In his critique of religion, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins makes several fundamental flaws in his reasoning for disputing the arguments in Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, particularly the Third Way: The Argument From Contingency. Dawkins writes of this argument, and the others, in a condescending, blatantly contemptuous manner. It is clear that he did not make an attempt to thoroughly understand the points that Aquinas makes, and in his rush to refute them, he overlooks a few errors of his own. Dawkins seems to have misunderstood the Third Way particularly egregiously. He misinterprets this argument, and then criticizes his misinterpretation for being false using faulty logic, and unfounded statements. According to Dawkins’ interpretation, …show more content…
In the text, the Third Way can be considered as a two separate things. Namely, an argument that is entirely secular, which reaches an entirely secular conclusion, and an objective truth about the catholic faith. The secular argument concludes that something must exist which is necessary for all other things to exist, but is not contingent on any other thing to exist. The objectively true statement that immediately follows is that Aquinas and the Catholic audience he is writing for call this thing on which everything depends God. This statement, the only reference to God of any kind in the argument, does not assume anything at all about the nature of God. It is a fact. The Third Way combines this fact with the secular argument and conclusion preceding it, and concludes that the thing which Catholics call God must exist in some capacity. Dawkins has already conceded that the only assumption made in the primary argument is true. Therefore, unless Dawkins considers a fact an unjustified assumption, the Third Way does not make any unjustified …show more content…
He states that the big bang, or some other, possibly unknown, physical thing would be a much better explanation for the thing that all other things depend on to exist. In fairness, the big bang theory is widely accepted as the origin of the universe as we know it. According to this theory, all matter and energy was once infinitely compressed into a single point, called a singularity, which then expanded into the universe we know. However, saying that the infinite regression described in the Third Way can be terminated by a singularity is, frankly, completely absurd. By Dawkins’ own definition, the regression described in the Third Way cannot be terminated by a physical thing. No physical thing can rely on itself, and nothing else, to exist. A singularity, composed of all the matter and energy that has ever existed, and will ever exist, is still a physical thing. Putting the main principle of the Third Way into his own terms, Dawkins says “there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence.” (77) A better argument might have been made by refuting the assertion that all things rely on something that is non-physical to exist in the first place, but while Dawkins implies that this is wrong, he never provides evidence, or elaborates on his alternate explanation in any
In 1986, Richard Dawkins suggested that Paley's "design" argument might have been the best explanation in the 19th century for the existence of God and the intelligent design of the universe in his novel The Blind Watchmaker. Although Paley succeeded in making his argument, Dawkins argued that it had one major defect; the explanation itself. “Paley’s argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong.” (Dawkins : 606) Paley gave the traditional religious answer to who our designer is: God.
There are different viewpoints on the question “what is the universe made of?” I think that both science and religion offer their own explanation to this topic and they sometimes overlap, which creates contradictions. Therefore, I do not agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial, which claims that there is a fine line separating science from religion. That being said, I think the conflict between science and religion is only in the study of evolution. It is possible for a scientist to be religious if he is not studying evolution, because science is very broad and it has various studies. In this essay, I will talk about the conflict between religion and science by comparing the arguments from Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. I argue that science and religion do overlap but only in some area concerning evolution and the cosmic design. Furthermore, when these overlaps are present it means that there are conflicts and one must choose between science and religion.
In the above essay, I analyzed Aquinas’s efficient cause argument and presented Russell’s objections to some of the claims that Aquinas made. I then showed how Russell’s objection failed based mainly on the fact that the first cause is something that is unchanging. This, in turn, supported Aquinas’s argument for the existence of God.
...e confirmation to his contentions. From the verifications gave by theists, it is clear they include and are incongruence with one another. On the first contention, he realizes that a maker existed by belligerence it is dislodged by development. This may not be genuine as indicated by the illustration given and also the way that everything that exists needs to have had a beginning. The reasons can't be endless, important there was a cause that was autonomous and not created by an alternate reason.
Aquinas’ third way argument states that there has to be something that must exist, which is most likely God. He starts his argument by saying not everything must exist, because things are born and die every single day. By stating this we can jump to the conclusion that if everything need not exist then there would have been a time where there was nothing. But, he goes on, if there was a time when there was nothing, then nothing would exist even today, because something cannot come from nothing. However, our observations tell us that something does exist, therefore there is something that must exist, and Aquinas says that something is God.
William Lane Craig is not the original creator of this argument. It was originally created by Ilm al-Kalam, but Craig is a modern philosopher that has restored this argument. In this argument, Craig asserts that the reason the universe exists is because God created it. This cosmological argument is unique because all other variations of cosmological arguments show that the universe has always existed and has an infinite past. The first premise states that “everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of existence” (Philosophy of Religion). The second premise says that the existence of the universe has a beginning which means its past is not infinite (Philosophy of Religion). From these two premises, we can conclude that something created the universe and if something caused the universe to exists, then it had to be caused by God. These two conclusions prove that God does exists. This argument implies that the universe does not have an infinite past. Even though it doesn’t directly say that the universe has a beginning, it can be proven mathematically by showing that infinity cannot exists.
In today’s culture, the idea of there is perfect and divine designer that made the earth and everything that entails with it, really pushes people away. Not only has this idea been conflicted about in today’s culture. It has been especially trivial in past decades, an example of this is seen by H.J. McCloskey. McCloskey wrote an article about it called “On Being an Atheist”, which attempts to defeat the notion that there is a God. McCloskey first addresses the reader of the article and says these arguments he is about to address are only “proofs”, which should not be trusted by any theist. He then goes and unpacks the two arguments that he believes can actually be addressed, the cosmological and teleological argument. McCloskey also addresses the problem of evil, free will, and why atheism is more comforting than theism.
It is my view that God exists, and I think that Aquinas’ first two ways presents a
McCloskey dives right into the meat of his article by addressing what he refers to as “proofs” he claims were put forth by theists. I think that it is imperative to know the difference between a “proof” and an argument. A proof contains a note of certainty. It suggests that something can be known to be 100% truth. In one of the recent PointCast presentations, Dr. Foreman insists that we cannot know any with a complete certainty that we have absolute truth about the existence of God. Therefore these ideas should be put forth as arguments and not as proofs. In fact, if looking at it the other way, he cannot know for certain that his ideas are correct. If he uses his rebuttals to the theist’s arguments, they seem contradictory several times. As we have no absolute certainty for either side, we are left then to find the best possible explanation. This is widely used in cases where things simply cannot be known for certain such as the example of the black hole that Dr. Foreman used. Science can’t fully expl...
St. Thomas Aquinas presents five arguments to demonstrate the existence of God. However, this paper focuses on the fifth argument. The fifth argument is regarded as the Teleological Argument and states that things that lack intelligence act for some end or purpose. While the fifth argument satisfies God’s existence for Aquinas, some contemporary readers would argue that Aquinas neglects the laws of physics. Others argue that Aquinas allows a loophole in his argument so that the Catholic conception of God is not the only intelligent designer.
The controversial topic involving the existence of God has been the pinnacle of endless discourse surrounding the concept of religion in the field of philosophy. However, two arguments proclaim themselves to be the “better” way of justifying the existence of God: The Cosmological Argument and the Mystical Argument. While both arguments attempt to enforce strict modus operandi of solidified reasoning, neither prove to be a better way of explaining the existence of God. The downfall of both these arguments rests on commitment of fallacies and lack of sufficient evidence, as a result sabotaging their validity in the field of philosophy and faith.
“Science proves religious people are stupid and atheists are smart.” This is a somewhat provocative title pulled from an article on a small blog called “The Moral Minefield,” run by a group of Graduate Theological Union students and graduates (Green). This statement is exactly the kind of thing, however, that one would expect Richard Dawkins to wholeheartedly agree with. In fact, he seems to imply this sentiment throughout the entirety of his speech titled, “Militant Atheism.”
Being a devout Christian, Thomas Aquinas naturally believed in God, but he wanted to prove God's existence to those who could not accept things on faith alone. As a result he made five proofs, which he claims, prove the existence of God. With each proof there is always a beginning, a starting point, Aquinas claims it must be God that is the beginning of each. The first proof does not do complete justice to Aquinas’s claim that God exist, while the fifth proof could be used alone to prove Gods existence.
Thomas Aquinas was a teacher of the Dominican Order and he taught that most matters of The Divine can be proved by natural human reason, while “Others were strictly ‘of faith’ in that they could be grasped only through divine revelation.” This was a new view on the faith and reason argument contradictory to both Abelard with his belief that faith should be based on human reason, and the Bernard of Clairvaux who argued that one should only need faith.
Thomas Aquinas uses five proofs to argue for God’s existence. A few follow the same basic logic: without a cause, there can be no effect. He calls the cause God and believes the effect is the world’s existence. The last two discuss what necessarily exists in the world, which we do not already know. These things he also calls God.