Part One: Multiple Choice Questions. Select the best answer from the options given.


1. In Section V of Hume’s Dialogues, the following inference concerning the possible origin of the world is drawn: “This world ... is very faulty and imperfect ... and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance...”. Who draws this inference, and why?

[ ] A. Demea draws it in order to attack Philo’s anthropomorphism.
[x] B. Philo draws it, in order to show that the argument from design, if it works, can lead to conclusions unlike those the theist wants to draw.
[ ] C. Philo draws it, in order to defend the argument from design from an attack to the effect that it is incapable of accounting for imperfections in the world.
[ ] D. Cleanthes draws it, in order to show that the argument from design can rule out the conclusion that the deity is imperfect.

2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned by Plantinga?

[ ] A. Maximal Excellence
[ ] B. Superbachelors
[x] C. Supertriangles
[ ] D. Rachel Welch

3. What is the point of Swinburne’s ‘half-made world’?

[ ] A. He claims that a world in which humans always made the right choices would be merely half-made, and that it requires full human free-will, including the potential for bad decisions that that brings, to make the world fully complete.
[ ] B. He claims that a world in which humans could make mistakes but do no harm – a flight simulator world – would only be half a world, and unworthy of God’s creations.
[ ] C. He says that the atheist sees the world as imperfect, or ‘half-made’, when in fact if we appreciate the finer details, and knew more about the world, we would realize that it is not half-made at all, but perfectly formed.
[x] D. He says that putting humans in a ‘half-made’ world is good, because it allows them to take part in improving the world and gives them opportunity to show moral virtues, and that these goods outweigh the various evils that are part of such a world.

4. Which of the Aquinas’ Five Ways involves an argument for an intelligent designer from the operation of natural bodies:

[ ] A. The Fourth and Fifth Ways.
[ ] B. The First Way.
[ ] C. The First and Second Ways.
[x] C. The Fifth Way.


5. What is the point of Plantinga’s ‘superbachelor’ example?

[ ] A. It is meant to illustrate Kant’s argument that existence is not a predicate.
[ ] B. It is meant to show how existence can be fruitfully used as part of a definition of a concept.
[ ] C. It is meant to show that existence can’t be used as part of a definition of a concept.
[x] D. Both A and C.

6. Edwards claims that the proponent of the cosmological argument is saddled with at least one brute fact. Grush has claimed that Taylor, a who develops a version of the cosmological argument, is not stuck with this sort of brute fact. Why does Grush say this?
[ ] A. Edwards’ argument is based on the principle of sufficient reason, and since Taylor’s does not exploit PSR, he is not stuck with the problems that beset PSR arguments.
[x] B. Taylor’s argument exploits PSR, and according to his argument, everything has an explanation for its existence, including God; the difference is that contingent facts have something else as their explanation, while necessary facts, such as God’s existence, explain themselves.
[ ] C. Taylor does not rule out the possibility that God may be caused to exist by something other than God, and so he is not insisting that God’s existence is necessarily uncaused; he just maintains that all he needs to show is that the universe is caused by God.
[ ] D. Taylor argues that in reality the uncaused cause is the universe itself, and so his position does not posit God as an uncaused first cause at all.

7. Near the beginning of his essay, Swinburne constructs a new version of the ‘spatial’ argument from design. In short, it is:
[ ] A. It is only under specific conditions that evolutionary processes can operate, and the fact that exactly those conditions obtain suggests an intelligent designer.
[ ] B. Nature is a machine-making machine. And machine-making machines need to have designers.
[ ] C. The laws of evolution are in fact not sufficient to explain the evolution of animals, and so this complexity needs to be accounted for by intelligent design.
[x] D. Both A and B.

8. In the final version of the ontological argument Plantinga constructs, the key first premise is:
[ ] A. There is a possible world in which maximal studliness is instantiated.
[ ] B. It is necessary that maximal greatness is instantiated.
[ ] C. There is a possible world in which maximal excellence is instantiated.
[x] D. There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.

 

9. Which of Hume’s characters defends the argument from design?
[ ] A. Philo
[ ] B. Demea
[x] C. Cleanthes
[ ] D. Both A and B.

10. What does Demea say about the possibility of an infinite series of causes, and how does Cleanthes respond?
[ ] A. Demea says that an infinite series is possible only if each member in the series is caused not only by the preceding member, but by the series as a whole; Cleanthes responds that a given thing can have only one cause, and so this explanation of an infinite series is absurd.
[x] B. Demea says that an infinite series is possible, but then the entire series needs to have a cause; Cleanthes responds that the whole just is the sum of the members, and if each member has a cause, then everything is accounted for and we don’t need to ask in addition for the cause of the whole series.
[ ] C. Demea says that an infinite series is impossible, for if one takes away the first cause, one takes away the entire series, therefore, there must be a first cause; Cleanthes responds that an infinite series is possible as long as the universe has existed for infinite time.
[ ] D. Demea says that an infinite series is only possible if the universe is infinite in both space and time, but then we need to explain how an infinite universe is caused; Cleanthes responds that a temporally infinite universe cannot have a cause, since causes are temporally prior to their effects and nothing can be prior to something that is infinitely old.