Cosmological argument

Question 1

Cosmological definition

Answer 1

Starts with observation about the way the universe works and then from that tries to explain why the universe exists.

Question 2

Aquinas’ first way

Answer 2

• The unmoved mover.
• Nothing can move on it’s own but can’t go back to infinity otherwise nothing would have moved at all.
• There must be a first/unmoved mover which is God.

Question 3

Aquinas’ second way

Answer 3

• The uncaused causer.
• Everything we observe is caused by something else.
• Nothing can be it’s own efficient cause otherwise we go back to infinity.
• The uncaused causer is therefore God.

Question 4

Aquinas’ third way

Answer 4

• Contingency and necessity.
• There must be a being which has it’s own necessity (it’s existence can only be explained by itself) which causes other beings.
• This being is God.

Question 5

Hume necessary beings

Answer 5

1. It is wrong to say that a necessary being must exist as a being that exists must also be able to not exist.
2. However, the masked man fallacy can prove how we can think of something that is impossible.
3. However, a priori reasoning can still not be used to prove that something exists.

Question 6

Bertrand Russel

Answer 6

Criticises the idea of their being a necessary being because he questions whether a being can be necessary in the same way a proposition is.

Question 7

Hume causal principle

Answer 7

1. Hume argues that the causal principle is not true, there is nothing incoherent about an event or thing existing without a cause.
2. However, the causal principle is justified through experience.
3. However, all evidence we have for the causal principle comes from our observation of change within the universe itself. None of this says anything about how the universe itself came to exist.

Question 8

Hume infinite regression

Answer 8

1. If there could be an infinite regression of objects then the cosmological argument fails. For something to be impossible it must be self contradictory but there is nothing self contradictory about an infinite regression.
2. However, Craig’s library example.
3. However, this argument fails because it involves a finite number of objects.

Question 9

Aquinas infinity

Answer 9

1. Aquinas argues that there cannot be an infinite amount of time because that means an infinite amount of time will have already passed and an infinite amount of time is still to come.
2. However, theories such as the Big Bang theory suggest that that could have been the start of time in our universe. We know very little about how time works, and we would be wrong to make assumptions about it.

Question 10

Craig infinity library example

Answer 10

If you had a library with an infinite number of books half of which were red and half of which were blue and you removed all the blue books then you would have half an infinity of books left. Infinity cannot exist.

Question 11

Elizabeth Anscombe

Answer 11

Just because we can imagine something existing without a cause it doesn’t mean that it is logically possible.

Question 12

Coppleston

Answer 12

Just because you can imagine x happening without y happening it doesn’t mean that it is possible.

Question 13

Dorothy Emmett

Answer 13

It is incoherent to say that God is the first cause as that is to say that he is a part of time but he is timeless.

Question 14

Leibniz

Answer 14

Best of all worlds.