The Cosmological Argument - Quotes

Question 1

Third Way

Answer 1

‘taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus’

things in nature are ‘found to be generated, and to corrupt’

‘there must exist something the existence of which is necessary’

‘it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things’

‘some beings [have] of itself its own necessity’

• Summa Theologica

Question 2

Fallacy of Composition

Answer 2

‘All the bricks in the wall are small, so the wall is small’
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• ‘twenty particles of matter’

Question 3

Hume’s criticisms

Answer 3

‘Why mat not the material universe be the necessarily existent Being…?’
- Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

‘Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent’
- Dialogues

‘The words, therefore, necessary existence, have no meaning’
- Dialogues

it would be ‘unreasonable’ to ask about the cause of the whole ‘twenty particles of matter’ if the causes of each individual part were to be shown
- Dialogues

Question 4

First Way

Answer 4

‘whatever is in motion is put in motion by another’
- Summa Theologica

Question 5

Second Way

Answer 5

‘there is no case known… in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself’
- Summa Theologica

Question 6

Third Way Latin phrases

Answer 6

contingent beings ‘quandoque non est’ (sometime is not)

‘ex nihilo, nihil fit’ - from nothing, nothing comes

at one point ‘nihil fuit in rebus’ (there was nothing in existence)

‘generabilia et corruptibilia’

‘omne corruptibile quandoque corrumpetur’ (everything perishable will perish at some time)