Dissecting Clarke's Cosmological Argument

In my understanding of the Cosmological Argument I would have to say that I agree the most with Clarke’s explanation. Not only is it short and sweet but it almost takes Aquinas’ argument and folds it up and puts it in its pocket. I think believe it is much clearer for anyone to see and admit that everything that happens in this world is connected and caused by previous events and decisions. Due to this anyone can go back to the story of Adam and Eve and ask themselves the question of what caused these two? It is at this point where one is forced to admit that there is an “unmoved mover”, an independent being, and an uncaused cause who is called God.

Throughout many centuries philosophers have argued over the existence of God. In today’s society many people tend to hesitate in believing in a God because of the new scientific discoveries. For example, in the mid 1990s scientists built the Hubble telescope which revealed that there were billions of galaxies in our universe, this discovery led some people to question how can one divine being create so much and yet have a personal connection with everyone in the world. Which, in result, may take some scientific explanation to strengthen one’s belief in God, but for those who believe there is a benevolent God they do not need science to show proof that he exists because of their morals and beliefs they have been raised to follow. In this paper I will prove that God does exist by explaining the ontological, cosmological, and design argument.

The argument also indulges in an infinite regression. It assumes that a transcendent god created the entire universe. However, it fails to account for what created the god. As stated in the lecture slides, a committee of lesser beings may have created the god, but that begs the question about who created the committee. One could object to this idea and believe that god has always existed, transcending time and reality itself. Once again, however, this logic is just as applicable to the universe. The universe is as capable of existing forever as a god is.

Parmenides of Elea once presented the expression ex nihilo nihil fit, which translates to nothing comes from nothing for one of his many theses. The Cosmological Argument, an argument of the posteriori category, meaning that it requires data based on past experiences, argues for the existence of God with this type of expression at its core. By attempting to prove how the universe must be influenced by an independent being that has godlike qualities, cosmological arguments suggest that it is rational to believe in an omnipotent being and its accountability of creating the universe.

The argument discussed is one that has an unending list of contingent beings, all of which need a cause for existence. According to the article, McCloskey assumes that the argument calls for an uncaused cause to start an infinite number of contingent beings. McCloskey believes that each contingent being simply exists with an infinite number of causes that eventually lead back to a case of chance. In “Philosophy of Religion” by Stephen Evans, Evans refers to this way of thinking as a “brute fact.” According to Evans, by claiming this stance would turn the partial argument into a whole argument and concurrently, “this will require the defender of the argument to claim that the contingency of the whole of the universe can validly be inferred from the contingency of all its parts.” Where McCloskey’s ignorance further takes a violent curve against acquiring knowledge about the beginning of the universe connects to his argument is when he said “This means that the first cause must be explained as being a necessarily existing being, one who cannot exist.” What he is alluding to, and is also the focal point of his disapproval of theism, is that humans do not have the right to claim that a being created the universe. If an atheist can claim that there is no such existence of God, then why is it that a theist cannot claim the existence of a God?

Frederick Copleston was a priest, and historian of philosophy who supported Aquinas’ rejection of infinite regress. Copleston reformulated the argument by concentrating on contingency, which he discussed in depth during a radio debate with Bertrand Russell in 1947. Copleston, like Aquinas, argued that there are things in the universe which are contingent, for example, us – we would not have existed if our parents had not met. All things in the world are similar to this, nothing in the world is self-explanatory, and everything depends on something else for its existence. Therefore, we are forced to search for an external explanation. The explanation must lead us to a cause which is self explanatory, i.e. one which contains within itself, the reason for its own existence – a necessary being. The conclusion must be God. Copleston argues that if we don’t accept the existence of an ‘unmoved mover’, like Aquinas suggested, there is no explanation for the universe at all. Copleston believes the universe is gratuitous without a first cause, because without an explanation, nothing has meaning – “Everything is gratuitous. This garden, this city, and myself; when you suddenly realise it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift… that’s nausea”.

This argument states that everything in this world has certain potentials for change. It also states that, for these potentials to be met, another object, that already exists, must set off said potential. That object, in turn, would have to have been put in flux by something else, and so on and so forth. All of this ultimately leads to one object which started all this change, that one object being God.

(i) Examine the view that the cosmological argument provides an explanation for the world and is a trustworthy basis for belief in the existence of God. (21)

The first step of the argument outlines the need for “ an adequate explanation of the unity of the system as whole, how each of the parts is correlated with the others to from reciprocal laws, and then connected with the whole (Clarke 224).” The universe is a complex system that demonstrates interacting parts whose actions are dependent on each other. The cause of the whole system must have come before all these parts and is independent of the system entirely. After considering, the complexity of manipulating interacting elements in such a vast system, the second step argues, “such a cause can only be one possessing intelligence (Clarke 225).” Organizing multiple elements to work together cohesively and adhere uniformly to the same set of laws not only on the individual level but also on the scale of the universe would require the perspective of a guiding agent. Clarke argues this guiding agent is God. However, biologists interpret evolution as the universe’s guiding agent. Clarke embraces evolution but he notices it’s limitation as a great play of chance over time. There must be a stable set of background laws to lay the foundation for evolution to play out. The intelligible designer created the stable guiding rules and then allowed evolution to shot chance into life, making it unpredictable. Clarke views God as the intelligent designer that brought unity to the

SWA4: Is the cosmological argument commonsensical? Samuel Clarke and Baron D’Holbach have very different views when it comes to an infinite being. D’Holbach is an atheist who says that believing in a good is not reasonable or innate. Further, he says religion makes people give their attention to something they can never comprehend or experience. Clarke on the other hand believe that there has to have been a being that has exited in all of eternity without a cause a being that just exist because of absolute necessity.

In this paper, I am going to present an objection to the “divine argument” explained above. An obvious objection to this argument is that it begs the question of its readers, as it forces them to accept the fact that God exists. If one does not accept this fact, then the entire argument is rendered unusable. However, this objection is, quite frankly, boring, and so I shall attempt to give a more nuanced objection. I believe that line 3, which discusses how nobody can change the past, is actually false. Additionally, the inference from premise 7 to the conclusion is false, which renders the argument invalid.

Likewise that since the universe has a beginning that there must be a cause to its existence and that cause is God. Dr. Craig has many people that oppose his view, be he has made many supporting statements, articles, and books to help back his argument. He continues to support and teach his opinions in the Kalam cosmological

David Hume in his work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, reveals the reasoning for the cosmological argument through the character of Demea. Fundamentally, the main concept of the premises is the notion of causality. Demea argues that everything must have a cause since it is not possible for anything to produce itself. Therefore, in the nature of the universe, we either regress infinitely or conclude to an ultimate first cause. He further asserts that given the two options there must be an absolute self-caused being, or God. Even though Demea argues for the necessity of a creator, he does not clarify the source of God, implying that the alleged deity was the ultimate cause creating itself from nothing, which contradicts his own premise of causality and consequently resulting in an endless cycle.

Such are the problems secular cosmologists have in trying to make their big bang models work, they end up making desperate appeals to the most unscientific notions imaginable. For example, in December 2014, top cosmologist Lee Smolin published a book suggesting that the only way to solve the big bang’s many scientific problems is to argue that the laws of physics were different in the past. (Smolin, L. & Unver, R.M., The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014.) So, when the facts don’t fit their creation story, secular scientists must turn to alternative ‘scientific laws’ drawn from their imaginations.”

McCloskey nevertheless attends to specific claims presented in each of the more popular proofs for God’s existence. Regarding the Cosmological Proof, he says, the existence of the world does not entitle one to hold that, since the world consists of an