A-Level Religious Studies — Philosophy, Ethics & Religion

The design (teleological) argument

• The universe's order, regularity and purpose implies a designer. Aquinas' Fifth Way (non-intelligent things act to an end); Paley's watch (design qua purpose/regularity). Modern: fine-tuning/anthropic (Tennant), Swinburne (design is the best explanation).
• Challenges: Hume (weak analogy, chance, imperfect/many designers), Darwin/evolution (natural selection), and the multiverse.

The cosmological argument

• From the universe to a first cause/necessary being: Aquinas' first three Ways (motion, causation, contingency), and the Kalam argument (Craig). Challenges: Hume (why a cause? the fallacy of composition), Russell ("just a brute fact"), and why the cause is God.

The ontological argument (a priori)

• Anselm ("that than which nothing greater can be conceived" - existence in reality is greater); Descartes (existence a perfection). Challenges: Gaunilo's perfect island; Kant - existence is not a predicate.

Evaluation

• A posteriori (design/cosmological) vs a priori (ontological); do the arguments succeed against Hume, Darwin and Kant? Is God the best explanation?

Set each argument against its key critics (Hume, Darwin, Kant) and evaluate whether God is the most probable explanation - a posteriori vs a priori.

Diagram