The Intelligible Universe: A Cosmological Argument PDF
Preview The Intelligible Universe: A Cosmological Argument
The Intelligible Universe This book is an investigation of cosmological or causal arguments for the existence of God, and a setting-out and defence of one such argument. After an unsympathetic treatment of the wide spread view that arguments for the existence of God are pointless, since religious belief needs no rational justification on grounds independent of itself, the usual objections to cosmological argu ments for theism are set out in detail. It is a principal contention of the book that cosmological argu ments are most fruitfully considered against a background of dis cussion of the theory of knowledge. Two accounts of the nature of knowledge in particular are stressed and contrasted. The first has been defended especially by empiricist philosophers; it is argued not only that it leads to very paradoxical conclusions for history, science, and the knowledge of other minds, but that it is actually self-destructive. The second, it is argued, has perfectly satis factory and unproblematic consequences for these kinds of in quiry, but leads inevitably to a defmite conception of the nature and structure of the world. Hugo A. Meynell shows that the best way of accounting for the existence of a world of such a nature and structure is the fiat of an intelligent will; in fact, of something like what has always been called 'God'. This thesis is defended against the objections to cos mological arguments summarised earlier in the book; and a moral is drawn about the positive relation of theistic belief to the scientific outlook. Hugo A. Meynell is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Philosophy and of Theology and Religious Studies at the Uni versity of Leeds. His previous books are Sense, Nonsense and Chr£s t£anity, Grace versus Nature, The New Theology and Modern Theologians, God and the World, An Introduction to the Philosophy ofB ernard Lonergan and Freud, Marx and Morals. He has published several articles in journals on philosophical and theological subjects. New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion General Editor: W. Donald Hudson Jonathan Barnes The Ontological Argument William Warren Bartley III Morality and Religion Michael Durrant The Logical Status rif 'God' W. Donald Hudson Wittgenstein and Religious Belief Thomas McPherson The Argument from Design Hugo A. Meynell The Intelligible Universe T. R. Miles Religious Experience Kai Nielsen Scepticism Humphrey Palmer Analogy D. Z. Phillips Death and Immortality Vernon Pratt Religion and Secularisation Ninian Smart The Concept of Worship Richard Swinburne The Concept of Miracle The General Editor's introduction to the series appears opposite the contents list. THE INTELLIGIBLE UNIVERSE A Cosmological Argument HUGO A. MEYNELL Senior Lecturer, Departments of Philosophy and of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds ©Hugo A. Meynell1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-28102-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission Fzrst published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-05197-7 ISBN 978-1-349-05195-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05195-3 The things that were to be, and those that have been and now are no more and all things that are now, and the things that are to be - all these Mind has set in order. (Anaxagoras) I understand objective to mean what is independent of our sensa tion, intuition and imagination, and of all construction of mental pictures out of memories of earlier sensations, but not what is in dependent of the reason, - for what are things independent of the reason? To answer that would be as much as to judge without judging, or to wash the fur without wetting it. (Frege) New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion General Editor: W. D. Hudson, Reader in Moral Philosophy, University of Exeter This series of monographs includes studies of all the main prob lems in the philosophy of religion. It will be of particular interest to those who study this subject in universities or colleges. The philosophical problems connected with religious belief are not, however, a subject of concern only to specialists; they arise in one form or another for all intelligent men when confronted by the ap peals or the claims of religion. The general approach of this series is from the standpoint of contemporary analytical philosophy, and the monographs are written by a distinguished team of philosophers, all of whom now teach, or have recently taught, in British or American univer sities. Each author has been commissioned to analyse some aspect of religious belief; to set forth clearly and concisely the philosophical problems which arise from it; to take into account the solutions which classical or contemporary philosophers have offered; and to present his own critical assessment of how religious belief now stands in the light of these problems and their proposed solutions. In the main it is theism with which these monographs deal, because that is the type of religious belief with which readers are most likely to be familiar, but other forms of religion are not ig nored. Some of the authors are religious believers and some are not, but it is not their primary aim to write polemically, much less dogmatically, for or against religion. Rather, they set themselves to clarify the nature of religious belief in the light of modern philosophy by bringing into focus the questions about it which a reasonable man as such has to ask. How is talk of God like, and how unlike, other universes of discourse in which men engage, such as science, art or morality? Is this talk of God self-consistent? Does it accord with other rational beliefs which we hold about man or the world which he inhabits? It is questions such as these which this series will help the reader to answer for himself. Contents Introduction 1 On the Alleged Unimportance of Arguments for God's Existence 1 2 Standard Arguments and Counter-Arguments 7 3 On Knowledge and Experience 24 4 Explanation for Intelligibility 68 5 Paralipomena 104 6 Conclusion 118 Appendix 120 Notes and References 129 Namelndex 151 General Editor's Preface This book is the fmal contribution to the series New Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. The intention behind the series was to provide a set of books which would cover the main subjects likely to receive attention in a contemporary course of study in the philosophy of religion. The cosmological argument for the existence of God has had a long history but it still excites the interest of contemporary philosophers. Dr Meynell offers a clear account of its classical ex ponents, Aquinas most notably, and guides us through the main discussion of the argument in recent philosophical writing. His own firmly held opinion is that it will not do to dismiss the cosmological argument, as some recent thinkers have, on the ground that it is irrational to ask for an explanation of the totality of things. In an uninteresting sense this may be true. But accord ing to Dr Meynell the conclusion which the cosmological argu ment seeks to establish is that there is reason to suppose that the absolute totality of things includes that which is related to the rest of it much as the human conscious subject is related to its actions and products. This view, he contends, is by no means an ir rational one to take. He argues that the feature of the world which is so striking in our own times, viz. its susceptibility to scientific explanation, lends credence to the cosmological argument rather than the reverse. W. D. HunsoN Introduction Arguments for the existence of God may be divided into two kinds, those which argue from a defmition of God directly to his existence, without taking into account the world of our ex perience; and those which argue from some very general feature of the world of our experience to the existence of something sup posed to account for this, which is then assumed or argued to be identical with God. It is arguments of the latter sort which are generally termed 'cosmological', as opposed to those of the first, which are called 'ontological'. Among arguments which are 'cosmological' in this sense, those which argue from the presence of order or design in the world to the existence of an orderer or designer of the world are usually treated separately, as 'physico theological' arguments. The terminology is due to Kant;1 and has been, along with the division between types of argument which it marks, commonly retained by subsequent philosophers. The threefold division seems satisfactory on the face of it, and I shall follow it. I shall be dealing with cosmological arguments in the restricted sense, and shall only refer to ontological and physico-theological arguments incidentally, as throwing light on cosmological arguments. 'The plan which will be followed by the book is as follows. After a brief and not very respectful notice of the contention that it is pointless to try to construct arguments for God's existence, standard forms of cosmological argument will be set out together with the usual objections to them. It appears to me that the point of cosmological arguments cannot be adequately grasped without raising the question of the nature of human knowledge in general; this will be done in the following section. Finally, a version of cosmological argument will be presented against this background; this will be related to traditional forms of the argu ment, and objections to it reviewed.
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