Teleological

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  • Teleological
    • key words - telos, design qua regularity, design qua purpose.
    • Aquinas
      • When you look at the natural world you can see everything in it follows natural laws, even if the things are not concious, thinking beings
        • If things follow natural law they tend to do well and have some goal or purpose
          • However, if a thing cannot think for itself it does not have any goal or purpose unless it is directed by something that thinks
            • Everything in the natural world that does not think for itself heads towards its goal or purpose because it is directed by something that does think
              • This something is what we call God
            • an arrow can only be directed to its goal by an archer
      • design qua regularity
    • Paley
      • second part - design qua regularity
        • the rotation of the planets in the solar system, and how they obey the same universal laws and hold their orbits because of gravity
          • this could not have come about by chance
            • an external agent must have imposed order on the universe as a whole, and on its many parts
              • this agent must be God
    • Hume
      • 'why must we conclude that the universe has a beginning?'
        • even if we could prove that there is order and purpose in the universe it would still not be evidence for the existence of the work of a god of classic theism
      • humaans do not have sufficient knowledge and experiences of the creation of the world to conclude there is only one designer
      • God transcendes human understanding so trying to discuss design in human terms is not an acceptable analogy
    • Mill
      • evidence of design = support of the non-existance of god or a god that did not have the attributes accepted by christens
        • because there is evil and suffering in the world , the designer could not have been all-loving, all-powerful or all-knowing
          • if all-loving then the suffering of humanity would not have been included in the design
      • Untitled
    • Darwin
      • evolution
        • natural selection
        • natural selection has no purpose in mind- it has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. if It can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker
    • F. R. Tennant
      • Aesthetic Argument
        • the world is saturated with beauty
          • beauty does not help with our survival - no evolutional purpose
            • beauty in the natural order is replicated in human creativity, itself a gift from a personal, loving creator
        • Anthropic Principle
          • Goldilocks effect
            • the universe is 'just right' for humans to live in
          • Fine tuning
            • the finely tuned laws of the universe makes it possible for human life
              • the rational beauty of a finely tuned universe points to the rational mind of the creator
    • a posteriori
    • based on empirical evidence
    • does not offer conclusive proof of the existence of a God
  • watch analogy
    • first part - design qua purpose
      • eye example
      • Paley
        • second part - design qua regularity
          • the rotation of the planets in the solar system, and how they obey the same universal laws and hold their orbits because of gravity
            • this could not have come about by chance
              • an external agent must have imposed order on the universe as a whole, and on its many parts
                • this agent must be God
    • too complex to think that it just came about naturally - it must have had a designer

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