Cosmological argument

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Aquinas 3 ways - motion
Everything that is in motion must have been put into motion by something else. However, this would lead to the problem of infinite regression, therefore leading us to the answer that there must be an unmoved mover, namely God.
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Aquinas 3 ways - first cause
: In the world there is an order of efficient causes. There must be a first cause, because without it, there would not be any other cause. This first cause is God
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Aquinas 3 ways - Necessity and Contingency
Everything has the possibility to exist, and to not exist. Therefore, there must have been a time where nothing existed. If this were true, nothing would exist today, because things only come to exist, because of things already existing. There must b
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Empirical evidence
Empirical evidence points towards everything having a cause
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Ockhams razor
Simplest theory is most likely to be true
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Kalam Cosmological argument
William Lane Craig. Three steps: 1)Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2)The Universe began to exist. 3)The universe has a cause.
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Hume Cause and effect
• Hume argued that the idea of cause and effect is much more complicated than at first glance. We cannot jump from examples of cause and effect in our universe straight to the cause and effect of the universe itself. They are completely different thi
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Bertrand Russell (mother)
• Bertrand Russell added to Hume’s point by referring it to saying that every human has a mother. We cannot jump from looking at such individual cases to saying that the totality has a cause itself
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JL Mackie
• JL Mackie questioned the need of a necessary being. He says that Aquinas fails to explain why the necessary being must be God.
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Kant
• Kant also questioned the idea of a necessary being. He also said that our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal world of space and time and it is not possible to speculate about what may or may not exist independently of space and time.
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Anscombe
• Anscombe added the idea that even if you are able to imagine something coming into existence without a cause, it does not tell you anything about what is possible in reality
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Oscillating universe theory
• Oscillating universe theory – If the first causer can be thought of to be uncaused, then why can’t the universe itself be uncaused?
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Dorothy Emmet
• Dorothy Emmet questioned the idea of the first cause being a single event in time, and instead being a continuous process. She also questioned the use of the word at all. ’’First cause’ is not, I think, the first member of a casual sequence, althou
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William Temple
• Appeal to imagination – Criticising Aquinas’ alleged impossibility of infinite regression. William Temple commented “it is impossible to imagine infinite regress. But it is not impossible to conceive it” – William Temple, ‘Mens Creatix’. He is sayi
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Divine Cause
• If God is a cause, then he is different to any cause that we experience on this earth. We know what a biological cause might be, or what a chemical cause might be, but we have no direct experience of a divine cause, so we can’t assume that it exist
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Card 2

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: In the world there is an order of efficient causes. There must be a first cause, because without it, there would not be any other cause. This first cause is God

Back

Aquinas 3 ways - first cause

Card 3

Front

Everything has the possibility to exist, and to not exist. Therefore, there must have been a time where nothing existed. If this were true, nothing would exist today, because things only come to exist, because of things already existing. There must b

Back

Preview of the back of card 3

Card 4

Front

Empirical evidence points towards everything having a cause

Back

Preview of the back of card 4

Card 5

Front

Simplest theory is most likely to be true

Back

Preview of the back of card 5
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