A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies



AQA Philosophy Metaphysics of God HYPERLINK \l "conceptofgod" The concept and nature of God HYPERLINK \l "ontologicalargument" The Ontological Argument HYPERLINK \l "teleologicalargument" The Teleological (design) Argument HYPERLINK \l "cosmologicalargument" The Cosmological Argument HYPERLINK \l "problemofevil" The Problem of Evil HYPERLINK \l "religiouslanguage" Religious LanguageThe concept and nature of GodThe Paradox of the stone. Step 1: Aquinas argued that the definition of omnipotence was the ability to do the logically possible. Therefore, God can’t make a triangle with four sides. However this would not limit his omnipotence if we use Aquinas’s definition, since creating a four sided triangle is logically impossible. Aquinas argued that the reason God could not do the logically impossible is that it would involve God encompassing a contradiction within himself (since it is a contradiction for a triangle to have four sides, for example). This would detract from his perfection, since contradictions are imperfect. Yet God cannot be imperfect, therefore he cannot allow a contradiction, therefore he cannot do the logically impossible. Step 2: A four sided triangle is a logically self-contradictory thing. What if we were to ask instead whether God could create a stone so heavy he can’t lift it? A really heavy stone is not a logically self-contradictory thing in the way that a four sided triangle is, therefore Aquinas’s argument might not work so well against it. Also, the paradox of the stone is problematic for omnipotence whether God can or cannot make the stone. If he can make it, there is something he cannot do – lift the stone. If he can’t make the stone, there is something he cannot do – make the stone. Why should it be logically impossible for God to create such a stone, since it is not a logically impossible object like a four sided triangle?Step 3: Mavrodes responded to this by arguing that in fact the stone is logically self-contradictory if we notice the full context which is that it’s not just a really heavy stone – it is a stone ‘too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift’. That in fact is a logically impossible stone, just like a four sided triangle. Therefore God cannot create the stone since it is logically impossible, but that doesn’t detract from God’s omnipotence according to Aquinas’s definition which is therefore still valid.Step 4: Descartes disagreed with Aquinas. He argued that the definition of omnipotence included the ability to do the logically impossible. Descartes argued that logic was a human limitation but not a limitation for God. Therefore God could create or encompass a contradiction without it detracting from his perfection. God could therefore create a four-sided triangle. God could make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it, and then he could lift it.Step 5: Is logic really just a human limitation? Can God exist outside logic? Is logic the sort of thing something could either be in or not? Step 6: Presumably God created logic along with the world, therefore it could make sense for him to be outside of itStep 7: Perhaps God didn’t create logic though. Logic could be the type of thing which isn’t created – it simply ‘is’, in some sense.Step 8: Mackie argued that ‘logically impossible actions’ are just ‘words which fail to describe any state of affairs’. So Logical impossibilities do not exist.The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato’s writings. A Dilemma is when there are two ways something could be but each way raises problems. The two ways are called horns. The Euthyphro dilemma is summarised by modern philosophers as the question of whether what’s good is what God commands or whether God commands what is already intrinsically good. In other words, what makes good, good? The first horn Is it that God makes/commands/wills it to be so, the second horn is that good is good due to its intrinsic nature, independent of God’s commands.The first horn leads to the issue of arbitrariness.The second horn leads to a conflict with God’s omnipotence. Aquinas - God has an eternal and perfect nature and therefore cannot change his mind.However: This does not solve the arbitrariness problem AND: what caused God’s nature to pick out the things he commands to be good, as good? What is the connection between God’s perfection and picking murder to be wrong? If it’s arbitrary, then arguably it’s inconsequential and so how could it be a change which could result in God becoming imperfect?Omniscience and Free WillStep 1: Boethius grappled with the question of the consequences of divine foreknowledge – the idea that God knows what we are going to do before we do it. If he does, how can we have free will? Boethius thought this needed solving because if we don’t have free will, then how can God judge us fairly, sending us to heaven or hell. This would seem to question his omnibenevolence.Step 2: Boethius’ solution was to argue that God is eternal – outside of time. This being the case, he sees all time (past, present and future) simultaneously in the ‘eternal present’. This means that god does not have divine foreknowledge as there is no past, present or future for God – that is just the human perspective on time. God’s eternal omniscience does not interfere with our free will – he simply sees the results of our free choices in the eternal present, they are not in any way determined. So Boethius saves God’s omnibenevolence from the criticism that divine foreknowledge would determine our actions making him unjustified in rewarding or punishing us for them. God’s knowledge is not ‘foreknowledge’ – it does not exist ‘prior’ to our action as it exists outside of time. Step 3: However, while God’s knowledge may not determine our choices, nonetheless it still seems like the results of our choices are fixed and inevitable. Surely we cannot do anything other than what God knows we will in fact do. Therefore we don’t have the ability to do otherwise, and so how can we have free will?Step 4: Boethius responded to this challenge by distinguishing between simple and conditional necessity. He agreed that God knowing our future actions made our actions necessary – but only conditionally necessary. He likened this to someone observing someone else walking. The fact that the observed person is walking is clearly made necessary by the observer knowing that they are in fact walking – but this necessity is conditional. It is conditional on the walker having chosen to walk and the observer happening to observe. The walker might not have chosen to walk, and then it would not have become necessary that at a particular present time, they were walking. This is very different from the normal sort of necessity – simple necessity – which means something cannot fail to exist or occur. The walker could have chosen not to walk. But since they chose to walk, at the present time to the person observing them walking, it became necessary that they were walking – though conditionally so. This clearly doesn’t make it necessary in the simple sense however, since they could have chosen not to walk.From the perspective of God in the eternal present, everything is ‘present’. Everything we have done in our past, are doing in our present, and will do in our future – are all observed in God’s ‘present’. Everything we do is ‘present’ to God. Therefore, they take on the same kind of necessity as that the person walking to the other person observing them – conditional necessity. So although God knows what we are going to do in the future, for God our future is not future but ‘present’. God does not know what we are going to do ‘before’ we choose it because God’s knowledge does not exist ‘before’ we make a choice. ‘Before’ is a temporal relation. God’s knowledge exists outside of time and cannot therefore stand in a temporal relation to our choice which occurs in time.Step 5: Everlasting: Swinburne – claims God exists within time and so knows what we have done in the past and what we are doing in the present. Regarding the future, God only knows the logically possible choices we could make, not which choice we will actually make.Kenny also thinks God is everlasting. He argues that if God is eternal, then all events in history are happening at the same time for God, eg the battle of Hastings and the fall of Rome are happening at the same time as Kenny is writing his book. He just rejects that as counter intuitive. Isn’t there a causal relation between things? Didn’t the fall of Rome necessarily happen before the battle of hastings, and therefore a sense of causation in time is required for these events to be possible or intelligible? How can the passing of time just be some sort of subjective illusion to those stuck within time?Swinburne (temporal) vs Aquinas (atemporal)Loving relationshipSwinburne argues that for God to be in relationship of love to us, since love requires an interplay or back and forth, he must be within time since a loving relationship requires all involved to be in a temporal relationship.Aquinas argues that although God is atemporal and so does not change, nonetheless we change in relation to God which constitutes a change in our relationship to God which is sufficient for a loving relationship.PrayersSwinburn argues God must be temporal to respond to our prayersAquinas argues that prayers are only meant to have psychological value for the one saying them, they are not and should not actually be about soliciting favours from God. The Ontological ArgumentA priori (without experience – based on Logic instead)Deductive (If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true)St Anselm’s ontological argumentStep 1: Anselm refers to Psalm 14:1 ‘the fool says in his heart, ‘there is no god’.” When the fool can conceive of God (the greatest thing), it would be contradictory to suppose God doesn’t exist. As existence in reality is an intrinsic quality of greatness (by definition). To say there’s no God is simply to misunderstand what the word ‘God’ means.Premise 1 -God is the greatest conceivable beingPremise 2 -It is greater to exist in reality than the mind alonePremise 3 -God exists in the mindConclusion -Therefore God exists in realityStep 2: Gaunilo makes the point that if we apply Anselm’s logic to something other than God like an Island, we get an ‘absurd’ outcome: We can conceive of a perfect Island but that doesn’t mean it exists, so why should that be the case for God?Step 3: Anselm’s 2nd version of the ontological argumentContingent – depends on something else for its existenceNecessary – does not depend on anything for its existence – contains the reason for its existence within itself – cannot be denied without contradictionSomething is greater if it doesn’t depend on anything for its existence. An Island depends on things such as the ocean etc to exist. Therefore, an Island is contingent as it depends on things like an ocean, whereas God is necessary. That’s why the argument works for God but not an Island.Descartes Ontological Argument:Step 1:God is a supremely perfect beingA supremely perfect being contains all perfectionsExistence is a perfectionGod existsDescartes said that the relationship between God and existence was like that of a triangle with the property of ‘having three sides’ or a mountain and a valley. It is part of the definition of those things that they are together.Step 2: Leibniz’ Ontological ArgumentLeibniz noticed that Descartes’ ontological argument could be criticised by arguing that the concept of God was incoherent. Leibniz added additional reasoning to Descartes’ argument to solve this problem. Leibniz defined perfection as a “simple quality which is positive and absolute, or, which expresses without any limits whatever it does express”. Power is a perfection because it is positive and unanalysable – cannot be broken down into smaller parts. It expresses the concept of power without placing limits on it. If it’s the case that perfections such as power cannot be broken down into anything simpler however, then Leibniz argues they must be compatible and so a being such as God could contain them all without incoherence. Hume’s empiricist objections to a priori arguments for existence Hume’s fork. Step 1: Hume claims that there are two types of knowledge and two corresponding methods by which such knowledge is arrived at. Mathematical and logical truths are ‘relations of ideas’ because their truth is not dependent nor affected by any matter of fact. The facts in the universe could change completely and yet 1+1 would still = 2.Analytic truths are relations of ideas which is arrived at a priori Synthetic truths are matters of fact which are arrived at a posterioriHume simply rejects the idea that we can arrive at a matter of fact (such as claims about what exists, like ‘God exists’) by means a priori.Step 2: Hume assumes that God’s existence is a matter of fact like all other cases of existence, yet if God is necessary then the truth of his existence will be just as unaffected by matters of fact as mathematics is. Hume & Russell on the impossibility of necessary beings.Step 1: 1 – Whatever we can conceive of as existing, we can conceive of as not existing. Therefore, the claim that God does not exist cannot be a contradiction, which it would be were Anselm/Descartes right that ‘God exists’ is an analytic truth.Bertrand Russell developed this argument and suggested that beings could not be necessary, only propositions could, since any being that could be conceived to exist could be conceived not to exist.Step 2: Hume seems to be relying on the premise that conceivability accurately determines reality. It only follows from our being able to conceive something as not existing that that thing might possibly not exist and is therefore contingent if conceivability entails possibility.The masked man fallacy illustrates how conceivability does not equal possibility:Imagine I heard that someone had robbed a bank wearing a mask. I can conceive that they are not my father. However, if they really were my father then it wouldn’t be possible for them to not be my father. Therefore, I had conceived of something that was not possible. Therefore, what is conceivable isn’t necessarily what is possible. Step 3: Does the philosophical distinction between necessary and contingent actually a metaphysically valid one? Are things ‘in themselves’ actually contingent or necessary? Arguably whether something depends on something else for its existence or not is not a defining feature of it. Cruciality: Without necessary existence being a valid category, the ontological argument fails and Hume’s fork can defeat its criticism, making this a more crucial argument than Hume’s fork.Step 1: Kant’s objection based on existence not being a predicate.Kant argued that existence was not a predicate, meaning not an attribute, but the pre-condition for having attributes.Kant illustrated this with 100 thalers, which are coins. Imagine you have 100 coins in your mind as a mere concept. Then imagine you have 100 coins in existence, not in the mind alone. The coins in existence have existence, the concept of coins in your mind does not. Kant argues that the concept of what it means to be 100 coins is no different whether it is a mere concept in your mind or whether that concept actually manifests in reality as an existing thing. 100 coins is just 100 coins, whether in your mind or reality.If there is no difference in the concept of what it means to be 100 coins between whether it is in the mind alone or in reality then it makes no difference to the concept of a thing whether it has existence or not, which means that existence cannot be part of the concept of a thing, which means it cannot be an attribute or predicate.Step 2: Malcolm argued that Kant’s argument only worked for contingent existence but not necessary existence, so Anselm’s second version of the argument was right. Something is contingent if it is dependent on something else for its existence. The reason for its existence is external to it. However a necessary being doesn’t depend on anything else and so contains the reason for its existence within itself. This reason is the logical impossibility of non-existence. Since that is contained within itself in a way that contingent existence is not, Necessary existence can therefore be a part of a thing in a way that contingent existence can’t.1 God either exists or does not exist2 God cannot come into existence nor go out of existence as that would be a limitation3 So If God exists, God cannot cease to exist4 Therefore if God exists, God cannot fail to exist = necessary5 But if Goes doesn’t exist, he can’t come into existence (as that would make him dependent on whatever caused that which would make him contingent therefore limited)6 Therefore If God does not exist, God’s existence is impossible7 God’s existence is either necessary or impossible8 The concept of God is not self-contradictory (like a four-sided triangle), therefore God’s existence is not impossible 9 Therefore God exists necessarilyStep 3: Malcolm commits the fallacy of equivocation as in premise 6 he suggests impossible means can’t come into existence but in premise 8 suggests it means conceptually coherent.Also, Malcolm’s argument could be defeated by arguing that the concept of God is self-contradictory e.g paradox of the stone etc.Step 1: Existence is not a perfection/greatness is the argument that Anselm and Descartes were wrong to claim that it is ‘greater’ or ‘more perfect’. Why is it ‘greater’ to exist in reality than in the mind? Isn’t ‘greatness’ subjective? Isn’t it merely the subjective preference of humans to exist?Why it is greater to be necessary than contingent? Anselm clearly thinks it is greater to be unable to fail to exist. A contingent being can fail to exist, therefore it’s lesser, for Anselm. However, that assumes that existence or inability to fail to exist is greater than an ability to fail to exist, which still operates on the same assumption that existence is greater than non-existence. Why?Step 2: Malcolm claims to get around this objection by not including or relying on a claim that existence is great or a perfection, which he claims was a ‘remarkably queer’ idea.The Teleological (design) ArgumentTeleological – ‘telos’ or purposeA Posteriori – knowledge through sensesThe design argument from analogy as presented by Hume.P1 – The way that the means of complexity is fitted to ends in nature is analogous to human design.P2 – like effects have like causes.P3 – the cause of human artefacts is an intelligent mind.C1 – Therefore, the cause of the universe is an intelligent mind.Hume’s criticism #1: Unsound Analogy Step 1: Our world is not like a machine (whereas the watch is) at all since it is composed of living things, it is more organic than it is mechanical. The world does not closely resemble something man-made, a house can be certainly concluded to have a designer, because we have seen it being built. We cannot infer from this that the universe has a similar (intelligent) cause.Step 2: Hume is claiming that we know artefacts are designed because we have seen them or heard of them being made. So, we know the watch is designed for a similar reason. This is in contrast to Paley who claims it’s the complexity and purpose that enables us to know it was designed. Step 3: Imagine an aboriginal who has never seen technology were to discover the watch. Would they know it was designed, despite having never heard of or seen one being made? If so, they arguably inferred its design from the complexity and purpose and so Paley seems right, if not, Hume seems right.William Paley’s argument from special order/purposeDesign qua Regularity - Paley pointed to the rotations of planets in the solar system and how they obey the same universal laws as shown by Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Paley argued that unless gravity consistently has strength it does within a narrow boundary then the planets would be unable to maintain their order and life on earth could not exist.Hume’s criticism #4: Epicurean hypothesisStep 1: A chaotic random universe, given an infinite amount of time, will by complete chance occasionally assemble itself into an orderly one. Not just once, but an infinite amount of times! In an infinite time frame, everything possible will happen, an infinite number of times.Step 2: Currently the view of science is that time began at the big bang however, therefore there has not been an infinite amount of time.Step 3: Still, it’s possible that the universe crunches together and then explodes again infinitely, thus an infinite amount of time and the big bang are compatible.Design qua Purpose argues that the complexity of e.g. the Human eye which is arranged to fulfil the purpose of enabling us to see. He also points to the wings of a bird and fins of a fish.Watch analogy: If you had never seen anything man-made, and came across a watch, you couldn’t argue it had come about by chance nor been there forever because it has Complexity & Purpose. This must mean it had a designer – a watch maker. Paley then points out there are also things in the universe that are complex and have a purpose. Therefore, it follows that there must have been a universe maker which must have been God. “Every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature.”It does not matter if the watch goes wrong or isn’t perfect, the point is the watch’s existence suggests it was designed for a purpose.Hume and Paley’s criticism #3: the problem of spatial disorderStep 1: Hume argues there might be chaos somewhere in the universe. This suggests it was not designed as a chaos is by definition not designed. Paley considered a similar objection, that the watch has faults or is broken, as the universe arguably is e.g. problem of evil.Step 2: Paley responds that even a broken watch must have a watch maker, and so too must it be with the universe.Step 3: Arguably Paley fails to prove the God of classical theism though, at least.Hume’s criticism #2: like effects don’t infer like causes Step 1: Just because two effects are alike, it doesn’t follow that their cause must be alike. So just because the effect of the watch and the effect of the universe are like each other in that they both have complexity and purpose, it doesn’t follow that the cause of the watch (a watch-maker) must be like the cause of a universe which Paley claims is a universe-maker. Two effects which are alike might in fact have very different causes.Step 2: However, arguably Paley’s claim isn’t merely that the cause of the universe must be like the cause of the watch simply because the universe and the watch are similar effects. Paley’s claim is arguably just that a designer is the best explanation of the cause of a complex and purposeful effect and that a God is the only sort of thing that could design and create a universe.Step 3: Hume could respond that we only think a designer is the best explanation of complexity and purpose because that is all we have ever observed, but we have no evidence that the creation of the universe was anything like what we commonly observe.Step 4: Arguably Paley’s point is that purpose must come from a mind. This is arguably a conceptual claim rather than an empirical one which depends on evidence.Darwin’s theory of evolution – suggests God is not the best or only explanation.Step 1: Evolution by the process of natural selection shows that order in biological organisms could come about by purely natural forces.Step 2: Some Christians respond that evolution could simply be the mechanism by which God designed and created us. The strength of this argument is it accepts the evidence for evolution while still making room for God.Step 3: Evolution provides us an explanation that doesn’t require God. We have evidence for that. But there’s no evidence that God did evolution. So maybe we have most reason to believe in evolution without God?Step 4: There is no evidence for God, but why would there be? Isn’t God outside of the empirical?Swinburne’s design argument argues that modern discoveries of science provide evidence for a designer.There are temporal regularities: e.g the element of carbon has the same properties now as it did 10 billion years ago. Why should that be? Hydrogen in our part of the universe behaves in exactly the same was as Hydrogen across the other side of the universe. There are only a few laws which sum up all of nature. Everything in the universe is composed of around 12 fundamental sub-atomic particles. All of this orderliness persists throughout time. This all requires explanation, Swinburne argues. We should not expect such order to exist on its own by chance. It’s easy to think that these features of the universe are normal because we are so used to them, but why should the universe be so orderly and elegant? Swinburne claims that science tells us the what but not the why. Science can only discover the laws of nature but cannot tell us why there are laws. Science cannot even explain why the universe can even be understood by science at all. These are 4 things Swinburne thinks science cannot explain: Why is there something rather than nothing?Why are there laws of nature at all?Why are there the laws there are, rather than other laws?Why are the laws that exist so perfect for human existence, when so many others are possible?Number 4 is especially powerful and is sometimes called the ‘fine tuning’ argument. If the laws of our universe, such as the charge of the election, were a tiny degree greater or lesser, life could not exist at all. Swinburne thinks it is unimaginably unlikely for all these things to happen exactly as they do by chance. Since science – the study of the natural - can’t answer these questions of why nature is the way it is, it must be something beyond the natural that is responsible for it being so – something that intentionally designed the world to be fine tuned for life. God.Swinburne issue #1: Max TegmarkPhysicist Max Tegmark suggests 2 responses to the fine tuning argument.Step 1: Fecundity. There is no fine-tuning because intelligent life could arise in many forms in many different types of universes.Step 2: Arguably there are many more ways for a universe to be chaotic than for it to be orderly. Since it seems life cannot exist in a chaotic universe, the overwhelming probability for a universe created by chance to be able to host life is still very tiny and so Swinburne’s argument remains forceful.Step 1: Multiverse theory. The multiverse theory which suggests our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes, all of which have different laws of physics. So the fact that some universes are so perfectly fine tuned for human existence doesn’t require any special explanation, since there are an infinite number of every possible configuration of universes. However, there is very little evidence for the multiverse theory.Step 2: Swinburne points out that the multiverse theory is an unproven hypothesis.Step 3: Same mistake as Paley and evolution. No one knows what scientific theories we could discover in the future that would perform the same function as the multiverse theory in responding to Swinburne. Isn’t Swinburne making the same mistake Paley did when Paley took the area of scientific ignorance in his time – how adapted animals came to exist – and claimed that God must be the explanation? Evolution came along and proved him wrong. However that should reveal that Paley’s logic was at fault all along, even before evolution was discovered. Simply saying that science can’t explain something therefore God must have done it is an argument from ignorance fallacy which is when you say that not being able to think of any other explanation for something justifies your explanation. Swinburne could be accused of doing the same thing.Swinburne issue #2: Swinburne assumes more than he can knowStep 3: Swinburne finds it surprising that hydrogen behaves exactly the same way everywhere in the universe and that the matter in the universe would organise into the exact set of regularities that it does. He argues that it’s unimaginably unlikely that these things happened by chance. But this seems to assume that were it not for the efforts of a God, the ‘default’ state of nature would be some sort of chaos or nothingness. But how does he know that? On what ground can Swinburne claim that natural universal and regular laws themselves are unlikely? I could claim that it’s unlikely to rain today because I have knowledge of the ‘default’ or ‘average’ state of the weather. But how does Swinburne know the ‘default’ state of a universe? It seems he thinks the universe that is created by chance does something like roll some dice to figure out what its laws will be, but that might not be how it works at all. No one knows!In other words, Swineburne’s argument is based on the claim that the way the universe is, is incredibly unlikely to happen by chance. But on what basis can Swinburne claim to know how likely order, universal laws and regularities actually are? The Cosmological ArgumentAquinas 1st Way – Unmoved MoverPremise 1- Everything is in a process of motionPremise 2- Everything in motion (everything) is changing from a potential state to an actual statePremise 3- Everything in a state of motion must have been caused by another thingPremise 4 - The chain of motion cannot go on infinitely into the past (otherwise = infinite regress)Conclusion- There must be a first mover which is unmoving = God(Counter: false understanding of motion, Newton’s law of motion disproves it)Aquinas 2nd Way – Uncaused CauserPremise 1- Nothing is an efficient cause of itself (nothing can create itself)Premise 2- Everything has an efficient cause which follows a chain.Premise 3- The chain of efficient causes cannot go back infinitely.Conclusion- There must be a first efficient cause which does not have an efficient cause. “That thing we call God”.Aquinas 1&2nd way issue 1: contradiction.Step 1: The first premise and conclusion of the 1st and 2nd ways seem to contradict each other by firstly claiming that everything has a cause or is in motion, but concluding that there’s something that doesn’t have a cause nor is in motion. Step 2: The Kalam Cosmological argumentCreated by Al-Ghazali and developed in modern times by William Lane Craig, the Kalam argument seems to solve the problem in step 2. Instead of claiming that everything has a cause, it claims that everything that begins to exist has a cause. God has existed forever therefore he didn’t begin to exist so it’s then no contradiction to claim that God doesn’t have a cause.Hume’s objection to the ‘causal principle’.Step 1: Hume questions the belief that cause and effect even exist. He points out that humans think every event has a cause, but this may just be a misunderstanding. If we are being honest, whenever we think we see cause and effect we really only observe one event following another event. No matter how many times we observe a certain event following another event, such as a ball smashing a window when thrown at it, it is not giving us a valid reason to assume that there is any necessary connection between the events. Just because event B follows event A every time we observe it, it doesn’t mean that event A caused event B. Without the notion of causation, the cosmological argument fails.Step 2: Arguably modern science can provide us with evidence for cause and effect because we can now have a detailed understanding of how objects operate and interact and can therefore understand the causal mechanism sufficiently to conclude that the ball smashes the window because of our understanding of the chemistry of the brittleness of glass.Hume and Russell: The fallacy of composition.Step 1: Hume argued the cosmological argument made the fallacy of composition. This states that it’s a fallacy to assume that what’s true of of the parts of something must be true of the whole. In the case of the universe, Aquinas rightly points out that all the parts of the universe must have a cause. However it is the fallacy of composition to assume that therefore the universe itself as a whole must have had a cause. Note that Hume is not claiming to know that the universe had no cause. He is merely pointing out that it is invalid to argue from the parts of the universe having a cause to the universe itself having one. While the properties of the parts of something may indeed be the properties of the whole, that isn’t necessarily the case and it is the fallacy of composition to assume so.Bertrand Russell illustrated this by pointing out that just because every human has a mother, that doesn’t mean the human race has a mother.Step 2: Copleston: one cannot be sure that this analogy appliesStep 3: Russell: Proponents of the cosmological argument trying to prove God so they are the ones who have the burden of proof for being sure the analogy applies.Step 4: Kalam argument doesn’t assume everything has a causeOr: principle of sufficient reason doesn’t infer that the universe has a cause by observing that its parts have a cause. Instead it draws that conclusion from an proiri rationalist argument that all events must have a sufficient reason for their existence.Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason Step 1: Leibniz provides support to the cosmological argument by arguing against the infinite regress. It states that for anything there must have been a sufficient reason for its existence. In other words – everything happens for a reason. Even if we can’t know or even find out what the reason is, there must be one. ‘From nothing, nothing comes’. ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’.The key part of Leibniz’s argument for the purposes of the cosmological argument is that the reason must be ‘sufficient’. Leibniz argues that if things have always existed going back forever (infinite regress) then nothing would have a sufficient reason for its existence because everything’s reason for existence would consist in something for which its reason for existence consists in something else. In that case, nothing would have a reason for existence and so would not exist. Things do exist, therefore there must be something for which its reason for existence does not depend on anything else on which the existence of everything else depends; God.Step 2: Why must there be a reason for something’s existence? Isn’t this just a human desire for order that we project onto the world. Bertrand Russel’s idea of the ‘brute fact’ – the world might just exist for no reason. Oh well.Aquinas 3rd Way – Argument from NecessityStep 1:Premise 1- Everything in the universe exists contingently (once didn’t and won’t exist in the future)Premise 2- If everything exists contingently, then at one point, nothing must have existedPremise 3- If at one point nothing existed, then nothing would exist now (nothing comes from nothing)Conclusion - There must be something that exist necessarily – that thing we call GodThe cosmological argument answers the question which science can’t. Science, with the current model of the Big Bang, has answered how our universe started, but not what caused the big bang itself. With the merging of religion and science, one could arrive at the sufficient answer that God caused the Big Bang.Hume and Russell: The impossibility of a necessary being.Step 1: Hume claims that whatever we can conceive of as existing, we can conceive of as not existing. Therefore, the claim that God does not exist cannot be a contradiction, which it would be were Anselm/Descartes right that ‘God exists’ is an analytic truth.Step 2: This argument seems to rely on conceivability entailing possibility.Step 3: Russell: Contingent or necessary existence is not a thing. This builds on Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument that existence is not a predicate. Russell claims that only propositions can be necessary, not things. So no object is necessary or contingent – it simply exists or doesn’t existLaurence Krauss, a physicist, claims that the universe came from nothing because it actually is nothing. Gravity has negative energy which exactly cancels out the positive energy of matter, so the total energy of the universe is zero; it is nothing. Krauss claims this answers Leibniz’ question of why there is something rather than nothing. Although the universe might look like it’s something, science has revealed that actually it is nothing, it just looks like something because it’s divided into negative and positive which together total zero. Quantum mechanics has existed eternally and causes quantum fluctuations which can create a zero-energy universe from nothing.Step 3: Craig argues that Krauss’ definition of nothing is faulty since it’s actually something. Nothing really means total absence of anything.Step 4: Arguably the definition of nothing philosophers have traditionally used is in fact not what nothing actually is though. Science has proven the philosophical conception of nothing to be inaccurate.The possibility of an infinite series. If there is an infinite regress of objects going back in time forever, then the cosmological argument fails because there would have been no first cause or mover. Hume suggests it is a possibility for all we know, therefore the cosmological argument relies on an assumption that it isn’t the case.Step 1: William Lane Craig while arguing for the Kalam Cosmological argument argued that an infinite regress is impossible because Infinities cannot exist in reality. Craig points out that if a library had an infinite number of books, half red half green, and you were to take the red books out of the library then you would have taken an infinite number of books out but there would still be an infinite number left. This is because infinity divided by two is still infinity. His claim is that this is just not how physical objects in reality could possibly function so it’s absurd to think infinities could exist. Therefore the infinite regress cannot exist.Step 2: The infinite library is an example of an infinite number of physical objects, but the infinite regress could be a finite number of physical objects existing over an infinite amount of time. Craig has shown the absurdity of physical infinities but not temporal ones, which is what the infinite regress involves.Step 3: Aquinas claims an infinite regress is impossible because If there is an infinite regress, then time has existed forever. So there must be an infinite amount of time before the present moment. That means that to get to the present moment, an infinite amount of time must have passed. However, an infinite amount of time cannot pass. No matter how long you wait, even if you never stop waiting, you will never actually reach infinity. Every second you add is finite and can never total an infinite number of seconds. So there cannot be an infinite amount of time before the present moment and therefore there cannot be an infinite regress.Step 4: Aquinas makes some metaphysical assumptions about time which are difficult to know, such that time in fact ‘passes’ and that it is appropriate or accurate to measure time with numbers.Descartes cosmological argumentP1 – I am not the cause of my own existence, or I would make myself perfectP2 – My existence at one time does not necessitate my existence at a future timeC1 – therefore something must have caused my existence and be keeping me in existence P3 – I do not have that power so I depend on something that doesP4 – The trademark argument shows that the cause of me must be GodP5 – There cannot be an infinite chain of dependency because whatever caused my existence also sustains my existence.C2 – The cause and sustainer of my existence must be GodThe Problem of EvilEpicurus (ancient Greek philosopher, one of the first to oppose the problem of evil)Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotentIs God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolentIf God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?The Logical problem of evil is the claim that evil and the God of classical theism (as defined as omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient) cannot exist together. In other words, there is no possible world in which both evil and the God of classical theism exist. Their co-existence is completely impossible. Mackie argued for this.The Evidential problem of evil is the claim that the existence of evil counts as evidence against the existence of God. It is possible that they exist together however it is unlikely and therefore we have most reason to believe that they don’t and that therefore God does not exist. Hume argued for this.Mackie reformulated this argument into the ‘inconsistent triad’ which argued that God’s omnipotence, God’s omnibenevolence & Evil cannot all exist together. One of them has to be false. Since Evil seems to exist, this casts doubt on God being all loving or all powerful. Mackie’s view is known as the Logical problem of evil as it says it is logically impossible for both God (as defined with omnipotence & omnibenevolence) and evil to both exist. Alternatively others argue for the Evidential problem of evil which argues that God and evil could logically exist together, however the existence of evil makes it less likely.Hume and JS Mill pointed out that the God of classical theism doesn’t exist. This caused many at that time to become Deists who in a prime mover that doesn’t intervene or care about creation.Hume echoes Epicurus’s ‘old questions’ – the logical problem of evil - which he thinks have not been adequately responded to. Hume also considers the evidential problem of evil. Hume argues that the theodicies which attempt to respond to the problem of evil by claiming that God and evil could ‘possibly’ exist together, due to some speculation about God’s motives to punish (Augustine) or develop us (iraneaus) fail to really respond to the problem of evil. Hume is saying that it’s easy to make up some story about God’s motivation, but that such stories are mere constructed possibilities, not sufficiently evidenced views that warrant belief by an empiricist.For Hume, those who put forward theodicies seem to feel they have a licence to come up with any logically possible state of affairs as regards God’s will, to explain the problem of evil. That is not a sufficient way to respond to the problem of evil for an empiricist like Hume, who thinks that we should only believe what we have evidence for. The fact that the theodicies invented by Augustine and Irenaeus are possible ways that God and evil could co-exist is insufficient as they do not establish that they are in fact true. ‘I … allow, that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such attributes as you suppose: But surely they can never prove these attributes’To really solve the problem of evil, Hume thinks, the theist must not merely come up with some logically possible scenario in which evil and God co-exist, the theist must establish how they can infer God’s infinite power and goodness from what we experience which amounts only to a finite mixture of good and evil.In other words, what reason could we have for thinking the world as it really is was created by a being of infinite power and goodness? Certainly, it’s possible to come up with elaborate stories about reasons and motivations for such a being creating such a world, but is belief in that possibility actually warranted by the evidence, or is it merely one of an infinite number of such possibilities we could invent? Hume puts forward four categories of evil he thinks are unnecessary and would be avoidable by a God:1 – Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all?2 – Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness3 – Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil4 – Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?Since it would have been so easy for a God to make things better than they in fact are, this is evidence against the likelihood of such a God existing. Hume says it is ‘possible’ there are good reasons why a God doesn’t stop these things from happening ‘but they are unknown to us’. Since they are unknown to us, we are not justified in drawing conclusions about reality from them. The theist has to not simply invent a possibility, but show how they can infer a likelihood. Hume thinks that the evidence suggests that the cause of the universe, whatever that may be, is just as uncaring and indifferent to preferring goodness over evil as it is to preferring heat over cold.Religious LanguageCognitivism: the view that religious language expresses beliefs about reality which is truth ape (can be true or false).Non-cognitivism: the view that religious language expresses something other than a belief such as an attitude, which is not truth apt (cannot therefore be true or false)Verificationism was invented by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers, the most famous of which was A. J. Ayer. The verification principle states that in order to be meaningful, something must be either 1) analytically true or 2) empirically verifiable. Religious language is neither analytically true nor empirically verifiable because ‘God’ is a metaphysical term according to Ayer which means it is about something beyond the empirical world, so there can be no way to empirically verify it. Verificationism issue #1: Overly restrictiveStep 1: Ayer’s theory was criticised for being overly restrictive of meaning. Wouldn’t History be considered meaningless because it can’t be empirically verified? Step 2: To respond to this, Ayer came up with weak and strong verification. We can strongly verify whatever we can conclusively verify by observation and experience, so there is no doubt about it. We can weakly verify anything for which there is some evidence which points to its probably being the case. E.g. Historical documents and archaeological findings can be strongly verified, and on the basis of those we can weakly verify that there were certain civilisations in the past with certain histories to them.Step 3: However what about the teleological argument? Doesn’t that weakly verify God?Verificationism issue #2: The verification principle can’t verify itselfStep 1: The verification principle states that for something to be meaningful, it must be empirically verifiable, however that means that in order for the principle itself to be meaningful, IT must be empirically verifiable. Step 2: Ayer responded to this by arguing that the verification principle was just a definition not a truth claim, but it’s unclear how this works as a response since definitions have to be meaningful too.Verificationism issue #3: Eschatological verificationStep 1: Hick argued that there is a way to verify religious language, because when we die we’ll see God and then we’ll know. Hick told the story of the celestial city. Two travellers were walking on a road. One (symbolizing the theist) believed a city was at the end of the road, the other (symbolizing the atheist) did not. Hick remarked however that once they got to the end of the road (symbolizing death) one of them would have been right all along. Step 2: Arguably this only establishes that religious language is possibly verifiable. The verification principle requires that something be verifiable, not merely ‘possibly’ verifiable, however.Falsificationism was invented by Karl Popper who thought he could capture empiricism better than verificationism could. Popper was impressed with Einstein who claimed Mercury would wobble in its orbit at a certain time in the future because if he was wrong, his theory would be falsified. Popper was less impressed with marxists and freudians because they only looked for verifications of their views without ever admitting a way they could be falsified. Popper illustrated this with swans the claim ‘all swans are white’ which to be verified would require knowing that at no point in time nor at any place in the universe did a non-white swan ever exist. However, the claim is falsifiable because we can say what would prove it wrong; seeing a non-white swan. Popper thought this meant falsificationism is a better account of empiricism then verificationism. Something is falsifiable if it is incompatible with some logically possible state of affairs. That state of affairs is the entailed claim about the way things are not.Anthony Flew applied this to religious language. He claimed that because religious people can’t say what logically possible state of affairs is incompatible with their claim that God exists (in other words, because they can’t say what would prove them wrong), they are not actually asserting anything about the way things are (since there is no entailed claim about the way things are not). Therefore Flew considers religious language meaningless.P1 - A claim about the way the world is entails a claim about the way the world is not. (e.g saying the chair is blue entails that it is not red)P2 - Disproving something involves showing the world is not as it claims. P3 - If something cannot be disproven than it is not committed to a claim about the way the world is not.C1 – In that case, an unfalsifiable claim cannot be a claim about the way the world is. Parable of the Gardener - Flew claims that religious people pretend that their belief is falsifiable, but it isn’t. Two people walking in a forest see a patch of land and the first says a gardener works on it. The other proposes testing this so they wait but no one shows up. The first says its an invisible gardener so the second sets up electric barbed wire fence and bloodhounds but no sign is detected. The first then says it is a non physical gardener. The second person becomes annoyed and asks ‘but what remains of your original assertion’. The gardener is meant to be God and the first person a believer. Whenever a test of Gods existence is proposed some excuse is made about how its an invalid test but only by reducing the concept of God and the empirical footholds in reality that God has. Every time the believer says God is not something, in order to save the belief from potential falsification, they shrink the concept and thereby the original claim so that God ‘dies a death of a thousand qualifications’ such that ultimately there is no difference between a world in which the gardener/God exists and a world in which it does not. If there is no logically possible state of affairs which we could investigate that would be incompatible with the belief in God, then it is unfalsifiable and so meaningless.Falsificationism issue #1: Mitchell’s parable of the partisan/strangerStep 1: Mitchell argued against falsificationism with the parable of the partisan. Mitchell argued that rather than need to say what would prove them wrong, religious belief can be said to be connected to empirical reality if it allows empirical evidence to count against it, like the problem of evil. Mitchell imagines the example of a soldier fighting for the resistence against the government in a civil war. One day someone comes to them and claims to be the leader of the resistance, on their side, but a double agent pretending to be on the other side. The soldier decides to have faith in this person, even when they see them fighting for the government. This is analogous to faith in God, despite the counter evidence of the problem of evil. Mitchell’s point is that religious people do allow empirical evidence to count against their belief, they simply judge overall to retain faith. Their belief is connected to empirical reality as a consequence however, and can therefore be said to be cognitively meaningful according to Mitchell.Step 2: Arguably Mitchell’s criteria for falsifiability are insufficient. Merely allowing evidence to count against your belief doesn’t make it falsifiable. Only being able to say what would prove it wrong, not merely count against it, makes something falsifiable.Falsificationism issue #2: Hare’s BlicksStep 1: R. M. Hare disagreed with the cognitivism of verificationism and falsificationism and instead argued for non-cognitivism. Hare argued that religious language doesn’t get its meaning from attempting to describe the world, but from expressing ‘attitudes’ – which he called a Blick. The expression of attitudes is not an attempt to describe the world, therefore they cannot be true or false. Hare illustrated this with the example of a paranoid student who thought his professors were trying to kill him. Even when shown the evidence that they were not trying to kill him, by meeting them and seeing they were nice people, the student did not change their mind. Hare argued this shows that what we say about the world is really an expression of our Blick rather than an attempt to describe the world. If it were an attempt to describe the world, the meaning could be changed by that description being shown to be false. Because the meaning in the students mind was not changed by contrary evidence, Hare concluded that meaning must be connected to a non-cognitive attitude or Blick.Step 2: Although Hare saves religious language from being disregarded as a meaningless failed attempt to describe the world, nonetheless he only does so by sacrificing the ability of the meaning of religious language to have any factual content. So when a religious person says ‘God exists,’ for Hare they are really expressing their attitude rather than actually claiming that there objectively exists a God. Many religious people would claim however, that they really do mean that ‘there objectively exists a God’, irrespective of their attitude. So arguably Hare fails to capture the true meaning of religious languageStep 3: Hare could respond that although many religious people may indeed feel like they are making factual claims about reality, their conception of reality is really just an aspect of their Blick. The word ‘exist’ in religious history has been tied to a system of authority and power and is separate from the truly cognitive notion of existence that signs and evidence deals with. Saying God exists therefore really serves to add psychological force and grandeur to what is actually just their attitude. Language Games – Wittgenstein advanced two theories of meaning in his life. The first was quite similar to verificationism however his second theory – language games – completely contradicted it. The first theory is called the picture theory of meaning where Wittgenstein argued that words get their meaning by connecting to the world. More specifically, the logic of our language somehow connects to the logic of reality. Our words ‘picture’ reality by connecting to its logic.Wittgenstein later in his life repudiated the idea that words got their meaning by connecting to the world and instead argued they got their meaning by connecting to social reality. A language game exists when multiple people communicate. Wittgenstein called it a ‘game’ because he argued that language games consisted of rules. In each social situation the people participating in it act in a certain way because they have internalised and are following a certain set of rules which govern behaviour including speech. Therefore the meaning of their speech will be connected to those rules i.e to the social situation. There can be as many different language games as there can be different types of social interaction, I.e potentially unlimited. Nonetheless, they will all be differentiated by the set of rules which constitute them. Religious people play the religious language game. Scientists play the scientific language game. For Wittgenstein, to uproot a word from the religious language game and try to analyse it within the context of the scientific language game is to misunderstand how meaning works. Words get their meaning from the language game in which they are spoken. Therefore it’s not surprise to Wittgenstein that Ayer finds religious language meaningless, since Ayer is not religious and therefore isn’t a participant in the religious language game as he doesn’t know the rules of it.When Wittgenstein remarks that we have to ‘know’ the rules of a game to play it, he doesn’t necessarily mean consciously. For perhaps most of human social interaction we are following rules that we have unconsciously internalised. For that reason it can be very hard to say exactly what the rules of the religious language game are, as opposed to the scientific language game which is more cognitively formalised. Wittgenstein argued that the scientific language game can be about reality, since it is about evidence, experience and reason, whereas the religious language game is about faith and social communities, conventions & emotions.Language games issue #1: Overly restrictiveStep 1: Arguably the scientific and religious language games can in fact be fused together. There are scientists who think they can prove Gods existence using science however like Michael Behe with intelligent design and irreducible complexity which is the claim that some organisms are too complex with too many interdependent parts to have evolved each one separately. Step 2: However, we could respond on behalf of Wittgenstein that this particular fusion of religion and science is really itself a unique language game, dissimilar to either the religious or scientific games. Also, such scientists are typically not considered true scientists by the scientific community.Language games issue #2: Are language games only meaningful within a language game?Step 1: If all language is only meaningful within the context of a language game, in which language game is Wittgenstein’s theory of language games meaningful? Surely if it’s only meaningful within certain language games and not others, doesn’t that mean it’s not true? Isn’t Wittgenstein trying to rely on a meta-non-language game to describe language games, while also trying to insist there is no such thing as a meta-non-language game?Step 2: Wittgenstein could accept this and claim language games only have meaning in the context in the philosophy language game. But language games could still structure and defy and account for all other language regardless of whether it was meaningful in those language gamesLanguage games issue #3: Language games leads to theological anti-realismStep 1: If Wittgenstein is right, it means that when a religious person says ‘God exists’ they aren’t actually claiming that in a scientific sense that there objectively exists a God. Really, they are just speaking in a certain way based on how they have learned to speak by internalising a set of behavioural rules developed in a culture over centuries. However most religious people would object that they really do mean that there objectively exists a God. This point is most salient when considering the works of Aquinas who attempted to argue for the existence of God.Step 2: It’s true that religious people claim to be describing reality when they say God exists, however perhaps their concept of ‘reality’ is also determined by their language game and when they say God exists, it is really for the purpose of adding psychological force to their attitude to the world. ................
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