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William Paley Why Does God Exist

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William Paley wrote in natural theology reason to prove that God exists and repercussions that has for non believers and believers alike. Throughout his proof Paley compares God to a watchmaker and uses that to explain his reasoning. He starts out saying that although God can never be seen or known for sure humans cannot have created themselves. Paley goes on to say that it wouldn't disprove his existence if he didn't do things perfectly right or always right all the time. Next he says that because God is a higher being he cannot be discovered or if he can we haven't been able to discover him yet. Continuing on Paley states that God can have many different forms and being in his current form is just “one out of many possible combinations of
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William Paley was a well known theologian in the 19th century responsible for surmising the existence of “an intelligent creator by design.” His argument, built up to and stated on page 29, Chapter III, paragraph 1 in sentence 1 is as follows: “for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature”. Before diving into the meaning behind this, there are terms to be defined. By contrivance, Paley means artificiality, or to have been made. A watch, as easy as it is to grasp, is simply the mechanism on your wrist that tells you the time of day.

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Paley simply responds to this by saying that something doesn’t have to perfect to show that there was a designer. Another problem with this argument is that things in a watch (or a universe) contain different parts that look like they have no function, so these parts are somewhat proof that he universe wasn’t designed. Paley replies to this by saying that just because we do not know the function of something it doesn’t mean that it has no function, Paley looks at different parts of the watch (or universe) and from this he decides that it must have been

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According to William Paley’s argument in “The Teleological Argument" everything was created for a specific purpose. Paley uses the watch and mentions its maker to compare the creation of the world and God. In order to explain why certain objects have a specific design and purpose, Paley uses the watch to develop this idea. According to Paley, the watch has many intricate parts which contribute not only to the overall design but to the overall function of the watch. This can be compared to God and how he created each individual to serve a purpose.

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For this disputation, I had the pleasure of arguing against the topic of be it resolved that you can convince a non-believer to affirm the existence of God using philosophical arguments. As the opposing side, Sarah and I counter argued the following: the argument from motion, the ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument. The argument from motion argues that it is only possible to experience that which exists, and people experience God, therefore God must exist; however it can be counter argued that since faith cannot be demonstrated or experienced, as it is unseen, God cannot exist.

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Both sides of the God debate, for the existence of god and against the existence of god, made very compelling points. In my opinion the strongest point made by Dr. William Lane Craig, who was in favor of the existence of god, was the, “fine tuning” argument. The argument is basically that the laws of nature were made almost perfectly for humans and the universe to exist and being that way is so improbable that the universe must have been intelligently designed by a god rather than being because of physical necessity or chance. I thought this was the strongest point because he bolstered his argument with not only sound logic but also statistics. Dr. Austin Dacey attempted to rebut this point by saying science has yet to discover a fundamental theory to describe why certain laws of nature are fine tuned for human existence.

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I Thesis The Teleological Argument presented by William Paley is not a good nor a sound argument due to Paley’s use of the word ‘generally’ in premise three as well as his failure to establish a God, in all aspects of the word, existence. I now will explain each premise of the Teleological Argument and all of its premise’s in Section II, then in Section III explain why I believe this argument fails and is unsound. II

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After reading The Teleological Argument, William Paley’s conclusion is straightforward and can be stated in just two words: God exists. His entire argument is based on a watch and is used as a means to prove God’s existence. As simple as a watch may seem, Paley describes its complexity and claims that a higher power had to have created its intelligent design. But how does he know that God designed the watch and a man didn’t? Paley argues that we have never seen a watch been made and that we are all incapable of designing something so unique and intelligent; therefore, we can conclude that something greater than us must have created it.

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One of the many inquiries that have been pondered throughout time has been the question of God’s existence. McCloskey was an atheistic philosopher that denied the existence of God and gave certain “proofs” to verify his absence. Two of the main arguments that theistic philosophers use are the cosmological and the theological arguments. McCloskey takes these arguments and uses his “proofs” against them to disprove God. Although the cosmological and the theological argument do not prove that God is an absolute being, these arguments use certain reasons and evidence to support and build a claim that God does exist.

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As stated by Blaise Pascal in the argument of Pascal’s Wager, Pascal claims that most people bet on their lives that God either does or does not exist. In providing his reasoning, the probability of the various outcomes pertaining to finite and infinite gains as well as losses is shown, coming to the conclusion that logically one should believe in God. Although some people believe in God and an afterlife of paradise, we cannot truly grasp the extent of God’s existence. Through assessing Pascal’s argument, it is essential to keep in mind that logically, through the use of probability that one should believe in the existence of God. Pascal argues that a rational individual should live as though God does exist and seek a righteous life that pertains to living up to God’s will.

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In this he questions the attributes of God that are traditionally used to describe him. He claims that there is a lack of foundational evidence to prove that God is not only the creator of the universe but is the All Mighty God that he is described as (Speaks). Rather than Hume arguing that Paley’s argument is false, he focuses heavily on if God even exists or if he is the higher figure that he is painted as. Another argument that can be used against Paley is the theory of the Big Bang Theory.

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JL Mackie was persuasive in his argument by showing that belief in an almighty God is not rational. He proves this by posing the problem of evil. According to JL Mackie, if God exists and is omniscient, omnipotent, and good then evil would not exist. However, evil exists in this world, sometimes in the form of undeserved suffering (diseases that affect humans, earthquakes, famines ...) and others perpetrated by man (murders, wars ...). If God exists and has the capability to be powerful, good, omniscient and omnipotent, why would he let evil be perpetrated?

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Kant is concerned with the role of teleology in our understanding not only of individual organisms, but also of other natural things and processes, and of nature as a whole. Experience presents us with many cases in which features of a living thing's environment, both organic and inorganic, are beneficial or indeed necessary to it: for example rivers are helpful to the growth of plants, and thus indirectly to human beings, because they deposit soil and thus create fertile land (§63, 367); grass is necessary for cattle and other herbivorous animals, which in turn provide food for carnivores (§63, 368). Kant makes the negative point (a version of which he had earlier argued at length in the Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God of 1763)

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Fong-Wei Ting Mr. Mahoney Apologetics November 24 2014 Key Arguments for and against the existence of God God is defined as the perfect and all-powerful spirit or being that is worshiped especially by the Christian, Jews and Muslims as the One who created and rules the universe.1 There are many people who do not believe in a God, and with a lack of faith, they argue against the existence of God and are proving something that is completely false or unrelated. There are a large number of reasons proving God to be real. This essay is to prove the existence of God, and within this essay are twelve reasons that prove God does exist.

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God knew I would choose to write this paper, because God is omniscient. There is no possible outcome in which I could have chosen to not write this paper and made God’s knowledge false. This is an example of an atheological argument made by Nelson Pike, it essentially states that so long as God is omniscient, humans are unfree to act. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, this state is known as fatalism meaning “human acts occur by necessity and hence are unfree.” Upon evaluating Pike’s argument further, Alvin Plantinga came across what he refers to as a “confusion”.

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Descartes, and Paley suggest that we can know God and that he is within our understanding. Throughout the readings they describe and argue how we can now the existence of God and the attributes that are associated with him. However David Hume would refute these claims saying through his dialogues more specifically through a character named Philo that we cannot know the attributes or even for that matter the existence. During this paper I will analyze Descartes and Paley’s arguments in comparison with David Hume’s arguments that we cannot know these things. In Paley’s argument he says that if we saw a rock lying on the ground and someone said that rock had always been there that is conceivable, whereas if a watch were lying on the ground that answer would no longer be acceptable.

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