Philosophy 101

Introduction to Philosophy

Spring 2005

Paper Assignment

Write a paper, following all of the instructions below. It is due at the beginning of class on Friday, April 15. We do not accept papers by e-mail. Late papers will be penalized. Please keep a photocopy or electronic copy of your paper, for your own protection.

Format Instructions

Your paper should be about 3 pages. It must be printed in 12-point font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides. Its pages must be numbered and stapled together. Do not put your paper in a folder.

Content Instructions

Write your paper about the selection by Mark Mahin on the next page. Follow the instructions below.

0.         Provide proper citations (see the Citations handout).

1.         Write your paper so that it can be understood by students who are not in this class. It should have a standard essay format, except that it should have an argument with numbered premises and conclusion displayed in it. It should have at least one introductory sentence, and sentences that connect together the various sections in which you extract, explain, and evaluate the argument. Make these sentences brief and to the point. Do not begin your paper with a sentence like “Since the dawn of time, humans have wondered whether God exists.” Instead, begin with something along the lines of “This paper critically examines an argument by Mark Mahin for the existence of God.”

2.         Extract a valid argument from the selection and present it in numbered premise-conclusion form. The argument should be valid. It may, or may not, have subconclusions. Every argument should have one of the forms given on the Arguments handout (MP, MT, etc.). There should be no idle premises.

3.         The main conclusion of the argument must be “God exists”.

4.         Explain the argument line-by-line. That is, explain the technical terms that occur in it (including ‘God’), and give reasons in favor of each of the premises (Mahin’s reasons, if he offers any). Your explanation should always be clear about which line it is explaining, but do not number the parts of your explanation: present your explanation in ordinary paragraph form. For the purposes of this paper only, you may use our Final Principle about God as your definition of ‘God’. You do not need to define the terms that appear in your definition of ‘God’. (Mahin uses the term ‘God’ in this way.)

5.         Begin your evaluation of the argument. First, state whether it is valid and why. (It should be valid: see the instructions under (2) above). Next, present exactly one objection to the argument, even if you think it is sound. Present the strongest objection to the argument that you can think of. Be sure to specify which premise you are criticizing.

6.         If you have space, you can present a brief reply to the objection that you present in (5).

7.         After considering the argument and your objection (and your reply to the objection, if any), give a concluding evaluation of Mahin’s argument: is it sound?

Some Advice

This assignment asks you to Extract, Explain, and Evaluate an argument from the following selection. You might wish to review the handout on argument extraction before you begin to write your paper. You have a choice between two strategies when you extract the argument: (1) You can try to state all or most of the author’s argument in the numbered premises and conclusions. The resulting argument might be rather complex. (2) You can state only the “highlights” or “main points” in the numbered premises and conclusions, and state the rest of the author’s argument in your line-by-line explanation of the argument. It is probably wiser to follow the second strategy rather than the first.

The Selection

The following text is taken from:

Mark Mahin. 1985. The New Scientific Case for God’s Existence. Boston, MA: Mindlifter Press.

One of the main problems of cosmology is what cosmologists call the flatness problem. This can be defined as the problem of why the universe’s actual density was almost identical to the critical density when the universe began to expand. Matter and energy are two forms of the same stuff: mass-energy. The universe’s actual density is the average amount of matter or mass-energy per unit of space. If the universe’s actual density is greater than a particular density called the critical density, the universe will eventually stop expanding; if it is less than this density, the universe will expand forever. Both the actual density and the critical density change as the universe expands. From the fact that after more than ten billion years of expansion the universe has an actual density that is fairly close to the critical density, cosmologists conclude that at the time of the big bang the difference between the actual density and the critical density was amazingly small. Alan Guth of MIT has said that when the universe had an age of only 10^-35 second (that is, at a time only a hundred billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after it began to expand) there was a difference of less than one part in 10⁴⁹ between the actual density and the critical density. (The number 1 followed by 49 zeros is the same as 10⁴⁹. One part in 10⁴⁹ is a ten trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth.) Professor Paul Davies has estimated that when the age of the universe was 10^-43 second the actual density differed from the critical density by no more than one part in 10⁶⁰. Davies has said that if these two factors had differed by only one part in 10⁵⁷ at that instant rather than one part in 10⁶⁰, our expanding universe would not even exist; for the universe would have collapsed into oblivion after only a few million years. Cosmologists know of no reason why the actual density could not have been many times smaller or greater than the critical density at the beginning of the big bang, so there is a need to explain why the difference between them at this time was so amazingly small. . . .

             Now I will discuss the theological relevance of the flatness problem . . . I previously cited one scientist’s estimate that at 10^-35 second after the universe began to expand its actual density differed from the critical density by less than one part in 10⁴⁹, and another scientist’s estimate that when the universe had an age of 10^-43 second this difference was no more than one part in 10⁶⁰. It is generally recognized that there is no reason why the actual density could not have initially differed from the critical density by a factor of more than a million times, so it is hard to believe that such a close correspondence between the actual density and the critical density was due to mere chance. The most plausible way to explain this correspondence is to assume that God created the universe with an actual density that initially differed from the critical density by less than one part in 10⁴⁰, because God wanted life to appear in the universe, and life probably would not have appeared if these factors had not been almost identical when the universe began. (I previously cited a scientist who said that if these two factors had differed by only one part in 10⁵⁷ when the universe had an age of 10^-43 second, the universe would have collapsed into oblivion long ago.) [pp. 20-25, editing due to David Braun]