Cosmological Arguement

Question 1

Why is it also known as the first cause arguement?

Answer 1

Because it claims that God is the first cause of the universe

Question 2

How was the cosmological arguement first proposed?

Answer 2

It made up the first three of Aquinas’ five ways

Question 3

What three different parts is the arguement split into?

Answer 3

The arguement from contigency, motion and necessity

Question 4

What type of arguement will a cosmological arguement always be?

Answer 4

A posteriori, but they can vary between inductive and deductive forms

Question 5

Name to scholars who support the Kalam cosmological arguement

Answer 5

Liebnez and Copleston

Question 6

List three scholars who have criticised the cosmological arguement

Answer 6

Russell, Kant and Hume

Question 7

Explain the idea of a first cause

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Explain the idea of contingent existence

Answer 8

Describes a being which depends upon something else for its existence and can be conceived of as not existing

Question 9

Explain the idea of necessary existence

Answer 9

Describes a being which cannot be thought of as not existing and was not brought into being by anything else

Question 10

What is a brute fact?

Answer 10

Something that cannot be explained or has no cause

Question 11

What is a posteriori

Answer 11

A form of reasoning based on empirical evidence and experience

Question 12

What type of existence does the world and everything in it have according to the arguement?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

What type of existence does god have according to the arguement?

Answer 13

Necessary

Question 14

Why do supporters of the arguement dispute the idea that the universe just exists and that is all there is to it?

Answer 14

Because this would make it a brute fact

Question 15

Why is it a posteriori?

Answer 15

Because it draws on the evidence available to us in the world, namely that the world exists

Question 16

Why did Aquinas argue that effects cannot be explained purely by their cause?

Answer 16

Because this would cause infinite regress, and this is logically impossible

Question 17

What is an infinite regress?

Answer 17

A chain of cause and effect that continues forever

Question 18

What name is given to Aquinas’ first way?

Answer 18

The arguement from motion

Question 19

Explain Aquinas’ arguement from motion

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What name is given to Aquinas’ second way?

Answer 20

The arguement from efficient cause

Question 21

Explain the arguement from efficient cause

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What name is given to aquinas’ third way?

Answer 22

The arguement from contingency and necessity

Question 23

Explain the arguement from contingency and necessity

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What is the Kalam arguement an example of?

Answer 24

A causal arguement form of the cosmological arguement

Question 25

Set out the five premises and conclusion of the kalam arguement

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

How does the kalam cosmological arguement differ from Aquinas’ cosmological arguements?

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Explain Lane Craig’s kalam cosmological arguement

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Why does Lane Craig reject the big bang as a sufficient explanation for why the universe exists?

Answer 28

Because science cannot explain why the big bang happened

Question 29

Explain Leibinz’s version of the kalam cosmological arguement

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Explain Copleston’s version of the cosmological arguement

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Why does Hume reject the notion of necessary existence?

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Explain Hume’s arguement that it is not analytically true that every effect has a cause

Answer 32

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

Question 33

What is Hume’s problem with the way the cosmological arguemennt attributes necessary existence?

Answer 33

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

Question 34

How does Hume draw upon the fallacy of composition to discredit the cosmological arguement?

Answer 34

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

Question 35

On what two grounds does Russel reject the cosmological arguement?

Answer 35

• 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

Question 36

What is an analytic statement?

Answer 36

One where the predicate and the subject mean the same thing, making it true by definition. All tautologies are analytic statements

Question 37

In what three ways did Russell challenge the cosmological arguement in his radio debate with Copleston?

Answer 37

• 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.

Question 38

What analogy does Russell use to prove his idea that a partial explanation of the universe is sufficient?

Answer 38

‘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

Question 39

Why does Russell disagree with unconditionally rejecting the idea of infinite regress?

Answer 39

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’

Question 40

Why does Kant reject the cosmological arguement on the grounds that it is a posteriori?

Answer 40

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

Question 41

What lead Kant to believe that the cosmological arguement was incorrect?

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Why does Kant reject the idea of necessary existence?

Answer 42

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

Question 43

What is the flaw in Aquinas’ claim that something cannot make something hot without being hot itself to back up his arguement from contigency?

Answer 43

We can make things hot today with electricity, which is not itself hot, undermining the claim

Question 44

Why do many see the conclusion Aquinas makes as a result of his cosmological arguement as an inductive leap?

Answer 44

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

Question 45

Define inductive reasoning

Answer 45

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

Question 46

Define deductive reasoning

Answer 46

If we accept the premises then we must accept that the conclusion is true too. The conclusion is the logical result of the premise

Question 47

Why is the cosmolgical arguement inductive?

Answer 47

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

Question 48

What is the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning?

Answer 48

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

Question 49

What does the cosmolgical arguement try to prove?

Answer 49

That God is the best answer to the question about where the universe came from

Question 50

Why do atheists deny that God is the best answer to the question of where the universe came from?

Answer 50

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

Question 51

Who proposed the first recorded cosmological arguement?

Answer 51

Aristotle

Question 52

Explain the Aristotelean cosmological arguement

Answer 52

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

Question 53

What did Aristotle beleive about the prime mover?

Answer 53

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

Question 54

Explain Aristotle’s idea that everything that exists, has exited or will exist has 4 causes

Answer 54

• 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

Question 55

How does Aristotle use the 4 causes to try and prove the existence of God?

Answer 55

Science cannot explain what the final cause of the universe is - and Aristotle suggests that this is God

Question 56

Who was the Kalam Cosmological arguement originally put forward by?

Answer 56

12th century Muslim philosopher al-Ghazali

Question 57

What Greek influence on Islam did al Ghazali dislike?

Answer 57

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

Question 58

How does Ghazali use his beliefs about the finitude of the universe as a springboard to prove that God exits?

Answer 58

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

Question 59

Give a quote from al-Ghazali that sums up his kalam cosmolgical arguement

Answer 59

‘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

Question 60

Is the Kalam Cosmological arguement deductive or inductive?

Answer 60

It is inductive because if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true necessarily