An exam for Philosophy 215. Discusses and evaluates various philosophical arguments for the existence of god.

Multiple philosophers have sought to address the question of whether there really can be an irrefutable proof for the existence of a god. Though many philosophers have attempted to provide a solution to the problem, each of their arguments have run into criticism and refutations from other thinkers. Their arguments have stood the test of time, however, and multiple arguments are still debated in today’s philosophical conversations. Though there are many such arguments, three primary arguments have been set out for the existence of God and include the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for a divine presence.

The ontological argument, first presented by St. Anselm, claims that if God is the greatest conceivable being, and if it were the case that he existed in the understanding but not in reality, then it would be the case that God could be greater than himself. Being that God cannot be greater than himself, it must be the case that he exists in reality.

As far as this argument goes, I must side with Immanuel Kant’s claim that existence is not an attribute. God does not exist in the understanding. He can be understood by the mind, but that does not make up part of his existence. Thus if God were to “exist” in the mind, but not in reality, he would not really exist at all; for the conceptions of the understanding do not imply the actual existence of its thought in any way.

The cosmological argument basis itself on the contingency of the universe. It basically claims that not everything in the universe can be contingent and that there must be a necessary cause upon which all of the other contingent causes are based. There must be a first cause.

Though I think this argument is generally sound, I don’t understand why the first cause must be God. It would seem that contingent beings could be based on multiply smaller or more insignificant beings until the smallest, finest essence came into being upon some sort of accident of nature. Still, it does not fully account for the creation of the universe.

Though I think the cosmological is fairly strong, I think the strongest argument for divinity lies in the teleological argument. I have found that the teleological is the strongest in its ability to refute objections from its critics and establish itself as a strong argument in favor of a divine being.

William Paley sets out what I believe is fundamentally the teleological argument for the existence of God. Paley’s argument basically states that the creation of the earth is far too complex to leave to the random chance of nature. Paley presents an analogy of finding a clock in the middle of the desert. There is no situation that would allow someone to believe that the clock had always existed in nature. Much like the existence of the clock affirms an intelligent designer, so does the existence of the complex world we live in.

Foreseeing multiple objections to his proposition, Paley outlines multiple other conditions in which the clock could be found that would still support the idea that it was created by an intelligent designer. Paley provides the following conditions: if we knew no person who could make such a clock, if the clock seldom worked correctly, if we could not discern the purpose of various parts of the clock, if we were told that the existence of the clock were part of a principle of order or the laws of a metallic nature, or if we were told we know nothing about clocks. Granted all these conditions, it would still be irrational to assume to that the clock had been created by nature and that no specific intelligence was behind the design.

Though fairly simple, and even vague in parts, I think this is the strongest argument for the existence of a divine being. Though it seems like a weakness, the simplicity of the idea is perhaps its strongest point. The basic fact that there must be a designer of a world like our own is easily verifiable in nature. This is an argument that anyone can understand and anyone can believe.

The argument is not without its critics though. The modern scientific argument would be that the nature of the universe has indeed been able to lead to the creation of this world and all others. They would agree that though the chances are slim that such a world as this could be created, such a world would have to have been situated somewhere and ours just happens to be one that it could hold life. Each of the individual aspects of the world have their scientific explanations as well. The scientific explanations provide for multiple possibilities, many of which are as unverifiable. Such explanations do nothing to further the case that there is any likelihood that the world could really have come about by natural causes.

As far as I am aware, the strongest case against an argument such as Paley’s, actually comes from David Hume. In a conceived dialogue between ancient philosophers, Hume sets out his arguments against the argument of an intelligent designer through a character named Philo. Philo’s argument rests on what he considers a false analogy. He believes that our consideration of the requirement of an intelligent designer of the earth based on the requirement of an intelligent designer of a watch or house to be unsupportable.

Philo’s argument begins with an evaluation of the fundamental aspects of what is going on in the analogy. He explains that small particular events such as the creation of a clock or house are being equivocated with the creation of the universe. This, he claims, is unsupportable. “Unless the cases be exactly similar,” he says, “they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon.”

Philo goes on to support his argument by claiming that the thought and intelligence of men is just one of the springs of the universe. Though we can attribute this spring to particular events, it does not follow that, when addressing larger issues, we can simply attribute their cause to a larger, but similar, type of spring. He provides an example by asking, “From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything concerning the generation of a man?”

This analogy is then fully explained. After attributing the creations of mankind to “thought” we assume the greater creations must also be attributable to some greater “thought”. The operations of the parts, he explains, doesn’t really provide us with any certain information on the operation of the whole. We cannot take what little we know and assume that the rest of the universe works upon the same principles. Philo perhaps best expresses the idea when he says, “Nature, we find, even from our limited experience, possesses an infinite number of springs and principles which incessantly discover themselves on every change of her position.”

Philo concludes that the “universal cause” may very well be vastly different than mankind or anything we have yet observed or understand. I think there is something to be said for Hume’s argument. The simplicity of Paley’s original claim makes it easy to attack on the grounds of ignorance of all possible situations, as Hume has done. It is true that there is much to the organization that we don’t understand.

On the other hand, Richard Swinburne provides a response to Hume’s attack that defends Paley’s original position. He begins be explaining that the universe has two types of order, that of spatial and temporal order. He says that, for the most part, people have been marveled by spatial order throughout the history. People have wondered at the impossibly perfect creation of spatial order items such as plants and animals. But it is not in spatial order but in temporal order, Swinburne argues, that the argument for God is to be found.

The temporal order of the universe involves laws of chemistry, physics and biology and any laws that govern successive events. This temporal order, Swinburne claims, is much more striking than spatial order. “The universe might so naturally have been chaotic,” he explains, “but it is not – it is very orderly.”

Swinburne goes on to explicate the premise of the teleological argument on the basis of the temporal order of the universe. The premise is that “things have and will continue to conform to such as pattern however initial conditions vary, however men interfere in the world.” The premise is important because it is different than the premise that most people usually assume of the teleological argument, which would say something along the lines that “things have conformed to a pattern which man can recognize and describe.”

This distinction is significant because it indicates that the order of the world exists independent of what man understands it to be and beyond what is merely recognizable or describable by man. This point is important in countering the argument that men only see order because if there were no order then there would be no man. But Swinburne effectively notes that there is much more order in the universe than is necessary for man. It would be very possible to co-exist in a much less orderly universe, yet order is in abundance throughout the universe.

The crux of Swinburne’s argument then lies in the fact that our universe, which “is characterized by vast, all-pervasive temporal order” is completely unexplainable in scientific terms. Science can explain the lower level laws, which work within the higher level laws, but it has yet to provide any real explanation for the higher level laws of the world. Thus, the only other outlet for explanation is to propose the existence of a greater power or intelligence, which has created the universe and established both its special and temporal order.

Though perhaps not “provable” in terms of logic, I am convinced that the teleological argument is sound simply because of the absurdity of its opposite. As Swinburne explains, the vastness of the temporal order of the universe and the fact that it extends so far beyond our understanding and beyond our need for its existence confirms that there must be a greater presence behind its formation. The order of the universe is just too precise for it all to have happened on accident. Though I’m not sure this argument holds strong for the existence of any specific type of God, as Swinburne claims, it does establish that there must be some greater being behind the creation and order of the universe.

Feb. 11, 2004