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List two types of natural theology. Which one makes the most sense to you and why?
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Fine tuning and design are 2 types. Design resonates most with me, I am very forensic minded and the evidence speaks loudest to me.
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Fine Tuning and Design are two types. The one that makes the most sense to me is the design argument because its simplicity in philosophical thinking and its observational evidence in our daily lives and experiences.
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If I can only pick 2, I would go with Design and Moral Arguments.
Design: Psalm 8:4-5 “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You established – (5) what is man, that You are mindful of him? And the son of man, that You care for him?” This verse always gets me looking to the night skies and thinking about how vast and strategically place each celestial body is placed. I simply cannot see that this all happened by some crazy chance that is completely unfathomable to the human mind. Add to that when I teach students about the intricacies of plants and how every system has to be functional in order for that plant to survive, they are so reliant on one another, that if only one system was not working, the whole plant would die. Something so simple as a plant having such intricately dependent systems can only be seen through the eyes of a creator. It takes far more faith to think it all just happened by chance.
Moral: I have recently been forced to take on this perspective now that I have raised 2 teenagers, am now raising one, and have a pre-teen who thinks she is a teen. As they start developing their sense of right and wrong and the idea of a moral compass, it has become so much more important to stress to them what they found that compass on. I look at the world around us that says that each person determines their own moral compass and my response to that is “then why do we punish murderers? They thought what they were doing at the time was right according to their compass. Based on today’s argument, who are you to force your compass on them?” Then they can say that the government determines morality. My response turns to how that changes all the time and no one can agree about what should or shouldn’t be on what side of that line. One generation’s compass is now forced to ebb and flow with another generation. What makes a previous generation so wrong and a current generation so right? How is it that we become so reliant on humanity to determine our compass when we keep changing our minds about what is right and wrong? The only solution is to turn to someone outside of humanity, outside of the confines of this world, perhaps this being would be the one who created it and set the laws in place to begin with.
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In this lecture cosmological arguments are discussed; also, design, and fine-tuning arguments. In this lecture alone, the arguments surrounding fine-tuning make the most sense to me, that point to the truth that there is a God, who designed this planet, this universe in which we live. If anything within our cosmos were ever shifted by a number or unmeasurable fraction of time, or there be a shifting of the planets in proximity to our planet, or the air in which we breath ever changed in chemical make up, all life would cease to exist. There is One who has designed this world in such a way and Who also is sustaining it, so that we can exist. The fine-tune argument makes sense to me.
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Cosmological arguments and moral arguments. Moral arguments make the most sense to me because we can clearly see that the vast majority of people, barring those with a disorder such as sociopathy for example, know without having to be told that, for example, murder is wrong. There is an inherent moral code within each one of us that is nigh impossible to deny.
