Baier
→ Theism and Traditional Arguments for the Existence of God
→ Modern Science’s challenge to Theism
→ A worry about Atheism: The Objection to the purposelessness
→ Theism: Understood as the view that the universe was created by, and continues to be governed by, an all-powerful, all-knowing being, for the purpose of having a special relationship with God.
→ Traditional arguments for the existence of God were among the main reasons many thought the God argument plausible.
→ Features of the universe that supposedly cannot be explained except by appeal to God.
1. Cosmological Argument:
→ Every contingent being requires something else to explain its existence.
→ The universe as a whole is a contingent being.
→ Contingent being: Its existence is reliant on others (ex. You might not have been born if your parents had not met)
→ Therefore, the whole universe requires something else (God) to explain its existence.
2. Theological Argument (The argument from design)
→ The universe manifests a high degree of complexity and order.
→ A high degree of complexity and order implies a purposeful designer
→ Therefore, there is a purposeful designer of the universe.
→ Worry: God, being a purposeful and complex being, also has a creator ( God), creating a never-ending chain of God’s having a God who created them.
→ Ontological Argument: God is by definition the greatest conceivable being. If God didn’t exist, you could not have the idea of God in your mind. → appeals to the features of our own thoughts.
→ Pascal’s Wager: Not aimed at giving an argument to believe in God. You have a lot to gain by believing in God and nothing to lose; therefore, you should believe in God.
→ In Baier’s opinion, we need to appeal to God to explain modern science
→ Derived Purpose: The sort of purpose that could only be given bgy a higher being
→ Orignal Purpose: The sort of purpose that we can give to our own life.