condition but often
  through the interpretations and context of a
  particular age.
• But, can we honestly know God and His nature?

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THE IDEA OF GOD

• Before the emergence of the belief that the whole
  world is under the sovereign control of a single
  being, people often believed in a plurality of
  divine beings or gods, a religious position
  called polytheism.
• In ancient Greece and Rome, for example, the
  various gods had control over different aspects
  of life, so that one naturally worshipped several
  gods, a god of war, a goddess of love, and so
  forth.
• Sometimes, however, one might believe that there
  are a number of gods but worship only one of
  them, the god of ones own tribe, a religious
  position called henotheism.

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• Monotheism, the belief in only one divine being,
  has passed through a profound change, a change he
  describes with the help of the expressions up
  there and out there.
• The god up there is a being located in space
  above us, presumably at some definite distance
  from the earth, in a region known as the heavens.
  He is above all and outside of time, space,
  and the limitations of a finite existence.
• He is a transcendent God, and he does not take
  time to bother with individual matters. He
  controls the world much like an unseen puppeteer
  controls a marionette on the stage.

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• The fundamental change from the God up there to
  the God out there in the past 800 years is the
  change from thinking of God as located at some
  spatial distance from the earth to thinking of
  God as separate from and independent of the
  world.
• According to this idea, God has no location in
  some spot or region of physical space.
• He is a purely spiritual being, a supremely good,
  all-powerful, all-knowing, personal being who has
  created the world, but is not a part of it.
• He is separate from the world, not subject to its
  laws, and yet he judges it, and guides it to its
  final purpose.
• He is HERE with the world, but not of the
  world. He is an eminent God.

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The TRANSCENDENT GOD
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Transcendent God controls the world from up
there ?
Eminent God controls the world from out there
(here) ?
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This rather majestic idea of an eminent God
was slowly developed over the centuries
by great western theologians such as
Augustine, Boethius, Bonaventure,
Avicenna, Anselm, Maimonides, and
Aquinas. It has been the dominant idea of
God in western civilization.
Two views of God controlling the world
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THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

• According to many major theologians, God is
  conceived of as a supremely good being, separate
  from and independent of the world, all-powerful,
  all-knowing, and the creator of the universe.
• Two other features that were ascribed to God by
  the great theologians are self-existent and
  eternal.
• The dominant idea of God in western civilization,
  then, is the idea of a supremely good being,
  creator of but separate from and independent of
  the world, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing
  (omniscient), eternal, and self-existent.

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• What is it for a being to be omnipotent?
• How are we to understand the idea of
  self-existence?
• In what way is God thought to be separate from
  and independent of the world?
• What is meant when it is said that God, and God
  alone, is eternal?
• Only to the extent that we can answer these and
  similar questions do we comprehend the central
  idea of God to emerge within western
  civilization.
• Before turning to a study of the question of the
  existence of God, therefore, it is important to
  enrich our grasp of this idea of God by trying to
  answer some of these basic questions.

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OMNIPOTENCEParadox of the Stone

• Does God have the power to create a stone so
  heavy that He cannot lift it?
• Is it possible that he does or does not?

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• In his great work, the Summa Theologica, St.
  Thomas Aquinas undertakes to explain what it is
  for God to be omnipotent.
• After pointing out that for God to be omnipotent
  is for God to be able to do all things that are
  possible, Aquinas carefully explains that there
  are two different kinds of possibility, relative
  possibility and absolute possibility, and
  inquires as to which kind of possibility is meant
  when it is said that Gods omnipotence is the
  ability to do all things that are possible.
  Something is a relative possibility when it lies
  within the power of some being or beings to do.
• Flying by natural means, for example, is possible
  relative to birds but not relative to humans.
• Something is an absolute possibility, however, if
  it is not a contradiction in terms.

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• Having explained the two different kinds of
  possibility, Aquinas points out that it must be
  absolute possibility which is meant when Gods
  omnipotence is explained as the ability to do all
  things that are possible. For if we meant
  relative possibility, our explanation would say
  no more than that God is omnipotent means that
  he can do all things that are in his power to do.
  And while it is certainly true that God can do
  all things that are in his power to do, it
  explains nothing. God is omnipotent, then,
  means that God can do whatever does not involve a
  contradiction in terms.
• Does this mean that there are some things God
  cannot do?
• In one sense it clearly does mean this. God
  cannot make one and the same thing both round and
  square at the same time.

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• The idea that Gods omnipotence does not include
  the power to do something inconsistent with any
  of his basic attributes can help us solve what
  has been called the paradox of the stone.
• According to this paradox, either God has the
  power to create a stone so heavy that he cannot
  lift it, or God does not have that power.
• If he does have the power to create such a stone,
  then there is something God cannot do lift the
  stone he can create.
• On the other hand, if God cannot create such a
  stone, then there is also something he cannot do
  create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it.
• In either case there is something God cannot do.
  Therefore, God is not omnipotent. But..

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• The solution to this puzzle is to see that
  creating a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it
  is doing something inconsistent with one of Gods
  essential attributesthe attribute of
  omnipotence.
• For if there exists a stone so heavy that God
  lacks the power to lift it, then God is not
  omnipotent.
• Therefore, if God has the power to create such a
  stone, he has the power to bring it about that he
  lacks an attribute (omnipotence) that is
  essential to him.
• So, the proper solution to the puzzle is to say
  that God cannot create such a stone any more than
  he can do an evil deed.

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GOODNESSThe Dilemma of Divine Command

• In Platos Euthyphro, the issue concerning Gods
  goodness and his commands could be expressed in a
  two part question
• Is something good because God commands it, or
  does God command it because it is good?

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• The idea that God (and his commands) must be
  perfectly good is connected to the view that God
  is a being who deserves unconditional gratitude,
  praise, and worship.
• For if a being were to fall short of perfect
  goodness, it would not be worthy of unreserved
  praise and worship.
• So, God is not just a good being, his goodness is
  unsurpassable.
• Moreover, God doesnt simply happen to be
  perfectly good it is his nature to be that way.
• God logically could not fail to be perfectly
  good. It was for this reason that God does not
  have the power to do evil.
• To attribute such a power to God is to attribute
  to him the power to cease to be the being that he
  necessarily is.
• Being God is part of the nature or essence of the
  being who is God. So, since the being who is God
  cannot cease to be God, that being cannot cease
  to be perfectly good.
  Or can he?

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• Platos writings were in the form of dialogues,
  usually between Socrates and one or more
  interlocutors.
• In one of these dialogues, the Euthyphro, there
  is a discussion concerning whether right can be
  defined as that which the gods command.
• Socrates is skeptical and asks Is conduct right
  because the gods command it, or do the gods
  command it because it is right?
• It is one of the most famous questions in the
  history of philosophy. The British philosopher
  Antony Flew suggests that one good test of a
  persons aptitude for philosophy is to discover
  whether he can grasp its force and point.

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• The point is this. If we accept the theological
  conception of right and wrong, we are caught in a
  dilemma. Socrates question asks us to clarify
  what we mean. There are two things we might mean,
  and both lead to trouble.
• 1. First, we might mean that conduct is right
  because God commands it. For example, in Exodus
  2016, we read that God commands us to be
  truthful. On this option, the reason we should be
  truthful is simply that God requires it. Apart
  from the divine command, truth telling is neither
  good nor bad. It is Gods command that makes
  truthfulness right. But this leads to trouble,
  for it represents Gods commands as arbitrary. It
  means that God could have given different
  commands just as easily.

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• He could have commanded us to be liars, and then
  lying, and not truthfulness, would be right. (You
  may be tempted to reply But God would never
  command us to lie! But why not? If he did
  endorse lying, God would not be commanding us to
  do wrong, because his command would make lying
  right.) Remember that on this view, honesty was
  not right before God commanded it.
• Therefore, he could have had no more reason to
  command it than its opposite and so, from a
  moral point of view, his command is perfectly
  arbitrary.
• Moreover, on this view, the doctrine of the
  goodness of God is reduced to nonsense.

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• It is important to religious believers that God
  is not only all-powerful and all-knowing, but
  that he is also good yet if we accept the idea
  that good and bad are defined by reference to
  Gods will, this notion is deprived of any
  meaning. What could it mean to say that Gods
  commands are good? If X is good means X is
  commanded by God, then Gods commands are good
  would mean only Gods commands are commanded by
  God, an empty truism. In his Discourse on
  Metaphysics (1686) Leibniz put the point clearly
  
• So in saying that things are not good by any rule
  of goodness, but sheerly by the will of God, it
  seems to me that one destroys, without realizing
  it, all the love of God and all his glory. For
  why praise him for what he has done if he would
  be equally praiseworthy in doing exactly the
  contrary?

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• If Gods commands could be arbitrary,
• how can we say that He is GOOD ?

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• Thus if we choose the first of Socrates two
  options, we are stuck with consequences that even
  the most religious people must find unacceptable.
• 2. There is a way to avoid these troublesome
  consequences. We can take the second of Socrates
  options. We need not say that right conduct is
  right because God commands it. Instead, we may
  say that God commands right conduct because it is
  right. God, who is infinitely wise, realizes that
  truthfulness is far better than deceitfulness,
  and so he commands us to be truthful he sees
  that killing is wrong, and so he commands us not
  to kill and so on for all the commandments.

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• If we take this option, we avoid the troublesome
  consequences that plagued the first alternative.
  Gods commands turn out to be not at all
  arbitrary they are the result of his wisdom in
  knowing what is best. And the doctrine of the
  goodness of God is preserved To say that his
  commands are good means that he commands only
  what, in perfect wisdom, he sees to be the best.
  But this option leads to a different problem,
  which is equally troublesome for the theological
  conception of right and wrong In taking this
  option, we have virtually abandoned the
  theological conception of right and wrong.

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• If God knows some things are good
• (and also knows some things are evil),
• we cannot say that He knows the Good
• because He is Good unless we are
• also willing to say that He knows the Evil
• because He is Evil.
• So the standard of good evil
• must exist outside of God.

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• If we say that God commands us to be truthful
  because truthfulness is right, then we are
  admitting that there is some standard of right
  and wrong that is independent of Gods will. We
  are saying that God sees or recognizes that
  truthfulness is right, and that is very different
  from his making it right. The rightness exists
  prior to and independent of Gods command, and it
  is the reason for the command. Thus if we want to
  know why we should be truthful, the reply
  Because God commands it will not take us very
  far. We may still ask But why does God command
  it? and the answer to that question will provide
  the underlying reasons why truthfulness is a good
  thing.
• All this may be summarized in the following
  argument

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• Many religious people believe that they must
  accept a theological conception of right and
  wrong because it would be impious not to do so.
  They feel, somehow, that if they believe in God,
  they should think that right and wrong are to be
  defined ultimately in terms of his will. But this
  argument suggests otherwise.
• It suggests that, on the contrary, the Divine
  Command Theory of right and wrong itself leads to
  impious results, so that a pious person should
  not accept it. And in fact, some of the greatest
  theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas (ca.
  12251274), rejected the theory for just this
  reason.

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• But even if we cannot
• say that Gods commands
• are good, can we
• still say that
• God is good?

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WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT?

• Theologians and philosophers have developed
  arguments for the existence of God, arguments
  which, they have claimed, prove beyond reasonable
  doubt that there is a God.
• Arguments for the existence of God are commonly
  divided into a posteriori arguments and a priori
  arguments.
• An a posteriori argument depends on a principle
  or premise that can be known only by means of our
  experience of the world.

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• An a priori argument, on the other hand, purports
  to rest on principles all of which can be known
  independently of our experience of the world, by
  just reflecting on and understanding them.
• Of the three major arguments for the existence of
  Godthe Cosmological, the Design, and the
  Ontologicalonly the last of these is entirely a
  priori.
• In the Cosmological Argument one starts from some
  simple fact about the world, such as that it
  contains things which are caused to exist by
  other things. In the Design Argument a somewhat
  more complicated fact about the world serves as a
  starting point, the fact that the world exhibits
  order and design. In the Ontological Argument,
  however, one begins simply with aconcept of God.

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Ontological Argument

• This argument was first propounded by St. Anselm,
  Archbishop of Canterbury in his Proslogion of
  1077-78.
• Iin the Proslogion Anselm sets out to convince
  "the fool," that is, the person who "has said in
  his heart, There is no God " (Psalm 141 531).

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• Anselms argument is considered by some that he
  intended it for those who were already theists,
  not necessarily for convincing atheists. This
  distinction is important because his goals for
  the argument tell us how it was supposed to
  function if it was meant for theists, to provide
  a rational basis for already-existing faith and
  hence work as a cumulative argument (as discussed
  above), then we might judge it differently than
  if it was supposed to prove definitively the
  existence of God.
• Anselm himself wrote
• I have written the following treatise as ...
  one who seeks to understand what he believes...
• Given this context, we can now look at the
  argument itself.

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• In basic form, it states that the definition of
  God entails His existence. For example
• P1 God is the greatest possible being, one whom
  nothing greater than can be conceived of
• P2 If God is just a concept and does not exist
  in reality then a greater being can be conceived,
  one that exists both as a concept and in reality
• C1 This being would be greater than God,
  contradicting P1
• C2 Therefore, God is not just a concept and must
  exist in reality.

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• Thus the fact that we define God to be the
  greatest possible being means that He must exist,
  or else He would no longer be the greatest.
• Another way to understand the argument is to
  distinguish between a necessary being (that is,
  one that necessarily must exist) and a contingent
  one (that is, one that may or may not exist,
  depending on the circumstances).
• According to the ontological argument, then, it
  would be greater for God to exist as a necessary
  being than as a contingent one.
• Notice that this argument depends only on the
  definition, not any facts about the world. It is
  perhaps for this reason that many people find it
  unsatisfactory at first glance.
• Does the notion of a "greatest possible being"
  make sense?

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Lets do the argument again

• In presenting Anselms argument again, I shall
  use the term God in place of the longer phrase
  the being than which none greater is
  possiblewherever the term God appears we are to
  think of it as simply an abbreviation of the
  longer phrase.
• God exists in the understanding.As weve noted,
  anyone who hears of the being than which none
  greater is possible is, in Anselms view,
  committed to premise 1.
• God might have existed in reality (God is a
  possible being).Anselm, I think, assumes the
  truth of premise 2 without making it explicit in
  his reasoning.
• If something exists only in the understanding and
  might have existed in reality, then it might have
  been greater than it is.Statement 3 is the key
  idea in Anselms Ontological Argument. It is
  intended as a general principle true of anything.
  Steps 13 constitute the basic premises of
  Anselms Ontological Argument.

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• From these three items it follows, so Anselm
  believes, that God exists in reality.
• But how does Anselm propose to convince us that
  if we accept 13 we are committed by the rules of
  logic to accept his conclusion that God exists in
  reality?
• Anselms procedure is to offer what is called a
  reductio ad absurdum proof of his conclusion.
  Instead of showing directly that the existence of
  God follows from13, Anselm invites us to suppose
  that God does not exist (that is, that the
  conclusion he wants to establish is false).
• Then he shows how this supposition when conjoined
  with 13 leads to an absurd result, a result that
  couldnt possibly be true because it is
  contradictory.

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• In short, with the help of 13 Anselm shows that
  the supposition that God does not exist reduces
  to an absurdity.
• Since the supposition that God does not exist
  leads to an absurdity, that supposition must be
  rejected in favor of the conclusion that God does
  exist.
• Does Anselm succeed in reducing the fools belief
  that God does not exist to an absurdity?
• The best way to answer this question is to follow
  the steps of his argument.

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• 4. Suppose God exists only in the
  understanding.This supposition, as we saw
  earlier, is Anselms way of expressing the fools
  belief that God does not exist.
• 5. God might have been greater than he is. (2, 4,
  and 3)6Step 5 follows from steps 2, 4, and 3.
  Since 3, if true, is true of anything, it will be
  true of God. Step 3, therefore, implies that if
  God exists only in the understanding and might
  have existed in reality, then God might have been
  greater than he is. If so, then given 2 and 4, 5
  must be true. For what 3 says when applied to God
  is that given 2 and 4 it follows that 5.
• 6. God is a being than which a greater is
  possible. (5)Surely if God is such that he
  logically might have been greater, then he is
  such than which a greater is possible.

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• Were now in a position to appreciate Anselms
  reductio argument. He has shown us that if we
  accept 14 we must accept 6. But 6 is
  unacceptable it is the absurdity Anselm was
  after. For replacing God in step 6 with the
  longer phrase it abbreviates, we see that 6
  amounts to the absurd assertion
• 7. The being than which none greater is possible
  is a being than which a greater is possible.Now
  since 14 have led us to an obviously false
  conclusion, if we accept Anselms basic premises
  13 as true, 4, the supposition that God exists
  only in the understanding, must be rejected as
  false. Thus we have shown that
• 8. It is false that God exists only in the
  understanding.But since premise 1 tells us that
  God does exist in the understanding, and 8 tells
  us that God does not exist only there, we may
  infer that
• 9. God exists in reality as well as in the
  understanding. (1, 8)

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• Defending critics of Anselms argument
• Try to think, for example, of a hockey player
  than which none greater is possible.
• How fast would he have to skate?
• How many goals would such a player have to score
  in a game?
• How fast would he have to shoot the puck?
• Could this player ever fall down, be checked, or
  receive a penalty?

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• Although the phrase The hockey player than which
  none greater is possible seems meaningful, as
  soon as we try to get a clear idea of what such a
  being would be like, we discover that we cant
  form a coherent idea of it at all. For we are
  being invited to think of some limited, finite
  thinga hockey player or an islandand then to
  think of it as exhibiting unlimited, infinite
  perfections.
• Perhaps, then, since Anselms reasoning applies
  only to possible things, Anselm can reject its
  application to his critics hockey player on the
  grounds that the hockey player and than which
  none greater is possible is, like the round
  square, an impossible thing.

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Cosmological Argument

• According to Plato in his dialogue the Timaeus,
  ...everything that comes to be or changes must
  do so owing to some cause for nothing can come
  to be without a cause.
• Historically, the cosmological argument can be
  traced to the writings of the Greek philosophers,
  Plato and Aristotle, but the major developments
  in the argument took place in the thirteenth and
  in the eighteenth centuries.
• In the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas put
  forth five distinct arguments for the existence
  of God, and of these, the first three are
  versions of the Cosmological Argument.

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• The Cosmological Argument has two parts.
• In the first part the effort is to prove the
  existence of a special sort of being, for
  example, a being that could not have failed to
  exist, or a being that causes change in other
  things but is itself unchanging.
• In the second part of the argument the effort is
  to prove that the special sort of being whose
  existence has been established in the first part
  has, and must have, the featuresperfect
  goodness, omnipotence, omniscience, and so
  onwhich go together to make up the theistic idea
  of God.
• What this means, then, is that Aquinas first
  three arguments (of five) are different versions
  of only the first part of the Cosmological
  Argument.

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St. Thomas Aquinas' FIVE WAYS

• Background
• St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) was a Dominican
  priest, theologian, and philosopher. Called the
  Doctor Angelicus (the Angelic Doctor,) Aquinas is
  considered one the greatest Christian
  philosophers to have ever lived. Two of his most
  famous works, the Summa Theologiae and the Summa
  Contra Gentiles, are the finest examples of his
  work on Christian philosophy.

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First Way (Cosmological)Argument From Motion

• St. Thomas Aquinas, studying the works of the
  Greek philosopher Aristotle, concluded from
  common observation that an object that is in
  motion (e.g. the planets, a rolling stone) is put
  in motion by some other object or force.
• From this, Aquinas believes that ultimately there
  must have been an UNMOVED MOVER (GOD) who first
  put things in motion.

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• Follow the argument this way
• P1 Everything that moves is moved by something
  else
• P2 An infinite regress (that is, going back
  through a chain of movers forever) is impossible
• C Therefore, there must exist a first mover
  (i.e. God).

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Second Way (Cosmological)Causation Of Existence

• This way deals with the issue of existence.
  Aquinas concluded that common sense observation
  tells us that no object creates itself. In other
  words, some previous object had to create it.
  Aquinas believed that ultimately there must have
  been an UNCAUSED FIRST CAUSE (GOD) who began the
  chain of existence for all things.
• The second cosmological argument proceeds
  similarly.

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• Follow the argument this way
• 1) There exists things that are caused (created)
  by other things.
• 2) Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing
  can create itself.)
• 3) There can not be an endless string of objects
  causing other objects to exist.
• 4) Therefore, there must be an uncaused first
  cause called God.

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• The first two cosmological arguments seem much
  the same but the slight distinction is that the
  first focuses on the fact that things are moved
  by agents acting in the world while the second
  discusses the actors causing these things to
  happen.
• Several criticisms have been made of Aquinas'
  assumptions. Philosophers have challenged the
  idea that events are linked in a "chain" from one
  to the next, each resting, as it were, on those
  below. Another telling objection is to ask why
  there could not be more than one first
  cause/mover? Why could the chain not lead back to
  several ultimate causes, each somehow outside the
  universe? Not only that, but these two arguments
  could just as easily lead to two different Gods.
• Aquinas offers a third argument.

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Third Way (Cosmological) Contingent and
Necessary Objects

• This way defines two types of objects in the
  universe contingent beings and necessary beings.
  
• A contingent being is an object that cannot exist
  without a necessary being causing its existence.
• Aquinas believed that the existence of contingent
  beings would ultimately necessitate a being which
  must exist for all of the contingent beings to
  exist.
• This being, called a necessary being, is what we
  call God.

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• Follow the argument this way
• 1) Contingent beings are caused.
• 2) Not every being can be contingent.
• 3) If a contingent being exists, then there must
  exist a being which is necessary to cause
  contingent beings.
• 4) This necessary being is God.

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• The idea here is that if everything in the
  universe was contingent then there must have been
  some time when there were no contingent beings at
  all. In that case, how could the universe have
  come into being, since contingent beings would
  require a cause? This means that there must be
  some necessary being, which we take to be God.
• The problem again is that Aquinas third argument
  might be taken to imply another God, different
  from the other two. Others object that matter or
  energy are not contingent (although still others
  question this assumption), or that the
  contingency could run backwards in time as far as
  we like and "end" in the future.

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• Final Comment on the Cosmological Argument
• As with the ontological argument, the
  cosmological argument does not appear to be
  intended to convince non-theists that they should
  become theists but instead suggests the existence
  of God as a possibility, or an explanation of the
  brute fact of the existence of the universe.
• How convincing it is depends, apart from the
  opinions we might hold of the content of the
  argument, on whether we feel this fact is in need
  of explanation or not.

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Fourth Way The Argument From Degrees And
Perfection

• St. Thomas Aquinas formulated this Way from a
  very interesting observation about the qualities
  of things. For example one may say that of two
  marble sculptures one is more beautiful than the
  other. So for these two objects, one has a
  greater degree of beauty than the next. This is
  referred to as degrees or gradation of a quality.
  
• From this fact Aquinas concluded that for any
  given quality (e.g. goodness, beauty, knowledge)
  there must be a perfect standard by which all
  such qualities are measured. These perfections
  are contained in God.

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Fifth Way (Teleological) Argument From
Intelligent Design

• The final Way that St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of
  has to do with the observable universe and the
  order of nature.
• Aquinas states that common sense tells us that
  the universe works in such a way, that one can
  conclude that is was designed by an intelligent
  designer, God.
• In other words, all physical laws and the order
  of nature and life were designed and ordered by
  God, the intelligent designer.

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• The Teleological Argument points to the existence
  of purpose and order in the universe and supposes
  that if we see signs of design then there must
  have been a designer.
• Indeed, the word "teleology" comes from the Greek
  telos, meaning "purpose", "goal", or "end."
• Sometimes it is called the argument from design,
  or more properly the argument for design.
• A more complete explanation of St. Thomas' Fifth
  Way about God as Intelligent Designer can be
  understood by examining William Paley's
  Teleological Argument.

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• The basic premise, of all teleological arguments
  for the existence of God, is that the world
  exhibits an intelligent purpose based on
  experience from nature such as its order, unity,
  coherency, design, and complexity.
• Hence, there must be an intelligent designer to
  account for the observed intelligent purpose and
  order that we can observe.

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2. Paley's teleological argument is based on an
analogy. Watchmaker is to watch as God is to
universe. Just as a watch, with its
intelligent design and complex function must
have been created by an intelligent maker.

• A watchmaker, the universe, with all its
  complexity and greatness, must have been created
  by an intelligent and powerful creator.
• Therefore a watchmaker is to watch as God is to
  universe.

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WILLIAM PALEY AND HIS WATCH.

• If you tripped over a watch you would assume
  (after examining it) that it had been put
  together by a clever watchmaker. 
• Is it not reasonable to assume the same about the
  world?
• You could say the same about an eye.
• Except its maker is a lot cleverer  than the
  watchmaker.

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• Paley's Teleological Argument
• 1) Human artifacts are products of intelligent
  design.
• 2) The universe resembles human artifacts.
• 3) Therefore the universe is a product of
  intelligent design.
• 4) But the universe is complex and gigantic, in
  comparison to human artifacts.
• 5) Therefore, there probably is a powerful and
  vastly intelligent designer who created the
  universe.

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Design Argument we may disagree about WHO is in
charge, but somebody must be!
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CRITICISMS

• HUME - It depends what you look at in the world.
  What if you focus on suffering and disease. Does
  this suggest a designer? An incompetent designer
  or an evil designer?
• Why only one great Designer? Hume suggests there
  could be several so not God, in the usual sense
  of God.
• J S MILL - Nature is guilty of many serious
  crimes. If people committed crimes like these
  (earthquakes etc) they would be punished. Mill
  suggests that it is wrong to think of the world
  as being ordered or designed.

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Humes EVIL DESIGNER
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• RICHARD DAWKINS - Modern Darwinian biologist. In
  his famous book The Selfish Gene (1989), he
  suggests that human beings and other animals
  exists as gene carriers (and not because theyre
  important in themselves). The human body is a
  gene survival suit. There is no order or design
  there is no God.
• CHARLES DARWIN - Darwin was famous for
  formulating the theory of evolution. Darwin
  said that, what looks like order, has come about
  as a result of a random process. Animals just
  keep adapting to the things that happen
  (accidentally) in their environments. What looks
  like order is just adaptation.

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• Hume
• An incompetent designer
• Mill
• An unordered world
• Dawkins
• Gene survival No God
• Darwin
• Adaptation No God

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After years of trying to create life in the
laboratory, the scientists finally concede that
God did a better job than they every could.
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• The success of evolutionary theory has also
  provided an alternative explanation as to where
  the order we see has come from, with the caveat
  that there is apparently no need to invoke
  purposive behavior to account for it. This is not
  necessarily an objection against design, however,
  since many theists now suggest that evolution is
  the means used by God to achieve His goals.
• With developments in science continually
  suggesting new angles to view the argument from,
  as well as refinements that point to the amount
  of beauty in the universe as opposed to just
  design, the teleological argument rumbles on and
  it perhaps once again depends on the perspective
  from which it is viewed.

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The Religious Experience Argument

• Perhaps the most interesting argument for the
  existence of God comes from the fact that very
  many people have experiences they characterize as
  religious.
• These tend to have different forms, but there is
  enough common ground to list a few of them that
  have been distilled as a result of work by people
  like William James and David Hay.

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• Some common descriptions include
• - The experience is hard (if not impossible) to
  describe.
• - It is a feeling of oneness with God.
• - It can also be a sense of being dependent on
  God.
• - It may sometimes call attention to a painful
  separation from God.
• - It can be experienced anywhere, in everyday
  situations.
• - It can provide insight into otherwise
  inaccessible truths.
• - The experience tends to be transient.
• There are other descriptions, of course, and the
  experience itself seems to be largely personal.

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• The issue, then, is to explain these religious
  experiences in a satisfactory way. The religious
  experience argument, again, does not seek to
  prove that God exists but instead that it is
  reasonable to believe that He does because of the
  direct experience of Him.
• Moreover, the argument gives a motive for
  non-believers to also believe unless they can
  explain the experiences (which they may have for
  themselves) in another way. Indeed, we could say
  the argument is an inference to the best
  explanation
• P1 People have religious experiencesP2 The
  existence of God explains these experiencesC
  Therefore, God exists.

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• In summary, the argument from religious
  experience does not prove existence definitively
  and depends in good measure on what our prior
  opinions of such experiences are.
• Nevertheless, it provides an explanation for a
  widespread phenomenon.

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Other Types of Argument

• There are other types of arguments used to prove
  the existence of God.
• One commonly occurring one (used by Kant as well
  as others) is the Moral Argument.
• In its simplest form, it says that without God,
  there would be no morality. Since human beings
  have some internal sense of morality, there must
  be a God who not only created the world but also
  instilled within human beings a sense of right
  and wrong.

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• Another common argument is the Free Will
  Argument, which is designed to fly in the face of
  the notion of an uncreated universe that still
  (for some reason) has laws (such as cause and
  effect).

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• P1 Every event is derived from a cause
  determined by universal laws.
• P2. Human actions are undetermined.
• P3 Undetermined actions do no follow universal
  laws and thus must be the result of free will.
• P4 But if every event has a cause, then even
  undetermined events (resulting from free will)
  must have a cause.
• P4 The cause of free will must also (by analogy)
  be the cause of the universal laws.
• C Therefore God, the cause of the universal
  laws, must exist as the cause of free will.
• Personally, I dont think it is a very convincing
  argument.

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God smites those who do not obey Him, because
they use their free will badly.
On the other hand (or maybe with the same hand),
the Bible says that the Lord disciplines those
He loves (Hebrews 126).
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• For thought and discussion
• If there is only one God whose existence is being
  proven in all these arguments, why is it that
  there is a plurality of religions?
• If people can agree that God exists, then are all
  religions equally good in their approaches to
  God?
• Well discuss that after we read the handout.

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