AS Level cosmological Argument 1

Cosmological Argument 2013

Don’t forget to define it first – use premises and conclusion

1          Summary of the key concepts:

Aquinas 3 of his 5 ways:

• Unmoved mover – everything that moves is  moved by something:
• Clock / pendulum
• Newton’s cradle
• And expanding universe        
• Uncaused cause – everything which is caused is caused by something
• Possibility and necessity
• If the universe didn’t exist at some stage in the past then two states equally possible:  existence and non-existence;
• For something then to come into existence it needed to be willed by something;
• For us that’s like the decision between a holiday in Wales and in Tunisia; or most of the time willing a baby into existence requires a deliberate act of love and commitment!
• The universe exists therefore something had to will it into existence – that something is God.
• Nothing is responsible for its own existence; if not you then your parents…logically then at the start something outside the universe – God.
• Therefore if the condition of existence is only a possibility there must be a necessary being who is not like us contingent upon others for existence, but outside of it and whose existence is necessary for all others to occur.
• So Aquinas said God is that necessity: a necessary Being; it is impossible for God not to exist.
• Or as Copleston put it, He is “a being that must and cannot not exist.”
• Swinburne likewise agreed: if there is a starting point to time then something caused time and space to exist outside of that time and matter – that something is God.

Evidence from the bible comes in the form of God’s description of himself as given to Moses: “I am.” This implies eternally present and existent.

2          Arguments against

Objectors would say if everything has a cause so should God – you are making a special case by exempting him.

            Hume called the conclusion – God- a “leap too far.”

            Russell regarded the analogy as stretched as if you said well each of us has a mother then the whole human race has a mother. It is an error of degree.

What’s wrong with infinite regress; negative numbers go back infinitely.

            Hume also said that even if there had to be a first cause why did it have to be God.

3          Leibniz and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

            Need for an absolute cause – no need to back beyond it if it sufficiently answers the question; e.g. why did you break his nose? Because he insulted my football skills, because I let a goal in, because I fell over…..because my parents had me! Unnecessary!

Therefore God is sufficient reason no need to go beyond.

4          then there are the arguments in favour of this argument

5          and of course evaluation

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