Final Examination

• Contingent - possible existence
• Necessary - unavoidable and requisite
• cosmological - observation and inference from the universe
• Argument from Contingency - we could have not existed. The third way.
• Argument from motion - God is the unmoved mover; things are in motion.
• Argument from causation - Effects have causes. God is an uncaused cause.
• Infinite Regress - absurdity of reasoning.
• Fallacy - errors in reasoning
• Fallacy of composition - assumption of contingency as part of the whole.
• Cosmological Argument - argues that the universe must have been caused by something beyond it.
• Sufficient Reason Argument - 2nd form of cosmological argument
• Sufficient Reason Argument - there must be a sufficient reason or explanation (rather than a cause), for the existence of any contingent being as well for the contingent universe as a whole.
• Principle of sufficient reason - everything has a reason/explanation.
• Kalam Argument - third form of cosmological argument
• Kalam - speculative theology
• Actual infinite - completed totality or set of things or events rather than an indefinite one
• Potential Infinite - incomplete set in that it continues on indefinitely but never reaches the point. Never reaches an end.
• Entropy - measure of unavailable energy, or disorder, in a closed system.
• Telos - end or goal
• Teleological arguments - purposive and proves a God that directs. Used an analogy
• Fine - Tuning argument - initial conditions of the universe are extraordinarily balanced.
• The initial conditions of the universe are balanced on a razor's edge for the existence of life.
• The fine tuning of the parameters and conditions happened by chance, necessity, or intelligent design.
• anthropic - related to human beings
• irreducibly complex systems - removal of any parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. Cannot be produced directly.
• specified complexity - arranged specifically to mean something
• Ontological arguments - primarily reasons. Not based on experiences. Based on a priori - proceeding from the mere concept of God and conclude that God must exist.
• posteriori - based on the premise that can be known only by experience of the world
• a priori - based on the premises that can be allegedly known independently of experience of the world.
• God - a being in which none greater can be conceived
• reductio ad absurdum - reduction to absurdity. The strategy of Gaunilo's lost island analogy.
• Greatest possible island - criticize the logical reasoning
• Maximally Great Being - A necessary being. Maximum of qualities
• Possible world - a world that is logically possible
• semantics - has something to do with the meanings of terms and symbols
• Modal logic - system of logic which utilizes such modal expressions as possibly and necessarily
• Fundamental qualities of every entity: impossible, contingent, and necessary.
• Ontological arguments - least effective at convincing. Deductive rather than inductive.
• Epistemic cognitive limitations - cannot comprehend the reasons of God.
• Moral evil - what human beings originate