Gottfried Leibniz on Cosmological Argument

1. For every truth, there is sufficient reason why it is true.

2. There are two types of truths: necessary and contingent

3. It is impossible for the opposite of a necessary truth to be true.

4. So the sufficient reason for them can be discovered a priori.

5. It is possible for the opposite of a contingent truth so be true.

6. So the sufficient reason for contingent truths cannot be discovered through other contingent truths, because they too require a sufficient explanation, and so on.

7. The sufficient reason for contingent facts must be a necessary substance.

8. That necessary substance is God.

9. So, God exists.

1. Leibniz give the example of a geometry book that has always existed, one copy made from another.

2. We can explain the existence of each of the geometry books by the one it was copied from, but we can’t explain why these books exist at all.

3. This applies to the world as a whole, even if we can explain one state of the world by previous states, we lack an explanation of the world as a whole.

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1. No real, empirical proof, relies on logic as opposed to observation.

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