EXISTENCE OF GOD
Description
PHIL 1200 D01 21S
Assignment #1
:
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION – EXISTENCE OF GOD
INSTRUCTIONS:
This assignment consists of a short essay question, and a short response question. The
main intent of these questions is to ensure that you have a sound grasp of the fundamentals of the material
presented in this unit. To that end, there is a 3 to 4 page (1000 words) limit for the short essay question.
I’m not so concerned with whether you agree with a particular author or not. The quality of your answer
is based on your exposition of the competing positions, your comparative analysis of those positions and,
lastly, your argument in support of the position you defend.
As with all the assignments in this course, the short essay question is not designed to be a “research”
question. There is no requirement to get material from external sources such as other authors, or reference
websites, who have summarized, or criticized, the authors you are dealing with.
In effect, including such
material defeats your purpose in completing your essay because you are essentially telling me what some
other person thought about the material you should be explaining and assessing.
If you make reference
to sources external to the course readings it will be detrimental to your mark. In some
cases, I may ask you to re-work and submit your assignment.
The point of
your
essay is to
formulate the course material and develop
your
critical response. You can do this by working with the
course material and developing your own ideas about the issue. The essay is simply your opportunity to
set that out in paper.
So, the material you need to successfully complete this assignment can be found in the online course
materials available through the UMLearn course site. There may also be some reading material that is part
of the hard copy course readings package. You can find this information on the course materials section
of our course UMLearn website.
Questions:
(The total possible mark for this assignment is 100 marks.)
1.
Short Essay Question:
(90 marks) Consider the three arguments in support of the existence of God:
The Ontological argument, the Cosmological Argument, and the Teleological Argument. Provide concise
formulations of each of these three competing arguments by making reference to the authors
