Cosmological Argument

1st Way- Unmoved mover

• Everything in motion is moved by something else
• Infinite regress is impossible
• Therefore there must have been a 1st mover- God

2nd Way- Uncaused Causer

• Every effect has a cause
• Infinite regress is impossible
• Therefore there must have been a first mover- God

3rd Way- Contingency and necessity

• Some contingent beings exist
• If contingent beings exists there must be a necessary being
• Therefore a necessary being exists- God

• Hume- we have no experience of creation
• Hume- if nothing is uncaused why is god?
• Could be more than one first cause
• Different God for each of three ways
• Universe is not contingent- matter is eternal
• Bertrand Russell- "Brute Fact"

• Everything in the universe is contingent
• The universe is the totality of contingent things and is itself contingent
• Given the universe is contingent, there must be something on which it relies - God.

Based on Leibnitz principal of sufficient reason

Weaknesses

• universe could be NB
• leap from NB to God of christianity

Islam, recreated by William Craig in "The Kalam Cosmological Argument."

• Everything that begins to exist has a cause
• the universe exists
• the universe has a cause

This cause COULD be God.

Argued infinite regress was impossible- library of books

Big Bang theory supports Kalam argument

Swinburne- Ockam's razor argues that there ought to be something rather than nothing - suggests God

Against the Kalam Argument

• QM - electrons appear to cause themselves
• Oscillating universe theory and steady state theory allow for infinite universe

Hume -"Dialogues concerning natural religion."

• Agrees with Russell that saying everything has a cause is like saying every human has a mother, therefore humanity has a mother.
• We have no experience of creation

• The universe could be "Brute fact" (Russell)
• Words like necessary being have no consistent meaning
• The universe itself could be the necessary being if this just means "imperishable being"
• God may have caused the universe and then ceased to exist

Responses from religion

• Ockham's razor- universe would have been simpler not to exist
• John Wisdom's parable of the gardener- universe is religiously ambiguous but theist is more likely to see God and atheist may not.