Write a short essay (of several pages in length) in which you logically analyze and evaluate the following arguments for theism and atheism, respectively. Analyzing an argument involves defining the key terms
1. Be sure to complete the preliminary reading assignment: tutorials A01-A04 of the Argument Analysis section of the Critical Thinking Web. This is critical and prerequisite to all three writing assignments, as it teaches you how to logically analyze and evaluate arguments for theories.
https://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/
Links to an external site.
2. Be sure to complete the first reading assignment from the textbook: chapters 15 and 24. This introduces you to the philosophical problem of the existence of God. The philosophy that God exists, or theism, is represented and argued by Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, whereas the philosophy that God does not exist, or atheism, is represented and argued by Friedrich Nietzsche.
3. Write a short essay (of several pages in length) in which you logically analyze and evaluate the following arguments for theism and atheism, respectively.
Analyzing an argument involves defining the key terms/concepts in the argument in order to show that you correctly understand the argument. Evaluating an argument involves judging it to be SOUND or not. A SOUND argument is one that is VALID and PREMISSARILY TRUE. Hence, evaluating an argument involves judging it to be VALID or not and PREMISSARILY TRUE or not. It is also important to explain why/how you made the judgments that you did about a given argument. This is all explained in the tutorials. Feel free to do some independent study in preparing to write your essay.
THE TELEOLOGICAL/DESIGN ARGUMENT
Premise: The universe is the product of (intelligent) design.
Conclusion: (Therefore,) God exists. [Theism]
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL/SUFFERING
Premise 1: If God exists, then there should be no evil/suffering.
Premise 2: There is evil/suffering.
Conclusion: (Therefore,) God does not exist. [Atheism]
It is important that you be as thorough as possible. In composing any given essay, be sure to follow the instructions fully. Be sure to explain and defend any judgments that you make about the arguments.
Evaluating an argument is not simply about judging an argument to be valid or invalid, premissarily true orfalse, sound or unsound. In a proper evaluation of an argument, you need to give satisfactory reasons for coming to the evaluative conclusions that youcome to. After all, someone might come to different evaluative conclusions of a given argument, and you need to defend your conclusions.
The Teleological Argument or evidence for the lifestyles of a deity is every now and then referred to as the Design argument. Even when you have by no means heard of both argument, you’re likely acquainted with the principal concept of the argument, i.e. there exists a lot elaborate element, design, and reason withinside the global that we ought to assume a creator. All of the sophistication and remarkable element we examine in nature couldn’t have took place through chance.
When searching on the universe human beings would possibly see greater order or disease as is their predilection and they may see it in various proportions.
When inspecting the universe and seeing complexity and order there are a number of causes for a way it is able to have come about. Some human beings need an evidence subsidized through proof and with out violations of reasoning and a few do now no longer need such causes.
Some need the perfect causes with the least quantity of thought. Some simply be given the reasons that they have got obtained while developing up. Teleological Argument The Teleological Argument is the second one traditional “a posteriori” argument for the lifestyles of God.
Perhaps the maximum well-known version of this argument is the William Paley’s “watch” argument. Basically, this argument says that when seeing a watch, with all its elaborate parts, which paintings collectively in a specific style to hold time, one ought to deduce that this piece of equipment has a creator, on the grounds that it’s far a ways too complicated to have surely come into being through a few different means, together with evolution.
The skeleton of the argument is as follows:
1. Human artifacts are merchandise of clever design; they’ve a reason.
2. The universe resembles those human artifacts.
3. Therefore: It is likely that the universe is a made of clever design, and has a reason.
4. However, the universe is massively greater complicated and colossal than a human artifact is.
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
The theory of evolution is a shortened form of the term “theory of evolution by natural selection,” which was proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century. According to the theory, individuals with traits that enable them to adapt to their environments will help them survive and have more offspring, which will inherit those traits. Individuals with less adaptive traits will less frequently survive to pass them on. Over time, the traits that enable species to survive and reproduce will become more frequent in the population and the population will change, or evolve, according to BioMed Central(opens in new tab). Through natural selection, Darwin suggested, genetically diverse species could arise from a common ancestor.
Intelligent design (ID), argument intended to demonstrate that living organisms were created in more or less their present forms by an “intelligent designer.”
From this premise, they inferred that no such system could have come about through the gradual alteration of functioning precursor systems by means of random mutation and natural selection, as the standard evolutionary account maintains; instead, living organisms must have been created all at once by an intelligent designer.
In Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), the American molecular biologist Michael Behe, the leading scientific spokesperson for intelligent design, offered three major examples of irreducibly complex systems that allegedly cannot be explained by natural means:
(1) the bacterial flagellum, used for locomotion
(2) the cascade of molecular reactions that occur in blood clotting, or coagulation
(3) the immune system.
Evolutionary theory: Evolutionary theory highlights the adaptive cost of within-species variability. Optimal organic and behavioral techniques fluctuate relying on the character of the environmental context in addition to the traits of the organism including age, sex, health, or bodily size.
An example of evolutionary theory: One of the pleasant examples scientists have of herbal choice, is the evolution of whales. By the usage of Darwin’s idea as a guide, and knowledge how herbal choice works, biologists decided that the transition of early whales from land to water took place in a sequence of predictable steps.
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1990 as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.
Irreducible complexity (IC) is the argument that certain biological systems cannot have evolved by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection, because no less complex system would function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.
Biological evolution is the change in inherited traits over successive generations in populations of organisms. The environment acts to promote evolution through changes in development. A model organism is a species that is studied extensively in the laboratory with anticipation that the results can be applied to biological phenomena in general. Cave animals can serve as excellent models to study the relationships between the environment, evolution, adaptation, and development.
Evidence for evolution comes from many different areas of biology:
Anatomy. Species may share similar physical features because the feature was present in a common ancestor (homologous structures).
Molecular biology. DNA and the genetic code reflect the shared ancestry of life. DNA comparisons can show how related species are.
Biogeography. The global distribution of organisms and the unique features of island species reflect evolution and geological change.
Fossils. Fossils document the existence of now-extinct past species that are related to present-day species.
Direct observation. We can directly observe small-scale evolution in organisms with short lifecycles (e.g., pesticide-resistant insects).
In the late 20th century, many creationists advocated a view known as intelligent design . This view, which claimed to draw from modern science , was a contemporary interpretation of the argument from design for the existence of God as set forth by the Anglican clergyman William Paley (1743–1805). Intelligent design is not accepted by all creationists, however, because many of its proponents leave open the identity and nature of the “intelligent designer” of the universe, rather than equating it with the God of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
A diverse group of persons – including philosophers, lawyers, theologians, public policy advocates, and scientific or technical professionals – who believe that contemporary evolutionary theory is inadequate to explain the diversity and complexity of life on Earth. They argue that a full scientific explanation of the structures and processes of life requires reference to an intelligent agent beyond nature.
Conclusion: There is probably a powerful and vastly intelligent designer who created the universe.