Cosmological Argument

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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)
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 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

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