Phil 1000
Bradley Monton
Class 3
The Argument From Design
First, the Cosmological Argument
One version:
Premise 1: The universe began to exist.
Premise 2: Everything that begins to exist
has a cause of its existence.
Conclusion: The universe had a cause of
its existence.
Further step: this cause is God.
A Different Cosmological
Argument
Premise 1: Whatever is caused to exist is
caused to exist by something else.
Premise 2: It’s impossible to have an
infinite regress of (non-temporal)
causes resulting in the existence of
something.
Conclusion: There must have been a first
cause.
A Third Cosmological Argument
Leibniz -- the Principle of Sufficient
Reason: there has to be a sufficient
reason for everything that occurs.
Even if the universe has been in
existence forever, and even if there is
an infinite regress of causes,
nevertheless there must be a sufficient
reason for the universe to exist, and that
chain of causes to exist.
That sufficient reason is God.
This leads to a question: what is the
sufficient reason for God’s existence?
Maybe the answer is: God necessarily
exists.
A further question: is the principle of
sufficient reason true?
Rowe’s counterargument:
Rowe says that contingent facts can’t be
explained by a necessary fact.
Therefore, an appeal to God can’t explain
why the universe is this (contingent)
way, and not some other way.
But is the will of God a sufficient reason?
The Argument from Design
Also called: the teleological argument.
Paley’s version (given in 1800):
If you found a watch in a heath, you would
assume it had a designer.
But the human eye is even more
sophisticated -- we should assume that
it had a designer too.
The “Beautiful Universe” version of
the Argument from Design
Premise 1: The fundamental laws of
physics are beautiful -- they are simple
yet elegant.
Premise 2: If God doesn’t exist, this would
be improbable.
Premise 3: If God does exist, this would be
expected.
Conclusion: The fact that the laws are
beautiful provides evidence for the
existence of God.
The “Fine-Tuning” version of the
Argument from Design
Premise 1: Some of the values of the
fundamental constants are fine-tuned for life.
It follows that, if God doesn’t exist, it’s
improbable that the values of the constants
are life-permitting.
Premise 2: If God does exist, it’s expected that
the values of the constants are life-permitting.
Conclusion: The fact that the values of the
constants are life-permitting provides
evidence for the existence of God.
The Many Universes Reply to
the Fine-Tuning Argument
Maybe there are many universes in
existence, in addition to our own, and
different universes have different values
of the fundamental constants.
Then, even if God doesn’t exist, it’s not
surprising that we find ourselves in a
universe where the values of the
constants are life-permitting.