The cosmological argument

God's existence based on God's ability to create the universe

1. Arguments from Motion

2. Arguments from Causation

3. Arguments from Contingency

Through understanding of science and physical evidence

We live in a world that is constantly moving, the movement is caused by movers and something therefore must have been the original mover to set the motion off otherwise there would be an infinite regress.

In a chain of reasoning, each point in the chain relies on the existence of something that came before it and so on, with no starting point. Aquinas argued against this as he said it was like knocking over a line of domino's and saying nothing pushed the first one. (Absurd) Must be a beginning

Some things are caused and anything that is caused must be caused by something else, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes so there must be a first causer, itself uncaused which is God.

A being that has always existed, will always exist and cannot not exist.

Any being that could not exist

The argument from contingency- We cannot all be contingent beings as again it would lead to an infinite regress and no one may have existed, therefore there must be a necessary being that has always existed to prevent the regress.

Don't establish any particular God, we are left with uncaused causers and unmoved movers which have little in common with the christian God that many pray to and love, the God that cares about his creation, Aquinas' God is too far removed from the theistic God that many follow.

Polytheism

A non sentient being, following Aquinas' argument the creator may simply be an egg or any other material object.

Aquinas takes it as a given that there must be a starting point for everyone, if infinite regress is possible then his first two points fall apart.

They are self defeating- they prove themselves wrong. If Aquinas is right about everything being put into motion by something else and caused by other things then who says God doesn't have to be caused or moved? If we can exist without God being responsible for us then we don't need God to establish things in the first place. We can accept his argument without accepting his conclusion.

The prime mover of Aquinas- motion is a consequence of a creative act of God and he initiates all movement in the universe by a deliberate act of will. The prime mover of Aristotle- Acts by attraction, he is indifferent to the universe and has no intentions for it.

He says that we speak of "cause" and "effect" and assume we understand the ideas but scientifically they remain problematic. He argues that "Cause and Effect" disguises the complexity of the motion. Cause and Effect may simply be our way of reporting a statistical correlation. Instead of saying " x causes y" We could just say "whenever x, y" We can therefore describe the phenomenon without any mention of cause. Cause is therefore not the obvious notion which Aquinas assumes.

Whatever is meant by "cause" in relation to God cannot be in the scientific sense, God is not another cause in the way that my moving is caused by the movement of my joints. We have Biological causes and chemical causes but no divine cause as far as we are aware.

There was a time when there was nothing.

Bertrand Russell- Questions whether it makes sense to speak of a "necessary being." In logic, a proposition may be described as "necessary" It is a necessary truth that a square has four sides. Can a "thing" be necessary, whatever we mean by "necessary" it is a special usage. But if nothing else than God is necessary, and we cannot see his necessity. It is impossible to argue that we have any concept of necessary being that we can atribute to God.

According to Aquinas it is impossible, however we must distinguish what we believe to be impossible and something actually being impossible.

" It is impossible to imagine infinite regress but it is not impossible to conceive it"- meaning we can understand it not imagine it. Infinite regress is logically possible even if it is difficult to understand. "infinite" and "regress" do not contradict eachother whilst "square circle" contradicts eachother. A square circle is unimaginable but also unthinkable.

Most religious people see the universe not just about the beginning of the earth but how it was sustained. For believers God sustains and loves the world.

speaks of God as the " Ground being" which refers to his continued action. When we ask for an explanation we ask why things are the way they are not just how they began.

The principle of sufficient reason is that every truth, every fact and every event has a sufficient reason which explains why the way it is. He states that the way we reason is based on two principles, first is the principle of contradiction. Second, is the principle of sufficient reason which is an explanation that requires no further explanation. There are sufficient reasons to explain everything however they are unknown to us.

They are guilty of logical fallacy, just because something is true of one thing doesn't mean it is true of a whole. He says we may wish there to be an explanation but it doesn't mean there is one. We cannot assert there is an explanation without evidence for it.

The claim that every event to thing has a cause

That the causal principle is valid- things which change or exist have a cause

Propositions such as the causal principle can either be analytic or synthetic

True by definition (analytic)

Claims based on experiences cannot be known with certainty to be true in all cases- doesn’t mean that all events have a cause since we have no experienced all events

Having observed them constantly conjoined- eg everytime you have seen someone drop a ball- it has been followed by the ball dropping on the floor- this is not enough to justify belief in a necessary connection between A and B

Thinking that there is a necessary connection between the two events- that it is impossible for A to happen without B

That it applies universally

The universality of the causal principle is justified through induction- evidence suggests that B will always follow from A

Our observation of change from within the universe itself

We are not justified in assuming that these conditions apply to the universe itself

Only A posteriori cosmological arguments commit the fallacy of composition by assuming that the universe has a cause when is parts of the universe- a priori arguments claim to be derive from necessary truths rather than existence

A brute fact

Self-contradictory

Infinite regress

• Uses the example of a library with infinite books- half red books/half green- if you take all the red books you would have taken an infinite amount of books out but there would still be an infinite left

It involves an infinite number of physical objects, infinite regress could be a finite number over an infinite amount of time

Then time has existed forever- must be an infinite amount of time before the present moment, an infinite amount of time must have passed and an infinite amount of time cannot pass