Cosmological Argument

• Based on inductive proofs
• A posteriori = knowledge we know by experiencing the world

• In Aquinas' major work - Summa Theologica - he wrote five ways to prove God's existance

1) The unmoved mover

2) Uncaused causer

3) Possibilty and Necessity 

• The last two ways are not related to the cosmological arguement

The Unmoved Mover

• Idea of motion and change
• An object only moves when an external force is applied
• Things change through a chain of movements 
• Movements DO NOT go back to infintiy 
• Must be a prime mover
• Prime mover = GOD 

(There is an inductive leap, because it goes from a prime mover straight to God)

The Uncaused Causer

• A series of causes
• Nothing can cause itself
• Cannot have an infinite chain of causes 
• Rejects infiniate regress
• Must have been a first cause
• The First cause is God

EXAMPLE : Dominoes, they have to fall with an external force

Possibilty and Necessity 

• Contingency (dependent) and Necessity 
• If time is infinate, there must have been a point where nothing existed
• If everything in the universe is contingent, then nothing would exist as somethin cannot come from nothing - nihlo nihlo fitt
• God is therefore contingent but God is a necessary being 
• Necessary being is God

• Al Ghazali - muslim scholar, questioned infintiy 
• Library analogy
• Actual infinities are impossible, but follows that the universe cannot be infinate - must have had a beginning = GOD
• Actual infinites = Start and then forever
• A potential infinity = No beginning or end 

• Contempory American Christian Apologist 
• The universe has a beginning
• That beginning was caused 
• That cause was a personal agent
• GOD 

STRENGTHS;

• Hasn't been dispoved 
• Widely accepted 
• Logical 
• Cumulative case - a lot of different people agree
• Copleston = if all things have a cause, the universe has a cause 

WEAKNESSES;

• Why does the personal agent have to be God?
• The universe could be infinate
• The cause of the universe might not have been a deliberate cause