Explain Paley’s version of the design argument and Darwinist objections to it. William Paley used an analogy of a watch to put across his argument for the Teleological argument, which he wrote in Natural Theology. He wrote about an old fashioned watch, that uses cogs, wheels and springs, with the point that such a watch of that design must have had a designer, so that means that because, like a clockwork watch, the universe is complex, so it must also have a designer. Another example is, if someone found a camera. Paley would suggest that to argue that the camera happened by accident is nonsense.
Stacey Snyder Professor McMichael Introduction to Philosophy April 08, 2014 Paley’s Teleological Argument In this paper, I will be discussing Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God. This is a valid argument but in my opinion it is not enough to prove the existence of God. I believe that even if all the premises are true and they relate to the conclusion, which they do, that the argument can still be proven wrong by other theories. Paley’s teleological arguments, also called the design argument, attempts to prove that God exists by proving that God created the earth and created humans. Paley’s version of the argument is commonly recognized by the “watchmaker” analogy which is as follows.
The next argument that I am going to examine is what some people in the world think, but it is based around Cultural Relativists, who say that if morality was decided for by God then he could say one day to murder somebody and it would be fine. This would then agree with the statement above. An argument I’m going to examine is The Devine Command Theory. This argument goes against the statement as it says that you can only have morals if you believe in God because you get morals from revelations, scriptures or religious experience. This means that to have morals God has to exist.
For Aristotle, Plato was a realist and Protagoras was a relativist. Essentially, he regards both theories as equally defective. J.D.G Evans attempts to analyze why Aristotle deems these theories inadequate and what position is left for Aristotle to take if both of the alternatives are defective. Repeatedly, Aristotle begins his accounts by criticizing the “answers of his predecessors” and, while there appears to be legitimate reasons to discredit them, he fails to provide an adequate alternate. The following passage from Eudemian Ethics (1235b 13-18) allows us to better comprehend Aristotle’s impression of philosophy, which in turn leads to a better understanding of how he reviews and resolves the aforementioned problem: We must adopt a line of argument which will both best explain to us the views held about these matters and will resolve the difficulties and contradictions; and we shall achieve this if we show that the conflicting views are held with good reason.
This is done just to create an impression that the world is against Iraq. However one should consider the validity of presenting such a support. Firstly, where the writer says, “some people…” it is a use of fallacy (false authority). Moreover he does not give proper understandable reasons of why is it appropriate to take over Kuwait; rather he merely states the population which agrees to the writer’s idea. One needs to know the rationale behind that agreement.
Cultural Relativism, a term used to describe individual’s beliefs that should be accepted in one’s cultural but also can be denied in society. In James Rachels’ essay, “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”, she brings up varies examples that contradicts with one society’s beliefs to another society. She uses this term and analyzes it different situations proving that it can be controversial at times since no one should have the same thinking process as another person. For example, if you were to take to civilizations of the past and tell them to trade beliefs. They would find it outrages since it would be unorthodox to their teachings.
Explain the criticisms of the Cosmological Argument. The Cosmological Argument has been criticised time and time again, but i am only going to go into two of the most well known criticisms. Hume criticised the link between cause and effect and says that just because we have an effect that doesn't mean we have to have a cause, an example of this is the universe it is an effect but it doesn't necessarily have to have a cause. Hume also said that our senses can be wrong, meaning the way that i may see something can be different to how someone else may see the same thing, and Hume said that when we see an effect it is instantly in our human nature to make an assumption about the cause. This shows that the argument is subjective and not solid
He further states that in order to validate a definition, one must first seek whether the definition extensive enough to include all of the items distinctly share the attributes of the defined word. Then the definition must be narrow enough exclude those items that exhibit one or two similar attributes. Oswalt further explains, Etymological a Greek word of myth is mythos which is used to describe a false legend of the gods. Sociological approach does not say if an idea is true, but whether the proponents of the idea is consider it to be true. Literary is the third kind of historical philosophical definition.
Explain the Teleological Argument. The Teleological argument is one who though he had the answer; William Paley had come up with a new view. Called the Teleological argument, ‘Telos’ is Greek for ‘Purpose’. His opinion was based on comparing the world to a watch. Discovering a watch in a field would be a beautiful thing, and you wouldn’t just presume it has been there since the beginning you would imagine someone had created it for a purpose.
You would not assume that it was made due to random changes in nature; you would think that the watch had a designer. Because it has a purpose (to tell the time) it must have a designer. As the universe also has signs of complexity and intelligence, it too must have a designer? The watch is an unintelligent being in the case, with the designer being the intelligence. If we use analogy to compare the watch to the universe then there must be some intelligent being which directs all unintelligent beings towards their end.