1A Inductive - Cosmological

Question 1

Who was St Thomas Aquinas?

Answer 1

• A philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism.

Question 2

What was Aquinas’ book called? Who was it aimed for?

Answer 2

• Summa Theologiae

* Believers/theology students

Question 3

What did Aquinas believe it was necessary to find out?

Answer 3

• How Aristotelian and Christian thought could be compatible
• How faith and reason could work together so that people did not have to depend on doctrine (faith seeking understanding)

Question 4

Out of revelation and human reason, which did Aquinas believe was stronger and why?

Answer 4

• Revelation = stronger ∵ humans can make mistakes

Question 5

What is Aquinas’ First Way also known as?

Answer 5

• The Unmoved Mover

Question 6

Summarise Aquinas’ first way.

Answer 6

• Everything = in a state of motion (changing state)
• “Whatever is in motion is put in motion by another”
• The change in motion can only happen if something that possessed a state of actuality acted on that in a state of potentiality
• If you trace the sequence back, there must be a starting point ∵ not infinite
• The starting point must be outside the universe ∵ must not have been moved by anything else
• Aristotle: “Prime Mover”; Aquinas: “Unmoved Mover”
• “That which all men call God”

Question 7

How did Aquinas define motion?

Answer 7

• “the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality”

Question 8

What analogy did Aquinas use for his first way?

Answer 8

• Wood
• A piece of cold wood has the potentiality to change state to hot if it is actualised by a first mover (e.g. another piece of wood on fire”

Question 9

When referring to the efficient cause in Aquinas’ second way, what kind of series is he talking about?

Answer 9

• A hierarchical, not a temporal series

Question 10

What are Aquinas’ three stages of cause?

Answer 10

1) First (efficient) cause
2) Intermediate cause
3) Ultimate cause

Question 11

What is Aquinas’ Second Way also known as?

Answer 11

• The Uncaused Causer

Question 12

Summarise Aquinas’ second way.

Answer 12

• The chain of intermediate causes cannot logically stretch back infinitely ∴ the first causer must be uncaused
• “There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which the thing is founf to be the efficient cause of itself”

Question 13

What example is often used to explain Aquinas’ Second Way?

Answer 13

• Dominoes
• They do not fall on their own as they need another domino to cause them to fall
• The first domino needed to be pushed

Question 14

What does contingent mean?

Answer 14

• Dependent on something else

Question 15

In what two ways is everything in the world contingent?

Answer 15

1) Dependent on something else for their existence

2) Dependent on something else for the continuation of their existence

Question 16

Summarise Aquinas’ third way.

Answer 16

• If there was a time when there were no contingent being, no contingent beings would exist today, as contingent beings cannot come ex nihilo
∵ must be a necessary being that is not dependent on its creation
• “some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity”
• “This all men speak of as God”
• God was not caused and does not depend on anything to exist.

Question 17

What did Aquinas note about his cosmological argument?

Answer 17

• The most that the cosmological argument can do is prove that G exists, not that He = God of Classical Theism

Question 18

Who were the Muslim thinkers strongly connected with the Kalam cosmological argument?

Answer 18

• al-Kindi (9th C)

* al-Ghazali (11th C)

Question 19

What did William Lane Craig do?

Answer 19

• Defended and developed the Kalam argument

Question 20

What are the four stages of Craig’s argument?

Answer 20

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence
2) The universe began to exist
3) ∴ the universe has a cause of its existence
4) Since no scientific explanation can provide an account of the cause of the universe, the cause must be a personal creator God

Question 21

What is the first part of Craig’s argument?

Answer 21

• He defends his second point (the universe began to exist) by rejecting infinites
• The present cannot exist in an actual infinite universe ∵ successive additions cannot be added to an actual infinite
• If the universe ≠ actual infinite ∴ cannot be potential infinite either
• The universe must have a cause ∴ must have been a time when it did not exist
• Something must have made the choice to create the universe, which must be outside space/time

Question 22

What example did Craig use to illustrate the nonsensical nature of the universe existing infinitely?

Answer 22

• A library
• Imagine a library w/ an infinite no. of books
• Suppose it contains an infinite no. of red books and an infinite no. of black books (for every red there is a black)
• The library ∴ contains as many red books as the total books AND as many red books as black books combined
• This = absurd ∵ the subset (red OR black) cannot equal the entire set (red AND black)
∴ actual infinites cannot exist

Question 23

What is the second part of Craig’s argument?

Answer 23

• Personal creator
• If the universe had a begininning, it was either caused (the choice was made to cause it) or uncaused (it was natural)
• The Kalam arg. states that the rules of nature did not exist before the beginning of the universe ∴ cannot be natural
∴ “if the universe began to exist, and it the universe is caused, then the cause of the universe must be a personal being who freely chooses to create the world”
• The cause cannot be impersonal ∵ the cause must be in a state of quiescence or activity
• Since it is the cause of spatiotemporal, physical reality, it must be a timeless, immaterial being of immense power