The Cosmological Argument

al-Kindi & al-Ghazali

• Whatever comes into being must have a cause
• Univ. came into being
• Univ. must have a cause
• That cause must be God
• God exists

Univ. does not depend on God now, but is original cause. 

Rejects idea of infinity --> logical paradoxes.

William Lane Craig:

• temporal series that has no beg. -> actual infinite.
• temporal series of events w/o beginning cannot exist.
• finite past = existence caused; universe finite past -> been caused.
• Space + time originated within univ. = finite past. So, cause beyond space + time
• If so, science cannot expl. origin of univ. = personal agent, not physical.

First: Motion

Obj moves when external force applied to it, chain of movements cannot go back to infinity.

= First unmoved prime mover --> God.

Things achieve their potential through external influence - fire making wood hot.

• Fire applied to wood makes wood achieve potential to become hot.
• For thing to change, actuality required, if not change initiated within itself. be both potential + actual = reductio ad absurdum.
• Wood being hot would mean cannot change to become hot. Wood is its actuality, fire can make it hot is potentiality.
• Smth must have made fire change and alight -> each change result of earlier change.
• But no series of infinite changes; point of first movement by first mover, necessary to arrive at it - God. 

Nothing can be cause of itself, would mean it had to exist before it existed = logical impossibility.

Rejected infinite causes = first uncaused causer - God started chain of causes and caused all events to happen.

Contingency of mattter in univ - come to exist & cease to exist.

Infinite time - then time when nothing existed because of concept of contingency, cannot live forever.

• Time when nothing, then still there would be nothing as nothing can bring itself to existence.
• Cause of univ = external + always existed, necessary being bringing everything into existence i.e. God.
• No God, nothing would exist.

Radio debate, BBC. Copleston; jesuit priest + professor & Russell; British philosopher. 

Copleston supported cosmological arg, Russell opposed.

Focused on principle of sufficient reason - Coppleston supported.

Russell:

Rejecting idea of necessary being - God, on which all things depend - have to be on special category of his own; where does category come from + why accepted? Necessary being, no meaning. Just b/c humans have mothers does not mean univ. had a mother. Meaningless to ask what caused univ. b/c fallacy (mistake in arg) to assume that just b/c some parts of univ. has causes, that whole thing has one too.

Does not feel need for ultimate answers or sufficient reaons; univ. not crying out for expl. "I should say that the univ. is just there, and that's all."