The Cosmological Argument

Prime Mover

- motion everything is moved by something before it

- Impossible to be both mover and moved, something cannot move itself

- there needs to be a first mover, must beGod

- An infinite regression of movement cannot exist, there has to be a beginning and end.

-Aristotle 'nothing moves itself'

First Cause

- Everything has a cause (a reason for its existence)

-Nothing can be the cause fo itself

-Cannot be infinite regression of causes, nothing comes from nothing 

-Must be a first cause, God

Necessity and Contingency 

- Everything is dependant upon something else

- Something doesn't need to exist if its contingent (needs something to exist)

- For nothing to need to exist, then they haven't always existed

- At some point then, nothing would've existed

- However, then nothing would exist now 

- There must be a necessary being to explain everything that now exists, this is God.

David Hume 

- Sun rises, inductive problem ( we see that the sun rises)

- We always see cause and effect 

- We assume the future will resemble the past, for example, the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has

- This then lets us see cause and effect where it is not actually present 

Christianity 

- Rejects the idea that the necessary being is the Christian God

- The cosmological argument never gives away the attributes of God

- Could be a committee of Gods and not the unmoved mover 

The universe and the beginning

- Rejects the idea that the universe has a beginning 

- perhaps it has always existed, no empirical evidence to say it has not

- oscillating universe theory, the universe follows infinite and self-sustaining cycles.

-the universe could be a first of possible series of universes/ could be the nth universe in a series

the fallacy of composition 

- just because everything in the universe is contingent doesn't mean the universe is 

- "every human has a mother, this doesn't mean the human race has a mother"

Cause

- we cannot experience causation

- the foundation of knowledge is experience 

- probably had a cause but we can never be sure

- cannot talk about it with certainty