The cosmological (congingency/dependency) argument

What are the 2 main types of cosmological argument?

1. The Kalam argument: argues for the need for a cause of the universe at the beginning of time

2. The dependency or contingency arguments: argue for the need for the universe to depend on something necessary, i.e. something that cannot not-exist (Aquinas’s versions of these arguments are best known - his 5 ways claim to show that language about God successfully refers, Aquinas used old arguments from Aristotle and Plato, and while it’s not certain whether he intended these arguments to establish God’s existence independent from faith, most commentators assume this was his intention)

What is Aquinas’ 1st way from motion?

P1. We observe motion.
P2. Motion is the actualization of a thing’s potential to be in motion.
P3. A thing can only come to be in motion by being moved.
P4. A mover must be something that is actual.
P5. A thing cannot move itself.
C1. So, all things in motion must have been moved by something else.
P6. If there were no first mover, there would be no motion now.
C2. Therefore, there must be a first mover which must itself be unmoved (pure actuality). That thing we call God.

What is Aquinas’ 2nd way from efficient causes?

P1. We observe efficient causation.
P2. Nothing can cause itself.
P3. There is a logical order to sustaining causes: the first cause, then intermediate causes, then an ultimate effect.
P4. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A doesn’t exist neither does B.
C1. There must be a first sustaining cause, otherwise P1 would be false as there would be no further sustaining causes or effects.
C2. As there is a first cause, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
C3. The first cause must itself be uncaused. That thing we call God.

What is Copleston’s simple explanation of Aquinas’ cosmological argument?

1. Everything in the universe is contingent (might not have been, relies on something to exist, doesn’t need to exist)

2. The universe is simply the totality of contingent things and is itself contingent (this is a jump, one could argue that everything in the universe is contingent and depends on the universe as a whole as a necessary existent totality - Russell, links to fallacy of composition)

3. Given the universe is contingent or dependent, there must be something on which it depends, namely God (assumptions: whatever it depends on must be necessary, and it must be the same as the God of religious belief)

Explain the further debate between Russell and Copleston after this explanation

• Russell: He rejects all talk of things within the universe of the universe as a whole being contingent or dependent because he claims the language of contingency implies there must be something necessary and accuses Copleston of smuggling the conclusion in with the premise. He says the universe ‘just is’, it is the ultimate brute fact and requires no explanation. If he’s right, this undermines Copleston’s argument.

• Copleston: He accepts that if Russell refuses to even ask the question of why there is a universe, he cannot be checkmated. The acceptance of the universe as a brute fact rules out requiring an explanation, but he considers this position unreasonable.

  • Gerry Hughes, Master of Campion Hall, Oxford, agrees with Copleston: “Any child of 5 would see that the question ‘why is there a universe at all?’ is a reasonable one.”

  • Supporters claim that God is a better ultimate explanation than the brute fact of the universe eg. Swinburne maintains that God us a simpler explanation than the brute fact of the universe because he provides a personal explanation

    • This, however, is debatable - Aquinas considered that God was metaphysically simple (this is the defining feature of his God on which other features eg. His timelessness etc. depend) but this is very different from saying that God provides a simple explanation.

    • Plus, it is one thing to say God is personal, but it is far from clear what this means when applied to the wholly simple God - it certainly cannot be understood univocally, it does not have a similar meaning to a human being who is seen as personal

Explain Aquinas’ 3rd way from contingency and necessity, as per Vardy’s summary

1. Everything ‘can be’ or ‘not be’

2. If this is so, given infinite time, at some time everything would not-be

3. If there was once nothing, nothing could come from it, therefore something must necessarily exist (this is not God)

4. Everything necessary must be caused or uncaused

5. The series of necessary things cannot go on to infinity as there would then be no explanation for the series, thus there must be some Being ‘having of itself its own necessity’

6. This is what everyone calls God

• basically, he sets out to show not everything can be contingent and claims that if everything can non-exist then, if there had been infinite time going back into the past, there would have been a time when there was nothing at all (he claims this because he considers that in infinite time all possibilities would be realised and one possibility is that nothing once existed)

• If, Aquinas claims, there was once nothing in existence even now there would be nothing as nothing can come from nothing - he clearly considers it absurd to say there is nothing now

• From this, he concludes that not everything can be contingent, there must be something necessary

What, according to Aquinas, are the 2 types of necessary beings?

1. Caused necessary beings: These are angels which Aquinas considered could not not-exist once they were created. He didn’t think there could be an infinite regress of such necessary beings as then there would be no explanation for the series. So there must be another category….

2. An uncaused necessary being: This is the de re necessary God. The God who cannot not-exist and is not dependent on anything else.

How does Aquinas’ conclusions link with the Abrahamic God we know today?

• Aquinas’ arguments claim to arrive at the conclusion necessary to explain the universe, motion, causation, contingency etc. - we do not know what God is, but whatever God is, God is whatever is necessary to explain the universe’s existence

• There is a jump, however, from whatever this is to describing it as God

  • Gave rise to Pascal’s quote: “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - not the God of the philosophers.”

• Aquinas ends his proofs by saying ‘this is what everyone calls God’ but this can be challenged - Aristotle’s prime mover appears radically different from the God of most Christians, so if we said that God was ‘whatever sustains the universe in existence’ we would be somewhere near to what Aquinas was saying, but this ‘whatever’ may be some way from Yahweh

• This lies at the heart of the central problem in Philosophy of Religion - ‘What is ‘God’?’

What are the 2 types of necessity?

• De re & de dicto

• It’s important to recognise that Aquinas ends up with God as de re necessary - he is necessary in and of God’s self and God is uncaused (de re = about/concerning the thing)

• This is not meant to be the same as logical necessity (de dicto necessity, based on how words are used) which applies in the ontological argument

• The ontological argument starts with de dicto necessity and attempts to arrive at de re necessity, while the cosmological arguments starts from the world and tries to reason to de re necessity

What are the qualities of the type of God Aquinas is proposing?

• The de re necessary God is wholly simple, bodiless, without parts, immutable, timeless and spaceless - simplicity is the key defining characteristic of this God

• The 2 central characteristics of Divine simplicity are:

  • The identity of essence and existence in God: God isn’t something that just happens to exist, God’s essence includes existence. God cannot be a material being because God “...cannot have any intrinsic accidental properties: cannot, therefore, change in any way; and cannot be an individual of any given species or genus. Hence an absolutely necessary being does not have a nature in any straightforward sense at all.”

  • God has no potential. Everything in the universe is actual and has potential, but God is pure actuality and has no potential at all.

What is Leibnitz’ argument?

• he asked ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’

• He championed the Principle of Sufficient Reason (which he believed to be self-evidently true) : If something exists there must be a reason, if a statement is true there must be a reason it is true, if something happens, there must be a reason it happens (known or unknown) etc…

•  "Suppose the book of the elements of geometry to have been eternal, one copy always having been  written down from an earlier one. It is evident that even though a reason can be given for the present book out of a past one, we should never come to a full reason. What is true of the books is also true of the states of the world. If you suppose the world eternal you will suppose nothing but a succession of states and will not find in any of them a sufficient reason.” - basically referring to the problem of infinite regress here

• Argument in steps:

  • The world we see is changing

  • Whatever is changing lacks within itself the reason for its own existence

  • There is a sufficient reason for everything either within itself or outside itself

  • Therefore there must be a cause beyond itself for its existence

  • Either this cause is itself caused or is its own sufficient reason

  • There cannot be an infinite regress of causes because this will never provide sufficient reason

  • Therefore there must be a first cause of the world which has no reason beyond itself but is its own sufficient reason

What are some responses/criticisms to Leibnitz?

• Does everything need a reason to exist or happen?

• Leibnitz says even if the universe is eternal we still need an explanation for its existence - is he right?

• What might be an alternative explanation for the universe, other than God?

What are some of Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument in general?

• like causes resemble like effects - the most that can be derived from finite effects will be finite causes

• What is true of the part cannot be assumed to be true of the whole - this is the ‘fallacy of composition’

• No proposition about existence can be logically necessary - the opposite of any statement about experience is always perfectly possible (this may rest on a confusion, as Aquinas doesn’t claim that God’s existence is logically necessary, but claims that the existence of God is necessary GIVEN motion, cause, contingency, etc.)

• The words ‘necessary being’ have no consistent meaning - any being claimed to exist may or may not exist

• If ‘necessary being’ means only ‘imperishable being’, then the universe itself may be necessary

• An infinite series is possible

• There is no way of establishing the principle of causality

• Seeing only half the scales we can draw conclusions as to the cause of the movement but not speak with absolute authority

What problems did Ockham raise with Aquinas’ approach?

1. He challenged the view that an infinite series was impossible - he maintained that causes could be originating causes and not conserving causes

2. He queried whether there was any necessary link between cause and effect - this was the same point made by Hume much later

3. He did not think it possible to prove that there was only one God nor that the most perfect possible being existed - there is a distinction between 2 possibilities, either God is:

   1. The most perfect being that actually exists - in this case, there is clearly such a being (whatever it may be) but this doesn’t mean its the Christian God, or

   2. The most perfect being that could possibly exist - in this case, there is no way of showing that this possible being is also an actual being

How does Kant reject the cosmological argument?

• he did not consider there way any way of reasoning from finite events to a transcendent cause

• In particular, he rejected the idea of a ‘necessarily existing being’, saying this was nonsense - the only things that are necessary are propositions where truth rests on linguistic convention (on the way words are used) eg. ‘All spinsters are female’ is true because of the way we use words and the definition we give to spinsters

What is Martin Lee’s rejection of Aquinas’ cosmological argument, and how would Aquinas reply to that?

• Lee considers that the cosmological argument rests on a confusion as either God is something or nothing

  • If God is something, we can ask what caused God

  • If God is nothing, then nothing cannot be a cause of the universe

• He essentially rejects the very idea of a self-explanatory, necessary ‘something’

• Aquinas: He would claim that God is neither something nor nothing, he is in a category of his own

  • The question, however, is how such a category can be established - he could be accused of inventing this unique category in order to stop the regress of explanation

Explain the argument that claims that infinite regress is logically possible

• ‘…it is impossible to imagine infinite regress (but) it is not impossible to conceive it.’ - William Temple

• Even if we cannot imagine something (infinity), we can understand the concept

• Mathematicians do this all the time with multi-dimensional geometry, so we can do this with existence

What are the 2 parts of these arguments?

1. Whether the universe needs an explanation - the most the argument itself could arrive at is a positive answer to this question and then to claim that the universe does, indeed, have an explanation

2. The identification of this cause with the God of Christianity, Islam, Judaism - a further argument is needed to establish this, as some hold that the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, the de re necessary being is not personal enough to be the same as the ‘Thou’ of religious belief (is this a separate issue?)

What are some general strengths of the cosmological argument?

• Saying the universe has always existed is not a sufficient reason to explain its existence.

• Science supports a beginning to the universe. The big bang theory suggests that the universe is not infinite.

• As we are constantly adding events to time, time cannot be infinite as you cannot add to infinity.

• Copleston would argue that there must be a first cause to explain the existence of the universe.

• Cause and effect is a recognised scientific principle

• This ancient argument uses rationality to support its claim

• This is part of the cumulative case set of arguments for the existence of God, and together they are strong evidence

• Science has not yet come up with a better explanation.

• It rejects infinite regress as an insufficient reason - If we reject infinite regress then there must be cause and a reason and there is therefore ‘sufficient reason’ to suppose that where once there was nothing there is now something and there must be reason for the fact of its existence (Leibniz)

• ‘Nothing can come from nothing’ said Aristotle– how else did the chain come into existence unless it was caused by something outside.

• Copleston rejected the idea of infinite regress on the basis that an infinite chain could only ever consist of contingent beings which could never have brought about their own existence. But if the explanation for the universe’ existence cannot be found within the universe it is logical to look outside for the cause.

• Copleston’s answer to Russell was that partial explanations are unsatisfactory and that an adequate explanation is one to which nothing further can be added therefore the idea that the universe ‘just is’ is insufficient. And God is the complete explanation.

• Because if God is self-causing, he does not need an explanation.

• If God is as Anselm said, ‘that than which no greater can be conceived’ then that would make him a necessary being, and could be the cause of the universe.

• It is a logical argument – we see order, cause and effect all around us.

• Does explain why it has this order and why beauty exists.

• Swinburne considered God the simplest explanation. ‘There could, in this respect, be no simpler explanation than one which postulated only one cause.

What are some general weaknesses of the cosmological argument?

• The cosmological argument is a fallacy of composition because it assumes that just because each part of the universe is caused it does not mean that the universe as a whole was caused.

• Even if we accept that there is an uncaused cause, must this be the God of Christianity? Could it not simply be the big bang, a scientific, not a religious, event?

• Saying the universe has always existed is not a sufficient reason to explain its existence

• Steady state theory (proposes the universe has no beginning or end) is a challenge to the cosmological argument as it rejects the idea of a beginning to the universe. This theory provides a scientific explanation that would undermine the cosmological argument.

• Aquinas argues that all things have a cause, but that God does not. This is a direct contradiction of his own argument. Why is God the exception to the rule? Why exempt God from causation?

• There may be more than cause or the cause may not be the God of classical theism

• Weak reasoning: the fact that it is both a posteriori and inductive makes it weak. Based on the evidence available, the conclusion is not necessarily reliable. Offering a ‘mythological explanation’, Dawkins suggests, is intellectually degrading and a leap of a conclusion.

• Depends on the idea that God is a necessary being. Just because something does exist does not mean that it must!

• Why look outside the universe for a cause? (Hume)

• Also, Russell: ‘the universe just is – brute fact.’ 

• Hume suggested that maybe cause and effect are just the way we see things and not necessarily linked.

• The argument, Hume claims, begins with something familiar to us and then goes on to makes claims about things outside of our experience