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Regarding the Cosmological Argument

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Regarding the Cosmological Argument
The goal of the cosmological argument is to support the claim that God exists as the first cause of the universe. According to Nagel, the argument runs as following:
(P1) Every event must have a cause.
(P2) If every event must have a cause, event A must have a cause B, which in turn must have a cause C, and so on.
(P3) There is no end to this backward progression of causes.
(C1) This backward progression of causes will be an infinite series of event.
(P4) An infinite series of events is unintelligible and absurd.
(P5) The existence of the universe does not result from an unintelligible and absurd process.
(P6) The existence of the universe does not result from an infinite series of events.
(C2) …show more content…

If God’s existence is not an event, then P1 (“Every event must have a cause”) does not apply to it and it is not necessary for God’s existence to have a cause, even if it is granted that every event is caused. Thus, Nagel’s argument that God’s existence must have a cause because every event must have a cause is not sound.
Although the second part of Nagel’s objection, directed towards the response “God is self-caused,” is reasonable, it contains a small weakness. If God can be “self-caused,” and there is no sufficient reason as to why only God can cause itself to exist, then it is logical to think that the universe can also be self-caused. The weakness of this argument is the difference between God and the universe. The universe consists of all events and is inseparable from them. No event in the universe, so far, has been self-caused, thus many components of the universe demands a cause other than themselves. It is difficult to imagine the universe to be self-caused when so many of its components are not. God, on the other hand, is often thought to exist outside of the universe due to its timelessness. Similar to abstract objects such as numbers, God does not have a temporal location and its existence is not associated with any event. To imagine God to be self-caused does not involve the same kind of difficulty as imagining the universe to be self-caused, since no part of God demands a cause other than

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