Cosmological arguments (old).

What are cosmological arguments?

-Try to prove God exists by looking at the design/order in the universe.

-Aquinas’ first 3 ways - motion, causation & contingency.

What are Aquinas’ 3 cosmological arguments?

-Motion.

-Causation.

-Contingency.

What is the unmoved mover argument?

-The ways in which things move/change, must mean something has made that motion take place.

-Everything is both in a state of actuality & potentiality.

-All things that are moved from potentiality to actuality are moved by something else.

-This cannot go on to infinity bc then there wouldn’t be a first mover & nothing would’ve started moving at all.

-The first unmoved mover is God.

What is the uncaused causer argument?

-Everything we observe (an effect) is caused by something else.

-Nothing can be its own efficient cause because it cannot have existed before itself.

-Things that are causes must themselves be casued, otherwise the effect would be taken away.

-We cannot go back to infinity bc it would mean there was no first cause of everything & all later effects/causes wouldn’t have happened.

-Therefore, there must be a first efficient cause that isn’t itself caused.

-The first uncaused causer is God.

What is the contingency & necessity argument?

-Everything in the universe is contingent - it relies on something to be brought into existence .

-In nature there are things that are possible to be & not to be contingent beings.

-These things cannot have always existed because they rely on something for their existence.

-If we trace this back, we get to a point where nothing existed, but then nothing would’ve begun to exist as nothing can come from nothing.

-Therefore there must be a necessary being.

-Perhaps necessary beings could have their necessity from another being.

-Therefore there must be a being that has its own necessity which causes other beings.

This is God.

What are Humes criticisms of the cosmological argument?

-Is it possible to make the jump from what Aquinas observed & the God that christians believe in. The effect cannot immediately point towards a particular cause.

-Causation is a psychological concept & we cannot make links between cause & effect that is beyond our experience. It isn’t necessary to suppose everything has a cause at all.

-We cannot make the jump that just bc everything in the universe has a cause/reason to exist then the entire universe must have a cause/reason to exist. Just bc u can explain the cause of each of a collection of 20 particles of matter, it doesn’t mean you can explain the cause of the group of particles. (fallacy of compostion).

-Why does it have to be God that is necessary: why can’t the universe be necessary?

-Even if we accept the cosmological argument, it only tells us a God created the world, it doesn’t prove he’s involved with his creations/cares for them.

-Cause & effect are simply correlations, it isn’t certain they must occur together.

Humes criticisms of the cosmological argument succeeds.

-Aquinas said there was evidence around us of cause & effect/motion & contingency. Our senses can decieve us. Hume argues our assumptions are merely interpretations of an event. E.G a person who has never seen a bus through observation of ppl sticking their hands out to stop a bus thinks this is what causes a bus to stop.

-Russell argues everything in the universe can be explained by an appeal to smt else in the universe. So the universe is self-coherent & doesn’t need some external explaination for its existence. We should just accept the universe as a bruce fact, it is just there.

-Infinite regress doesn’t have to be impossible as Aquinas claims. Just bc Aquinas finds it difficult to imagine doesn’t mean it’s a factural impossibility. Mackie argues a series of hooks could go on forever, each hook attached to the previous & so on.

-Higgs-Boson particle has been discovered & it’s self-causing.

-Even if we accept the cosmological argument it only tells us a God created the world, it doesn’t prove this God is involved with his creations & cares for them.

-Aquinas makes a leap in logic with his 3rd way. Just bc things within the universe are contingent, it doesn’t mean the universe is also contingent. This is fallacy of composition. The universe could’ve always existed & so have necessary existence.

-We have seen Hume doesn’t accept we can move from the observations of the world to the idea of a creator who is God. The conclusions of each of Aquinas’ ways seems to move from a very narrow observation to a declaration that the uncaused causer/mover/necessary being is the Christian God. It could be argued it’s an error in logic.

Humes criticisms of the cosmological argument fails.

-Hume argues infinite regress is possible, but it’s impossible to verify bc it cannot be proved or disproved by observation.

-Even recent discoveries of the Higgs-Boson particle that is self-causing don’t explain why the particle was here in the 1st place.

-Some think the cosmological argument proves a loving God created the world in which life could develop & grow bc order came out of the explosion - the big bang.

-Some may say Aquinas is only trying to point to an aspect of God & he isn’t trying to prove all of God’s attributes in such a short part of his work.

-Just because we cannot fully understand God, why should the logic of the arguments be dismissed.

-Is it reasonable to look for a total explaination of all events.

-Modern science suggets there is a definite beginning to the universe.

-A vegetable only grows bc the laws of biology work - where do these laws come from.

-Just bc we have no experience of something, it doesn’t mean our current understanding cannot explain it.

-God doesn’t have to share all the same characteristics as a human designer - e.g God doesn’t have a body.

-The creation of the world is a unique event, why shouldn’t there be a special case such as God to explain it?