Explain the Strengths and Weaknesses of Aquinas' Cosmological Argument

St. Thomas Aquinas’s first cosmological argument, the prime mover, defines things in the world as being either in a state of potentiality or in a state of actuality. Those things that are in potentiality are things that have the capability of being reduced to another form. Such as a boy is potentially a man, or tree is potentially a house. Things that are in a state of actuality are things that are currently reaching their potential; such as that boy becoming a man, or that tree becoming that house. Aquinas observed that all things in a state of actuality had to have been put into that state by something that was already in actuality. In thinking about this he concluded that there would have to be an infinite regress of actual things making potential things actual. He concluded that this would be impossible because given that, there would be no first mover. He instead, postulated that there must be a first mover. A being that never had potential but only has existed in a state of infinite actuality. That what we call God.

Comparing Aquinas and Descartes they both in a way have arguments for cause in proving the existence of God. Aquinas in that "nor indeed it is possible, that anything is the efficient cause of itself" (The Second Way, 2) and there needs to be a first cause that is the cause of all

Aquinas’ Cosmological Arguments The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas, is also known as the Third Way. It is the Third of Five ways in Aquinas's masterpiece, "The Summa" (The Five Ways). The five ways are: the unmoved mover, the uncaused causer, possibility and necessity, goodness, truth and nobility and the last way the teleological.

The Cosmological argument asks the question Where did everything come from? For everything we live with today there is a time in history when it did not exist. If it did not exist at some point then it would need to be created by someone else or something else. Therefore, there would have to be something or someone that was existent first and did not need to be created. This someone or something that Saint Thomas Aquinas refers to is

In an attempt to justify the existence of God, Christian Philosopher, St Thomas Aquinas, has developed an argument which derived from his observation of the physical world. He evidently observed that everything in the universe is moving and that which is moving is certain that it must have been moved by something else which has also been moved by something else. However, he realizes that by tracing back who has caused the very first movement, he believes that there must

Aquinas’ argument is contradicted by a previously learned concept called Ockham’s Razor, which focuses on the simplest reasoning without any assumptions. The text from Summa Theologica contradicts this by creating the idea of an eternal God to explain the universe. The simplest idea would be to believe that the universe is eternal itself, rather than creating an exterior being. The idea behind Ockham’s Razor is that the simplest answer is the most easily testable and most likely. Where did the idea of God creating the universe even begin? This concept is far more complex than simply the universe created itself.

Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica represents one of the most famous attempts to prove God's existence. Aquinas wrote at a time in which people began to develop skepticism concerning the existence of God. In this regard, it is instructive to position Aquinas

To what extent does The Cosmological Argument prove the existence of God? There are many different arguments which attempt to help us understand more about the universe. One of these arguments is the Cosmological Argument which is essentially an argument which consists of 8 main arguments; things exist because of a cause, these things do not have to exist but they do, the chain of causes goes back to the beginning of time, time began when the universe was created, there must have been a first cause which is responsible for everything else including the universe, the first cause must have a necessary existence, only God has necessary existence, therefore God is the first cause of the universe's existence. The argument basically puts across

The cosmological argument for the existence of God is based on causation and the world having a beginning. It holds that everything that exists has a cause and there must have been an initial cause. The argument attempts to prove the existence of God by making an inference from the world. It starts from the reality that things exist and then follows that there is a cause for the existence of these things. It acknowledges that something caused the universe to exist and some thing is currently keeping it existing.

The cosmological argument is an a posteriori argument which intends to prove that there is an intelligent being that exists; the being is distinct from the universe, explains the existence of the universe, and is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. The basic notion of cosmological arguments is that the world and everything in it is dependent on something other than itself for its existence. It explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused.

The third argument Aquinas makes is that of possibility and necessity. This argument holds that everything in this world has possibility to be and not to be. If there is the possibility that everything at one time or another cannot be, then at one time there was nothing, because everything that could have been, wasn 't^(et if there was nothing at one time, then there was nothing that could be^and so there would still be nothing. Therefore, there had to be something that existed to cause all the possibilities

The Cosmological Argument as previously discussed, is the existence of the universe and “cosmos” is the direct suggestion that God exists. This can be and is often indicated as the “first-cause argument”. This is because they believe that God is the first reason for the cause of the existence of the universe. One of McCloskey first complaints is that people are not suitable to believe that the universe needs a cause. McCloskey finds this to be true simply because, it would require a root for the universe which in turn, would also obligate a source for God. He then continues to profess that even if the cosmological argument is able to facilitate us to hypothesize the existence of God, then there would be no reason to hypothesize that God has to be omniscient, omnipotent, and many more. There are living things in our world that have no clue how they came to be. Essentially everything that happens has to be caused by something, which would mean that the actualization of our universe has to be contingent on a cause. He also stated that he believes that the cosmological argument, “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause,“ (McCloskey, 51).

Theories have arisen from many different philosophers trying to explain the existence of God; the Cosmological Argument is one such theory. The Cosmological Argument has been changed and reviewed for years; however, the focus has always stayed the same. The universe is a prime example that there is a God. A simple Cosmological argument states that:

Thomas Aquinas theorized five different logical arguments to prove the existence of God utilizing scientific hypotheses and basic assumptions of nature. In the fifth of his famous “Five Ways”, Aquinas sets forth the assumption that all natural bodies move toward an end. Since bodies are constantly moving in the best way possible to achieve that end, the path must be designed. God, of course, is the ultimate designer of the universe.

I believe that that the Cosmological argument gives good reason to believe in the existence of God. The Cosmological argument focuses on everything having a cause except one thing that started it all, this starter is known as the “Prime Mover”. The Prime Mover is the one that starts everything without anything having a previous effect on it. With that people have assumed that the logical answer to who the prime mover is, is God. This to me seems the most logical of arguments because although there is the idea of eternity and an eternal cycle there has to be a starting point. I do not believe the argument is successful.