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Intelligent Design Argument Analysis

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Advertising for Aquinas: How confusion of Intelligent Design and the Fifth Way cast doubt on the existence of God Whether there is a God or not is a question that has vexed the minds of people and philosophers a like. It would make sense then that many philosophers over the years have investigated and tried to answer this question, and have proposed many solutions to it. One way that they have tried to prove the existence of God is through teleological arguments, or arguments that explain the purpose or directive goal of something. One of the best examples of a teleological argument is given by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Fifth Way for the existence of God. This argument is found in the first volume of his Summa Theologica goes as follows: …show more content…

This is because it is often mistakenly classified as an intelligent design argument, arguments which are easily defeated by Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. An intelligent design argument being an argument in the vain of William Paley’s teleological (watch maker argument) which argues that the universe is the product of an intelligent designer based on the complexities of the human form which he believed could have only been created by an “intelligent design”. However, the Fifth way of Thomas Aquinas is not an argument for intelligent design. His argument is, in fact, an argument for causality of the universe. This type of argument is one which argues that the universe acts towards an end and since it acts towards an end there must be a supreme being which set it towards that end. This is plainly seen in Aquinas’ own example of an Archer firing an arrow down range towards its …show more content…

From this it is then reasonable to conclude that this causality was set in motion by a supreme being which is God. This argument answers the question of whether or not there is a God far better than the intelligent design arguments of William Paley. For, Paley’s argument easily invalidated by modern science because it argues that simply because there are complex features that can’t be explained by nature and that there are further complex forms in the universe then there must be a God who created the

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Aquinas differs from Paley by arguing that nothing happens by chance and that all things have means and ends. He also believed in a master powerful creator (God) that directed things to their natural end. While, Paley’s arguments did not include the bible or religion. Although, since Aquinas believed that things that don’t have minds can accomplish goals but only if it is controlled with something that does have a mind with intelligence and knowledge.

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Saint Anselm’s Ontological Argument was most likely constructed during a time when the majority of the population was religious, in order to strengthen the belief that God exists. The thesis of the argument is as straightforward as it gets – that God does indeed exist. In this argument, God is defined to be the greatest entity that an individual can ever conjure in his or her mind. His argument uses the reductio assumption, and the proof that starts it off – ironically – is that God does not exist. It is assumed that the majority of the people living back then believed in God, but in order to emphasise this fact, Anselm talks about how “even the fool” that does not believe in God, admits that God is thought to exist.

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The objection addressed the validity of the argument which had the premise 1, nothing is the efficient cause of itself except God and premise 2, a chain of causes cannot be infinite. The argument thus concludes there must be a first cause. This conclusion agrees with my thesis that Saint Thomas Aquinas’s argument formulated in the second way leads to a valid argument, which concludes that there must be a first cause and that God

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On the other hand, Aquinas believes

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The teleological argument, or otherwise known as the argument from design and the intelligent design argument, is a philosophical theory put forward by William Paley with its final premise of proving that god exists. The argument includes a handful of elements, however close to the fringe yet within the margin, of logic in order to assist the facilitation of accepting the premise as a truth. As we examine the argument, and its implications in the context in which it was given, we can begin to see the boundary of logic become veiled and intuition and assumptions start to interpose. The teleological argument is most commonly started with a supposition parable dealing with a watch, so lets start out with that. Suppose you are walking down along a river and along the way you spot something in the dirt.

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803 Words | 4 Pages

The Kalam Cosmological Argument The Kalam Cosmological Argument is a theory of religion that attempts to explain the existence of God by the following: Whatever began to exist must have a cause, unlike God, the Universe began to exist, Thus, there must be an uncaused cause of the Universe, namely God. Through examining the many criticisms of this argument, it is discernible that it is not valid and does not achieve the purpose of proving God's existence. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is favorable over Tomas Aquainas’ traditional Cosmological Argument, which says: Some things are caused, nothing can cause itself, so everything must be caused by an external force, namely God, because it is more specific, especially by encapsulating evidence

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In this essay, I will set out to prove that Thomas Aquinas’ First Cause Argument does not show that God exists and the conclusion that God exists does not follow from the premises of the first cause argument. I do think that the conclusion is valid and could be sound/or has the potential to be, but the premises fail to provide the basis upon which to reach such a conclusion. Hence, I will be raising some objections to the premises and will try to disprove any counter-arguments that could be raised in its defense. This would be done by examining Aquinas’ First Cause Argument and trying to disprove it whilst countering arguments in its defense.

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Additionally, the teleological argument argues that the universe's challenging structure and design indicates the existence of an intelligent designer, which offers a logical reason for considering God to be the creator. Furthermore, a lot of people turn to their religious beliefs for comfort and a sense of direction in life, which is itself evidence for the rationality of believing in God.

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There have been an innumerable amount of arguments for the existence of God for hundreds of years. Some have become much more popular due to their merit, and their ability to stay relevant through changing times. Two arguments in particular that have been discussed for a very long time are the ontological and cosmological arguments. Each were proposed in the period of the high middle ages by members of the Roman Catholic Church. They each have been used extensively by many since their introduction.

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Thomas Aquinas is the second critique of Anselm’s position. Take note that Aquinas assumed that the existence of God is obvious. He supported cosmological argument to prove that God exists. The cosmological argument uses the physical things that exist in the universe to demonstrate God’s existence. In his criticism of Anselm’s argument, Aquinas disagrees with the use of the word “God” and argues only some who hear the word “God” understands what it means (Himma, 4).

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Instead the belief revolves around the idea that natural causes are sufficient to explain everything that exists in the

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The debate of the existence of God has always been a controversial topic and has been going on for centuries. Till this day it is still a debate. We have people who strongly believe in God and others who questions his existence. Those who have strong faith will try to convince everyone who does not believe in God that he exits. They will try to come up with arguments to show he is real and good.

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Dominican philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, created the “Five Ways” of God’s existence – motion, causation, contingency, gradations, intelligence of design – in which the first two are cosmological arguments. Aquinas’s argument from motion states that it’s obvious some things in the universe are moving, and if they’re moving, something else must have caused them to move, and something else must have caused that to move… and so on. However, the pattern of movements can’t go on forever since there wouldn’t be that one thing that started the whole series. Therefore, there must be an “initial mover, an extraordinary being that started the universe moving but is not itself moved by anything else – and this being we call God,” (Vaughn, Lewis. Pg. 65).

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On Being an Atheist The existence of God has been a huge issue for many years. The main McCloskey's issue with the idea of God is the presence of many evils in the world. McCloskey implies that the "proofs" of the existence of God cannot establish a factual evidence which supports the existing argument of whether there is God or not. Some proofs explaining the existence of God should be dismissed because they are not valid.

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In this argument we already assumed that there may be possibility that God exist and finally we reached where we started. So this argument does not give us the exact information about existence of God. There are many objections on this argument but still it is a powerful argument. In my opinion, this argument is not much satisfactory. It describes that existence is greater than imagination.

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