Notes on Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God: Design and Kalām

Degrees of Perfection and the Existence of God

• Recognition of hierarchy in being: intelligent beings can give and receive love; living beings show a range of flourishing and value compared to inanimate things (stone, flower, earthworm, ant, or even a baby seal).
• If these degrees of perfection pertain to being and being is caused in finite creatures, then there must exist a real standard of perfection – a "best" being – the source and real standard of all perfections we recognize in beings.
• This absolutely perfect being, called the "Being of all beings" or the "Perfection of all perfections," is God.
• Question 1: The argument assumes a real "better." But aren’t all our judgments of comparative value merely subjective?
  • Reply: The very asking of the question demonstrates that we do think it is better to seek the true answer than to accept mere subjectivity. You can speak of subjectivism, but you cannot live as if it were true.

The Design Argument

• The design argument has wide and perennial appeal because most people sense a deep connection between the order and beauty of nature and intelligent design.
• Core insight: The universe exhibits a staggering amount of intelligibility and intricate order and regularity in how things exist and relate to one another.
• The observed order often results from many different beings working together toward the same valuable end (e.g., organs in the body work for life and health).
• Steps of the argument:
  1. The universe displays a staggering amount of intelligibility and an intricately beautiful order and regularity.
  2. This intelligible order is either the product of chance or of intelligent design.
  3. Not chance.
  4. Therefore the universe is the product of intelligent design.
  5. Design comes only from a mind, a designer.
  6. Therefore the universe is the product of an intelligent Designer.
• The first premise is widely accepted: even formidable counterarguments struggle to deny the impressive order in things from proteins to cells to organs (like the eye).
• If order exists, and it did not arise by chance, the implication is design.
• The critique of "chance": arguing that order arose by chance requires a background of order to even speak of chance; without order there is no meaningful notion of chance.
• Therefore it is reasonable to affirm the third premise: not chance, but intelligent design.
• Objections and responses:
  • Question 1: Hasn’t Darwinian evolution shown that order can arise by chance?
  • Reply: Not at all. Darwinian theory explains descent with modification and natural selection, not the pervasive order and intelligibility of nature. The phrase "The survival of the fittest presupposes the arrival of the fit" highlights that order (the fit) must preexist in some form for natural selection to operate.
  • Question 2: Maybe order exists only in this region of the universe; perhaps elsewhere there is chaos or the future becomes chaotic. What then?
  • Reply: Believers and nonbelievers share the same universe, which displays pervasive order and intelligibility. It is unreasonable to suppose we live in a small island of order surrounded by chaos. Our expanding scientific horizons repeatedly reveal more order, not less. Regarding the future, we know the way things have behaved and, unless shown otherwise, there is reason to expect continued orderly behavior.
  • Additional reflection on chaos: imagining total disorder is unintelligible. Questions about a chaotic background cannot be coherently entertained as real possibilities; some rearrangement of order is conceivable, but total disorder is not a viable option.
  • Question 3: What if the order we experience is merely a product of our minds? If reality could not exist as we think, then we would be implying a contradiction in how we must think about reality.
  • Reply: Our minds are the only means by which we can know reality. If we concede that we must think about reality in terms of order and intelligibility, then denying that there is intelligible order in reality would require conspicuously rejecting the very basis of thought. In other words, it is costly and illogical to deny that the being of the universe displays intelligent design simply because one suspects order could be a mental construct.
• Summary: The Design Argument emphasizes the pervasive order and intelligibility in the universe, argues against chance as a credible sole source, and infers an intelligent designer as the source of this order.

The Kalām Argument

• Background: Kalām (Arabic for "speech") is a form of philosophical theology focusing on demonstrations that the world cannot be infinitely old and must have been created by God.
• Form of the argument (three premises):
  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.
• Considerations: The first premise is widely seen as obviously true by most people.
• Next step: Is the second premise true? Did the universe begin to exist?
• The text suggests that this premise has recently been (and likely continues to be) a subject of contemporary debate and examination, reflecting ongoing discussions in philosophy and cosmology about the origin of the universe.
• Implications: If the universe began to exist, it implies there is a cause for its coming into being, which leads to the conclusion that the universe has a cause (i.e., God or a first cause).
• Note: The excerpt ends mid-sentence after raising the question of whether the universe began to exist, indicating that further elaboration on the second premise would follow in subsequent material.

Connections, Implications, and Context

• Foundational idea: The argument from degrees of perfection leads to the existence of an absolute standard of perfection, i.e., God.
• Relationship to causation and design: The Design and Kalām arguments both rely on the notion that there must be an ultimate cause or source behind order and existence.
• Epistemic stance: Critics may challenge the premises (e.g., whether order proves design, or whether the universe began to exist) but the proponent emphasizes the strength of the intuitive appeal and explanatory power of these premises.
• Philosophical significance: These arguments engage with metaphysics (the nature of being and perfection), epistemology (how we know the world), and philosophy of science (order, chance, and explanation).
• Practical and ethical dimension: If one accepts that an intelligent designer or first cause exists, it has implications for how we understand purpose, value, and our responsibilities within the universe.
• Recurrent themes: The necessity of using human experience of order as a foundation for metaphysical claims; the tension between empiricism (science) and metaphysical inference; the role of intuition in evidential reasoning.
• Notation and style: The material presents a dialogic format (questions and replies) to anticipate common objections and to clarify the design and kalām lines of argument.

Key Terms and Concepts

• Degrees of perfection: The idea that we recognize varying levels of goodness or perfection in beings and that a maximally perfect being must exist.
• The Being of all beings / Perfection of all perfections: Descriptors used for God as the ultimate standard of perfection.
• Intelligibility: The quality of being understandable or orderly in a way that يسمح predictable relations and ends to be achieved.
• Intelligent design: The thesis that order in the universe points to an intelligent cause.
• Chance vs. design: The contrast between order arising randomly vs. being guided by an intelligent agent.
• Kalām: A school of philosophical theology arguing for a temporally finite, created universe.
• First cause: The notion that the universe’s cause lies outside itself and is not contingent on anything prior.