Adventure(s) With God

This morning, please take the first period to work on your adventure stories.

During 2nd period:

Create a posit (a statement you think is true), premise, statement, etc. about the nature of God (i.e., what is God?) Use the flow chart graphic organizer to place clarifying conditions on your statement. Use "If...then..." conditional statements to ground and support your posit logically.

Share one:one; if you find someone with the same idea or answer, make a group and move together to the next individual or group and compare answers. Join them if your statement is similar; keep moving until all statements have been examined and you are in groups or alone. 

Then, let's discuss.

Many, many philosophers have debated and analyzed and posited statements about the existence, structure, composition, reality, or possibility of the concept of God. Here are a few important major arguments:

Teleological or Design Argument: the complexity and "perfect-ness" of all natural phenomenon, objects, or beings are proof that everything was "designed" or "suited to the function it performs"--this is the best of all possible worlds and God is that which designed it. We start with inductive reasoning: look around you and note how everything is complex and has a purpose that qualifies/quantitates it. The human eye, for example, is a complex part of the human body--all parts of it serve a purpose as to its shape, function, and use. This complex thing must have been designed so that all parts work together, just like a watch with its gears and springs and such. That designer is what we call God, etc. He is the divine "watch maker." 

The Anthropic Principle: The rare chance that humans and all living beings exist at all is so minute and radical, and that our planet is conducive to human survival in the first place is so tiny of a chance, that we can conclude that the world is the work of a divine architect. God is that which controlled and fine-tuned conditions for life to exist as it does. God, then, is the grand architect of the universe and everything in it. 

The Cosmological Argument or The First Cause Argument: All effects have a cause. Everything that exists must have had a cause that created it. The universe exists, for example. It must have been caused. This presumes that there is a first cause. God must be the first cause that started the whole shebang of everything. 

The Ontological Argument: We can define God as the most perfect being imaginable ("that being than which nothing greater can be conceived"--St. Anselm) A perfect being would not be perfect if it did not exist. Therefore, by definition, since God is perfect, he must exist. This is an a priori argument. 

HOMEWORK: Read the handout given to you in class on philosophers. Keep working on your adventure story drafts.