Cosmological Argument
- Created by: ClarissaFray
- Created on: 13-12-16 18:26
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- Cosmological Argument
- Aquinas' Cosmological Argument
- The argument from causation
- There cannot be an infinite regress of causes
- Nothing is the cause of itself
- Therefore, there has to be a first cause to start the chain of events
- Everything in the world has a cause
- The first cause we call God
- The Argument from motion
- There cannot be an infinite regress of things changing other things
- Nothing can move or change of itself
- Therefore, there must be a first (prime) mover (changer)
- Everything in the world is moving or changing
- This is called God
- The argument from contingency
- If things can not exist, there must been a time when they did not exist
- If everything can not exist, then there must have been a time when nothing existed
- This necessary being we call God
- Things exist now so there must be something on which we all depend which brought things into existence
- Everything in the world is contingent (can either exist or not exist)
- The argument from causation
- Copleston and Russell's BBC Radio Debate
- Russell refused to accept the terminology that Copleston was using - he refused to accept the notion of a necessary beings (beings that cannot be thought not to exist)
- In 1947, Copleston and Russell had a famous radio debate, where Copleston proposed his argument
- He replied "...what I am saying is that the concept of cause is not applicable to the total". Just because each human has a mother does not mean that the whole human race has a mother. He thought that the universe was just a brute fact and needed no explanation for its existence - "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all"
- In criticism Copestone added "...If one refused to sit at the chess board and make a move, one cannot, of curse, be checkmated"
- Fredrick Copleston's reformulation of the cosmological argument
- Copleston reformulated the argument by concentrating on contingency. He proposed this argument on a radio debate in 1947
- This necessary being is God
- All things in the world are like this, nothing in the world is self-explanatory, and everything depends on something else for its existence
- Therefore, there must be a cause for everything in the universe which is outside of it
- This cause must be a self-explanatory being i.e. one which contains within itself the reason for its own existence - a necessary being
- There are things in the universe which are contingent, they might have not existed. E.g. you would have not existed if your parents had not met.
- Copleston reformulated the argument by concentrating on contingency. He proposed this argument on a radio debate in 1947
- David Hume's criticism
- He said that we have no experience of universes being made, and so we cannot speak meaningfully about the creation of the universe
- To move from 'everything we observe has a cause' to 'the universe has a cause' is too a leap in logic
- This is the same as saying that because all humans have a mother, the whole human race has a mother
- To move from 'everything we observe has a cause' to 'the universe has a cause' is too a leap in logic
- He said that we have no experience of universes being made, and so we cannot speak meaningfully about the creation of the universe
- St. Thomas Aquinas realised that the existence of the universe is not explicable without references and factors outside itself.
- Aquinas put forward in his book 'Summa Theologica' 'five ways' in which he attempted to prove the existence of God a posteriori
- The first three ways make up the Cosmological argument
- It cannot be self causing since it is contingent and only the existence of a first, necessary cause and mover explains that existence of the universe
- Aquinas put forward in his book 'Summa Theologica' 'five ways' in which he attempted to prove the existence of God a posteriori
- Aquinas' Cosmological Argument
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