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Once you have completed the unit on philosophy of religion, you will be ready to respond to an article written by an actual atheist in a research paper. This article, titled “On Being an Atheist,” was written by H. J. McCloskey in 1968 for the journal Question. In this article, McCloskey is both critical of the classical arguments for God’s existence and offers the problem of evil as a reason why one should not believe in God.
Your
assignment is to read McCloskey’s short article and respond to each of the
questions below. The basis for your
answers should primarily come from the resources provided in the lessons
covering the Philosophy of Religion unit of the course —
Evans, Craig, Dr. Foreman’s two video
PointeCast presentations “Arguments for God’s Existence” and “Approaching the Question of God’s Existence,” which is the material that is covered in the Study Guide’s for Lessons 17 & 18. Included in this material from Dr. Foreman is the very important article from Dr. William Lane Craig on “The Absurdity of Life Without God,” which can be found in the Reading and Study section ofWeek/Module 6 in Course Content.
Below I have provided five (5) questions that you must answer within your paper to properly respond to McCloskey. I have also directed you to exactly where you can find the correct answers in our course materials.
I have literally even provided the exact page numbers and the two PointeCast Presentations & Study Guides (17 & 18)in the course materials to save you time and eliminate frustration. I want you to be able to do your very best on this paper by focusing all your energies on thinking, analyzing, and writing.
The five (5) questions serve to provide you with an outline to organize your paper around. Your answers to them will provide the material that will serve as the body of your paper. You are not merely to quote these sources as an answer to the question(s) – answer in your own words. When it is essential to confirm and support your argument with a quote, of course you must do so. Although you are allowed to appeal to outside sources, you ONLY need to quote from the course materials. Frankly most plagiarism occurs when students use the Internet rather than just sticking to the course materials, which is all you need if you use them properly.
All quotes and paraphrases
must be properly documented, using
Turabian or Chicago Manual of Style
preferred. But you may use
APA
or
MLA
style formatting, just use them properly. There must be quotes from the course materials to properly support your arguments, and don’t forget to quote McCloskey and reference him as well. All of the course materials MUST be included in a
Bibliography
or Works Cited
page that comes as a separate page at the end of your paper.
Note
that we take plagiarism very seriously! All papers are automatically run
through
SafeAssign
to detect plagiarism. Any violations are awarded a grade
of F, or 0 points and could result in failing the class.
Remember, this Response
Paper is to be a
minimum
of 1500 words (approximately six pages of 250 words each), and should
be written as a single essay and
not just a list of answers to
questions
.
You may be critical of McCloskey, but you must remain respectful. The purpose of this paper is to provide a philosophical response to McCloskey, NOT a theological or Biblical one. The best papers are written in third person and directed to McCloskey, who as an atheist will not accept the theological and Biblical positions that most of us would listen to. So, since you are writing to answer an atheist philosophically (and this class is a philosophy course), if you include theology, the Bible, or person testimony you will not do well. I love the Bible and theology and I love personal testimony—but this is NOT the place for it. This paper is for you to demonstrate that you have understood the course materials and can integrate the relevant ideas into a well reasoned argument in response to a well known atheist.
If you want to properly answer McCloskey and do well on this paper you will need to provide a detailed response to each of the five (5) questions below. Remember, I have also directed you to exactly where you will find the correct answers to these five (5) questions from within the course materials so that you can properly provide a detailed response to each question.
Again, this assignment isn’t designed to see if you are capable of independent philosophical thought and come up with answers on your own or from the Bible. This assignment is designed to see if you can assimilate and integrate philosophical concepts into a cogent and coherent response to important philosophical questions posed by McCloskey. Your written response should be properly formatted as a university level research paper following the writing style of Turabian/CMS, which is the proper style (but I will allow APA or MLA) for philosophy papers.
In your paper, you should address the following five (5) questions:
1. McCloskey refers to the arguments as “proofs” and often implies that they can’t definitively establish the case for God, so therefore they should be abandoned. What would you say about this in light of the comments on the approaches to the arguments in the video presentations “Arguments for God’s Existence” and “Approaching the Question of God’s Existence,” and the material that is covered in the Study Guide’s for Lessons 17 & 18? The video “Arguments for God’s Existence” presents the Best Explanation Approach, the Cumulative Case Approach, and the Minimalistic Concept of God approach. These approaches are crucial to organizing all the information in this paper. The video “Approaching the Question of God’s Existence” details and expands on the Best Explanation Approach and is incredibly helpful and will help you understand how to answer McCloskey’s arguments.
2. On the Cosmological Argument:
McCloskey claims that the “mere existence of the world constitutes no reason for believing in such a being [i.e. a necessarily existing being].” Using Evans’ discussion of the non-temporal form of the argument (pp. 69-77), explain why the cause of the universe must be necessary (and therefore uncaused).
McCloskey also claims that the cosmological argument “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause.“ In light of Evans’s final paragraph on the cosmological argument (p.77), how might you respond to McCloskey?
3. On the Teleological Argument:
McCloskey claims that “to get te proof going, genuine indisputable examples of design and purpose are needed.” Discuss this standard of “indisputability” which he calls a “very conclusive objection.” Is it reasonable?
From your reading in Evans, can you offer an example of design that, while not necessarily “indisputable”, you believe provides strong evidence of a designer of the universe?
McCloskey implies that evolution has displaced the need for a designer. Assuming evolution is true, for argument’s sake, how would you respond to McCloskey (see Evans pp. 82-83)?
McCloskey claims that the presence of imperfection and evil in the world argues against “the perfection of the divine design or divine purpose in the world.” Remembering Evans’ comments about the limitations of the cosmological argument, how might you respond to this charge by McCloskey?
4. On the Problem of Evil:
McCloskey’s main objection to theism is the presence of evil in the world and he raises it several times: “No being who was perfect could have created a world in which there was unavoidable suffering or in which his creatures would (and in fact could have been created so as not to) engage in morally evil acts, acts which very often result in injury to innocent persons.” The language of this claim seems to imply that it is an example of the logical form of the problem. Given this implication, using Evans’s discussion of the logical problem (pp. 159-168, noting especially his concluding paragraphs to this section), how might you respond to McCloskey?
McCloskey specifically discusses the free will argument, asking “might not God have very easily so have arranged the world and biased man to virtue that men always freely chose what is right?” From what you have already learned about free will earlier in the course, and what Evans says about the free will theodicy, especially the section on Mackie and Plantinga’s response (pp. 163-166) and what he says about the evidential problem (pp. 168-172), how would you respond to McCloskey’s question?
5. On Atheism as Comforting
In the final pages of McCloskey’s article he claims that atheism is more comforting than theism. Using primarily the argument presented by William Lane Craig in the article “The Absurdity of Life without God,” respond to McCloskey’s claim.
Finally—
