Criticisms of Cosmological Argument

Prime mover not necessarily God of Bible. 

Qualities, 3 O's? Omnibenevolence 

Aq. first mover unmoved, suggesting hard external thing. Bible= caring, loving, r/ship worthy.

Aq.'s = omnipotent and transcendent (beyond physical human exp)

God in Bible sustains implies God continues to exist.

Aq's God used for orginating purposes only, not sustainer.

Rests on contradiction:

Everything has a cause, but something exists that is not caused? 

BUT

God not like everything else/not like other things that have causes.

David Hume:

Thought that we do no actually have experience of causation, just smth our minds impose on perception, result of past experiences.

Snooker ball - think we see another cause another one to move when hits, but all we see is one move towards the other and the 2nd ball move away, where is causation happening now?

T/f, no knowledge of any chain of causes and effects. Coincidence?

Defender:

Elizabeth Andscome 

Poss for us to imagine an event not having one cause on another; but impossible to imagine no cause at all. As long as every event has a cause of some kind, Aq's arg still stands.

Relies on reductio ad absurdum

Claiming infinite regress is impossible. What if poss? Then no prob with infinite chain of contingent beings with no necessary prior being.

If Aq. is right, 1st necessary cause not necessarily Judaeo-Christian God. Does not mean anything - vague.

Aq. suggesting that overtime all contingent beings come to end. 

J.L Mackie;

Infinite series of overlapping but contingent things, then there would be no need of a necessary being. 

Using concepts of necessity & contingency. Used to refer a relationship btwn subject + predicate, but here used to describe existence.

David Hume: cannot combine statements a/b existence with term 'necessary'. 

Kant: necessity a/b relation btwn subj + pred; e.g. "bachelors are unmarried men", necessary b/c if denied, "bachelors are married men" = contradiction.

H/e, cannot say "David exists", is necessary b/c of denied, "David does not exist" = no contradiction. T/f, not possible to say that God's existence is necessary. 

Sufficient reason: adequate reason that explains cause of an event; INC, origin of univ. 

Supports cos arg incl. Aq. Nothing way it is w/o sufficient reason for being so. --> Ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes)

Whole of science - realisation that things don't just happen so Leibniz accepts arg b/c thinks must be significant reason for univ existing. 

Rejects infinite univ b/c does not believe was a satisfactory expl for its existence.