Cosmological Argument

Aquinas’ First Way - Motion and Change

P1 - Everything is potentially changing or moving (e.g. an acorn can turn into an oak)

P2 - Whatever is changing or moving is changed by something actual (e.g. a stick is potentially on fire and only burns when a flame is applied to it)

P3 - An infinite regress (going back in time) of movers or changers is impossible, because something must have started it off 

C - Therefore there must be an Unmoved Mover - something which moves everything else without itself being moved by something. This is God 

 

Aquinas’ Second Way - Cause

P1 - Everything has a cause  

P2 - Nothing can cause itself, because to do so it would have to exist before it existed 

P3 - Therefore everything is caused by something else 

P4 - An infinite regress of cause is impossible, because something must have started it off 

C - Therefore there must be an Uncaused Cause, or First Cause, which is eternal and itself has no cause . This is God 

Third Way - Necessity and Contingency

P1 - Everything we can point to is dependant upon factors beyond itself and is thus contingent (it can possibly not exist)

P2 - The presence of each thing can only be explained by reference to those factors which themselves depend on other factors 

P3 - These factors demand an explanations in the form of a necessary being (God) 

P4 - The very nature of things in the universe demands that God exists necessarily and not contingently (God must be other to everything else) 

C - Therefore there must be a Necessary Being who is God for if God did not exist, then nothing would exist 

OR

P1 - Everything can 'be' or 'not be' 

P2 - If this is so, given infinite time, at some time everything would not be 

P3 - If there was once nothing, nothing could come from it (rejects creation ex nihlio) 

C - Therefore something must necessarily exist (this is not God) 

 OR

P1 - Everything necessarily must be caused or uncaused 

P2 - The series of necessary things cannot go on to infinity as there would then be no explanation for the series (rejects infinite regress) 

P3 - Therefore, there must be some Being 'having of itself its own necessity' 

C - This is what everyone calls God 

Leibniz - Sufficient Reason

• The universe does not contain within itself a complete explanation for its own existence 

• Analogy: Chain of Geometry Books - each one explained as a copy of the one before (infinite causal series) 

• 'Sufficient reason' can only be found outside the chain (the universe) 

 

• Most thing exist contingently - are caused by something else 

• God needs to be in his own category - he exists necessarily 

• Numbers also exist necessarily - it's impossible for them not to exist (though they can't have existed before space and time) 

• Answer for universe must necessarily exist outside of the universe 

 

• P1 - Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its nature, or in an external case 

• P2 - if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that must be God 

• P3 - The universe exists 

• C - god must be the cause of the universe 

 

Advantages

• Support from the causal principle - Every event must have a cause. It seems impossible for an event to happen without a cause, otherwise something could come from nothing, which is absurd. Ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing) is an idea going back to ancient Greek Philosophers like Parmenides. So, everything that begins to exist and every contingent being must have a cause.

• Not defeated by the possibility of an infinite temporal series - Such a series would still either:

  • Be contingent and thus still require a God to create it (Leibniz & Aquinas’ 3^rd way)

  • Contain merely secondary causes and thus require a primary cause (Aquinas’ 1^st & 2^nd ways)

  Aquinas & Leibniz accept the possibility of an infinite regress of beings and/or time. They argue that what’s really impossible is an infinite regress of explanation. Scientific hypothesis about the possibility of the universe stretching back forever does not undermine their argument.  

• Contingency - Conclusions of arguments from contingency achieve more than arguments from causation. They can establish God’s necessity, meaning inability to cease existing, which is a key element of Christian theology. Aquinas understands necessity to mean the inability to cease existing, which fits with the concept of omnipotence. Another strength is their seeking of an ultimate explanation rather than only a first cause. This focus more fundamentally on the nature of things.

Counter-arguments

• Hume – we have no experience of universes being made, so we cannot claim to know what caused this one.

• It may be that an infinite regress is possible. This relates to the oscillating universe hypothesis - our universe alternates between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch, ours can be the first of many possible universes).

• It may be that the universe itself is necessary.

• Why assume that the necessary thing is a being, or even a being called God?

• Fallacy of composition - Hume argues that you cannot move from saying individual elements of the universe require an explanation to the whole universe requires one.

  • This is to commit the fallacy of composition. This is to assume that just because all the individual members of a group of things have a certain property, the group itself has that property.

  • For instance, just because all the tiles on a floor are square, this does not mean that the whole floor has to be square – it could be many other shapes.

  • But the fallacy of composition is not formal and does not always hold.

    • If you substitute colour for shape in the floor tile example, the fallacy doesn’t work (if every floor tile is red, then the whole floor WILL be red).

  • So the question is whether contingency is more like shape or colour in the floor tile analogy. It is difficult to see, if everything in the universe is dependent on other things for existence, how the universe as a whole could not also be dependent on something else for existence.

  • “Every man who exists has a mother, and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother, but obviously the human race hasn’t a mother — that’s a different logical sphere.” – Bertram Russell

• Reality of the ‘whole’ - Hume questions the reality of the ‘whole’ that people refer to, saying that ‘whole’ things are usually created by “arbitrary acts of the mind” (e.g. When we unite several counties into one kingdom, this has no influence on the nature of things. It is simply a human perception)

• CausationTo base an argument on causation is foolish as we can never be sure that causation is anything other than a psychological effect.

• In fact, it is more foolish in the case of the universe, because as we lack past experience of formation of universes, we haven’t even got anything to base our ‘habit of mind’ on.

• Existential propositions - Any being that exists can also not exist, and there is no contradiction implied in conceiving its non-existence. But this is exactly what would have to be the case if its existence were necessary.

• So the term ‘necessary being’ makes no sense a posteriori – any being claimed to exist may or may not exist.

• In Hume’s own words: “all existential propositions are synthetic.”

• Like causes produce like effects - Hume says that like causes produce like effects.

  • For example, parent rabbits produce baby rabbits.

  • So as many things in the universe seem to be the offspring of two parents, why should we assume that there is one male ‘parent’ of the universe – wouldn’t it make more sense to postulate a male and female creator God?

• No cause - Hume says that it is not inconceivable that the world had no cause or just always existed.

  • He says “it is neither intuitively nor demonstratively certain” that every object that begins to exist owes its existence to a cause.

  • Bertram Russell says the existence of the world is a “brute fact”