Cosmological argument - philosphers
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- Created on: 21-01-18 16:45
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- Cosmological argument
- Aquinas's Cosmological argument
- The First Way - Unmoved Mover
- Things in the world are in motion - from a potential state to an actual sate. They cannot be actual and potential at the same time.
- Everything in motion must have been put in motion by something else.
- Aquinas - "The chain of movers cannot go into infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and consequently no other mover".
- Concludes - "It is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other, and this everyone understands to be God".
- The Second Way - Un-caused cause
- Nothing is n efficient cause of itself. (efficient cause is God).
- It is not possible fir efficient causes to go back to infinity - if there is no efficient first cause, there will not be any following causes.
- Aquinas Concludes - "it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause to which everyone gives the name of God".
- The third way - Contingency (Not always there/true).
- Things in the world have a contingent existence. If everything at one time did not exist, there would be nothing in existence.
- Aquinas - "There must exist something the existence of which is necessary" - God is Not contingent, he is necessary. - Infinite regression of necessary things is impossible.
- Aquinas " There exists some being having its own necessity, this all men speak of as God"
- The First Way - Unmoved Mover
- HUME
- Agrees with Infinite regression - Aquinas Does not.
- Going backwards forever - accepted due to the fact that we have a concept of infinity.
- - BUT - There must be a starting point.
- Going backwards forever - accepted due to the fact that we have a concept of infinity.
- Criticisms:
- We see event A followed by event B - this does not prove that A causes B.
- The world is Finite - we can assume that a finite cause is likely to cause a finite effect. - God could be contingent.
- If we know about causes within the universe, we do not also need to explain the universe as a whole.
- It is possible to say that god does not exist, it is not like saying that triangles have four sides.
- The universe itself may be necessary.
- If the universe were eternal, it would be absurd to talk of it having a cause.
- Criticizes Aquinas:
- Between cause and effect there is a moment which we cannot explain - not as simple as we think.
- 'cause and effect' may be a statistical correlation. 'x,y' - 'something happens, something happens' - no mention of cause - do we need a cause.
- It is a very different cause to anything we know - we know other causes but don't know a divine cause - outside of our experience.
- We look at things and can model and understand how the cause happened - but we cannot explain or model how God caused the universe.
- BUT - Some things we do not know yet and may be able to work out in the future.
- Agrees with Infinite regression - Aquinas Does not.
- Leibniz
- God provides the sufficient reason. It is a final answer without need of further reason.
- We need a full explanation of everything.
- "Sufficient reason is that in virtue of which we hold that no fact could ever be true of or existent, nor statement correct, unless there were a sufficient reason why it was thus and not otherwise"
- Copleston
- Uses ideas from Aquinas's 3rd way.
- Universe is contingent. No object is the reason of its own existence - universe was created by something outside of it - God.
- A complete explanation is needed - in its entirety - nothing can be added.
- Doesn't believe in infinite regression - if there was then we would not be contingent beings.
- Russel
- Agnostic
- The idea of cause does not need to be applied to the whole universe.
- Says that the universe is just there - it is not explainable - may not even be an explanation - even if there is it is out of human grasp.
- We are contingent beings.
- Just because individual beings have a mother, doesn't mean that the whole universe has a mother.
- "I should say that the universe is just there and that is all" - brute fact.
- J L Mackie
- "There is a permanent stock of matter whose essence did not involve existence from anything else"
- Non-contingent so no cause - against cosmological argument.
- Aquinas's Cosmological argument
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