Cosmological arguments

Cosmological arguments attempt t show that god is the creator of the universe, some focusing on God as a necessary being. They don’t show that God has ‘all’ of the omni perfections nor that God is personal. Therefore, it can be argued that some of the arguments don’t prove that the creator has to be ‘God’ specifically

Arguments from causation

Descartes: argument based on his continuing existence

Type of argument: atemporal causation, a priori deductive, conclusion is certain

Descartes argues for the existence of God by claiming that God must be what explains his continued existence by eliminating all other possibilities

Part one: If I cause my own existence, I’d give myself all perfections but I don’t have all perfections.

C: I am not the cause of my own existence

Part two: I happen to exist now but that doesn’t mean that I have to continue existing and my existence is not uncaused. Therefore, some cause is needed to keep me in existence. I don’t have the power to cause my continued existence through time

C: I depend on something else to continue to exist

Part three: I am a thinking being with an idea of God. causal adequacy principle- there must be as much reality in the cause as the effect. Therefore, what causes my existence must be a thinking being and have an idea of God. My parents might be the cause of me being born, but they don’t sustain my existence and there also cannot be an infinite sequence of causes. Therefore, some cause must be the cause of its own existence. What is the cause of its own existence is God

C: God exists

Aquinas’ first way: motion

Type of argument: temporal causation, a posteriori inductive, conclusion is probable

  • Some things in the world undergo change/ are in motion

  • To move from one state to another, all things require something actual to move them from their state of potentiality

  • Things cannot move themselves from a state of potential to actual. This means everything requires something else to move it. But you must have a first mover that is not moved itself to cause the movement of other things. If you did not, there would be no explanation for the movement of the things which are currently in motion because you cannot keep going back forever in the chain of movement.

  • The first cause of change is God

  • C: God exists

Rowe’s objection

Rowe challenges the claim that ‘something potential can only be made actual by something that is already actual’

He uses the example of a plant dying because of a fungus which is full of life

This undermines Aquinas’ argument by illustrating that it isn’t necessary that ‘something potential can only be made actual by something that is already actual’

Aquinas’ second way: atemporal causation

Type of argument: atemporal causation, a posteriori inductive, conclusion is probable

basically the same as the argument from motion, except it talks about a first cause rather than a first mover

  • All things are caused by other things.

  • Nothing can be the cause of itself.

  • You cannot keep going back in the series of causes forever, or you would have no things now – if there was no initial cause, there could not be other causes.

  • There must be a first cause, itself uncaused, which began the causes.

  • God is the first cause