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23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the aim of the teleological argument? |
It seeks to prove the existence of God using evidence of design of the world as a whole and of design of things within the world |
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What is the teleological argument often referred to as? |
The design argument for the existence of God |
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What does teleological mean? |
It comes from the Greek word 'telos' which means end or purpose |
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What is the key idea of the teleological argument? |
The idea that the world, as a whole, appears to have been designed for some particular purpose and also, the natural objects within it also fulfil particular purposes. |
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What does this idea suggest? |
This couldn't have come about by chance, so there must have been a creator. |
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What are some things which appear to fit their purpose? |
The lacteal system, the human body, bees and pollination, gravity, the alignment of the plants, the sun, the water cycle, our climate, the atmosphere, the ozone layer and the seasons |
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What may some people say after looking at this list? |
It's intuitively obvious that there's a creator. |
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Who do we attribute the origins of this argument to? |
Plato Aristotle Cicero |
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When was Plato around and what did he say? |
4/5 th century BCE. The demi-urge(powerful being) used pre-existent matter to design everything on Earth, shaping it in accordance with a plan like a builder uses materials to build a house. |
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When was Aristotle around and what did he say? |
4th century BCE. The beauty and complexity of the world could only be explained by the existence of a divine intelligence. He used an example of a duck's webbed feet allowing it to swim as evidence for purpose in the worlds. |
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What was Aristotle's quote? |
There exists Gods and all these marvellous works are the handiwork of the gods. |
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When was Cicero around and what did he say? |
2nd century BCE. He argues that no sane person could suggest the world was created by chance. |
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What is Cicero's quote? |
It is impossible to understand their nature without intelligence of a higher order. |
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What type of argument is it? |
An inductive argument. This means that the premises supply strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. Though the conclusion is not necessarily true. |
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What else is this argument? |
A posteriori. This means, it's based on evidence and observations. |
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What can it be seen as? |
Design Qua purpose. These are teleological arguments from design. They often use analogies, identifying something with a purpose and arguing that this proves the universe was designed. |
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What could it also be? |
Design qua regularity. These are teleological arguments to design. They consider that the universe as a whole exhibits purpose and then argues there's a purpose giver/ designer.
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What is Aquinas' fifth way? |
His teleological argument |
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What does Aquinas say? |
Something that lacks intelligence can't move towards fulfilling a useful end , unless something with intelligence has moved it to do so. |
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What did he use as an example? |
An arrow can't reach the target by itself, it instead needs to be fired by an archer. |
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How does he relate this to the workings of the universe? |
He says that everything in the universe follows natural laws. The fact that they do this without intelligence suggests they've been directed by something else. |
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What does he say about things which lack knowledge? |
They act for an end, which is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best results. |
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What did he conclude from this? |
Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end, and this being we call God. |
