Cosmological Arguement Flashcards
Why is it also known as the first cause arguement?
Because it claims that God is the first cause of the universe
How was the cosmological arguement first proposed?
It made up the first three of Aquinas’ five ways
What three different parts is the arguement split into?
The arguement from contigency, motion and necessity
What type of arguement will a cosmological arguement always be?
A posteriori, but they can vary between inductive and deductive forms
Name to scholars who support the Kalam cosmological arguement
Liebnez and Copleston
List three scholars who have criticised the cosmological arguement
Russell, Kant and Hume
Explain the idea of a first cause
Something which can create a chain of cause and effect, without being caused itself. Rooted in Aristotelean thought and is commonly thought to be God
Explain the idea of contingent existence
Describes a being which depends upon something else for its existence and can be conceived of as not existing
Explain the idea of necessary existence
Describes a being which cannot be thought of as not existing and was not brought into being by anything else
What is a brute fact?
Something that cannot be explained or has no cause
What is a posteriori
A form of reasoning based on empirical evidence and experience
What type of existence does the world and everything in it have according to the arguement?
Contingent. It must have been brought into existence by something else at a certain time by something else. It can’t have brought itself into existence, so its existence must be contingent on something else
What type of existence does god have according to the arguement?
Necessary
Why do supporters of the arguement dispute the idea that the universe just exists and that is all there is to it?
Because this would make it a brute fact
Why is it a posteriori?
Because it draws on the evidence available to us in the world, namely that the world exists
Why did Aquinas argue that effects cannot be explained purely by their cause?
Because this would cause infinite regress, and this is logically impossible
What is an infinite regress?
A chain of cause and effect that continues forever
What name is given to Aquinas’ first way?
The arguement from motion
Explain Aquinas’ arguement from motion
There are certain things in the world that are moving. Nothing can move by itself; therefore, there must be a cause of this movement. This cause itself must be in motion, because something without motion cannot create something that has motion. This forms a change of moved and moving. This chain cannot infinitely regress; there must be a first mover that started this chain and this is god
What name is given to Aquinas’ second way?
The arguement from efficient cause
Explain the arguement from efficient cause
Everything has to have an efficient cause, because it is logically impossible for something to bring itself into being. There must be an ultimate efficient cause to explain the existence of the universe. God is a the efficient cause of everything because he is a necessary being that has always existed
What name is given to aquinas’ third way?
The arguement from contingency and necessity
Explain the arguement from contingency and necessity
The world is made up of contingent being. There must be a necessary being responsible for creating these contingent beings - only the existence of a necessary being can explain the contingent beings we see around us. This necessary being is God
What is the Kalam arguement an example of?
A causal arguement form of the cosmological arguement
Set out the five premises and conclusion of the kalam arguement
- The world must have a cause, just like everything else
- The world can’t have been created out of nothing
- The world must have been created at a particular point in time
- The cause of the world must have been something that wasn’t caused itself
- This being must be God
- Therefore God exists
How does the kalam cosmological arguement differ from Aquinas’ cosmological arguements?
The kalam is a causal arguement, whereas Aquinas proposes a contingency arguement. This is because the kalam arguement states that the universe must have had a beginning in time, and it is because of this that there needs to be an explanation. The contingency arguement simply posits that the existence of contingent beings cannot be explained purely by the existence of other contingent beings and that a necessary being is required. Whereas the kalam arguement relies on the causal principle - if cause and effect hold then a causal explanation is required for why the universe exists
Explain Lane Craig’s kalam cosmological arguement
Since everything that exists has a cause of its existence, and since the universe began to exist, we can conclude that the universe has a cause of its existence. He argued that no scientific evidence can provide a sufficient explanation for the cause of the universe, so this cause must be God
Why does Lane Craig reject the big bang as a sufficient explanation for why the universe exists?
Because science cannot explain why the big bang happened
Explain Leibinz’s version of the kalam cosmological arguement
He says that their needs to be an explanation for why the universe exists rather than nothing. He says that this explanation is still necessary even if the universe has always existed. This reason cannot be gained from inside the universe, it must be gained from something inside the universe. He says that merely explaining the efficient cause of parts of the universe is insufficient, there must be an explanation for why the universe exists rather than nothing. Leibinz holds that because contingent beings cannot have purely contingent explanations, this sufficient reason that the universe exists must be God
Explain Copleston’s version of the cosmological arguement
Based on the idea of necessary and contingent existence. He argued that some things within the universe do not provide an explanation for their existence. There needs to be a necessary being to explain their existence, as only necessary beings have a reason for their existence in and of themselves. This necessary being that provides an explanation for the universe is God
Why does Hume reject the notion of necessary existence?
Because it will always be possible for us to conceive of the non-existence of something we formerly thought to exist. He says that the idea of a necessary being is meaningless because we can say that it does not exist without contradiction. This thwarts the contigency cosmological arguement
Explain Hume’s arguement that it is not analytically true that every effect has a cause
It is possible that something did not have a cause and was created out of nothing. Although we have never experienced this, we have never experienced the start of the universe and so cannot make assumptions about what may have happened. He argued that our knowledge of cause and effect are a posterior rather than a priori and so can be applied arbitrarily outside of areas of human experience. This thwarts the kalam cosmological arguement
What is Hume’s problem with the way the cosmological arguemennt attributes necessary existence?
He said that there is no reason the universe itself couldn’t have it and there is no reason why this is attributed solely to God. Even though there is no current evidence that the universe has necessary existence, this could be the case in a way we don’t understand. Hume raises the point that there is as much evidence to suggest that the world is necessary as to suggest that God is; so it is therefore an inductive leap to attribute this necessary existence to God. This thwarts the contigency cosmological arguement
How does Hume draw upon the fallacy of composition to discredit the cosmological arguement?
Just because the component parts of the world follow the laws of cause and effect, this does not mean that the universe does as well. This thwarts the contigency cosmological arguement
On what two grounds does Russel reject the cosmological arguement?
- The logic used in the cosmological arguement means that God must also have had a cause, which undermines the idea of necessary existence
- It is possible that the universe has always existed and therefore does not need to have a cause
What is an analytic statement?
One where the predicate and the subject mean the same thing, making it true by definition. All tautologies are analytic statements
In what three ways did Russell challenge the cosmological arguement in his radio debate with Copleston?
- He says that the existence of God is not analytic and it is not self contradictory to say that he doesn’t exist. This means that there is no such thing as a necessary being
- Argues that a whole explanation of the universe is not necessary and a partial explanation is sufficient
- Says that the universe is simply there as a brute fact and that is all.
What analogy does Russell use to prove his idea that a partial explanation of the universe is sufficient?
‘Every man that exists has a mother, and it seems to me that your arguement is therefore that the human race must have a mother, but obvioulsy the human race doesn’t - as this is a completely different logical sphere
Why does Russell disagree with unconditionally rejecting the idea of infinite regress?
Because he says that there is nothing really to suggest why it cannot exist other than human intuition, describes the idea as a ‘failure of imagination’
Why does Kant reject the cosmological arguement on the grounds that it is a posteriori?
Because this means it relies on empirical evidence and human experience. He argues that such an approach is not appropriate for thinking about God, who is beyond the world of the senses
What lead Kant to believe that the cosmological arguement was incorrect?
He said that it was logically incorrect to make a leap from our perceptions about the existence of the world to making metaphysical claims about the cause of it - as such a claim would require a different kind of proof
Why does Kant reject the idea of necessary existence?
He says that even if God was a necessary being, it would not mean he existed; proving that God is a necessary being is not the same as proving that God exists
What is the flaw in Aquinas’ claim that something cannot make something hot without being hot itself to back up his arguement from contigency?
We can make things hot today with electricity, which is not itself hot, undermining the claim
Why do many see the conclusion Aquinas makes as a result of his cosmological arguement as an inductive leap?
Because the God that the cosmological arguement supposedly proves the existence of is not necessarily the GoCT. It seems to imply a more deist type of God if anything, which is inconsistent with Christian teaching. Aquinas has therefore made an inductive leap by assuming something from the premises that is not necessarily true
Define inductive reasoning
Evidence gathered from sensory experience is used to support the conclusion. We start with human experience and build up our evidence to reach a conclusion
Define deductive reasoning
If we accept the premises then we must accept that the conclusion is true too. The conclusion is the logical result of the premise
Why is the cosmolgical arguement inductive?
Because it depends on what you think is the most probable explanation for the existence of the universe, it does not prove anything absolutely - it depends on what you think is probable
What is the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning?
Inductive reasoning is a bottom up approach, whilst deductive reasoning is top down. Inductive takes you from the specific to the general, while deductive makes inferences from general premises to specific conclusions
What does the cosmolgical arguement try to prove?
That God is the best answer to the question about where the universe came from
Why do atheists deny that God is the best answer to the question of where the universe came from?
They argue that the universe has always been here in one form or another or that it needs to be accepted as a brute fact
Who proposed the first recorded cosmological arguement?
Aristotle
Explain the Aristotelean cosmological arguement
Aristotle believes that all movement depends on there being a mover and that everything in the universe is in a state of flux. Argued that behind every movement there most be a chain of events that brought about the movement that we see. Aristotle’s view of change is eternal. There cannot have been a first change, because something would have happened just before this change that set it off. He went on to argue that this chain of events must lead back to some sort of prime mover
What did Aristotle beleive about the prime mover?
He thought that it was God, He thought this God exists necessarily, meaning it does not depend on anything else for its existence. He never has any potential to change, never begins and ends, and so is eternal
Explain Aristotle’s idea that everything that exists, has exited or will exist has 4 causes
- Material - explaining something by describing what it is made up of
- Formal - explaining something by describing how it is structured
- Efficient - explaining something by describing what happened prior to it
- Final - explaining something in terms of the purpose and plan behind it
How does Aristotle use the 4 causes to try and prove the existence of God?
Science cannot explain what the final cause of the universe is - and Aristotle suggests that this is God
Who was the Kalam Cosmological arguement originally put forward by?
12th century Muslim philosopher al-Ghazali
What Greek influence on Islam did al Ghazali dislike?
The idea that we live in a beginningless universe that flows necessarily out of God. In his book, ‘the incoherence of the philosophers’, he argued that the universe must have a beginning
How does Ghazali use his beliefs about the finitude of the universe as a springboard to prove that God exits?
If the universe had a beginning point in the finite past, then there must have been a transcendent creator that brought it into existence - since nothing exists without a cause
Give a quote from al-Ghazali that sums up his kalam cosmolgical arguement
‘Every being which exists has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore it possesses a cause for its beginning
Is the Kalam Cosmological arguement deductive or inductive?
It is inductive because if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true necessarily
