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)
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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
He states that since the series of dependent beings couldn’t be caused by any external or internal source, that it would have to be cause “absolutely by nothing”. He then states that this is a “contradiction to be done in time; and because duration in this case makes no difference.” He also states that it is a “contradiction to suppose it done from eternity.” Since the universe has parts that come into existence at one occasion and not another, it must have a cause. There could supposedly be an infinite regress of causes if there was evidence for such, but lacking such evidence, God must exist as the cause.
1. The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is based on the principle of cause and effect. What this basically means is that the universe was the effect of a cause, which was God. One of the oldest and most well known advocates of the Cosmological Argument was Thomas Aquinas who outlines his argument for the existence of God in his article entitled The Five Ways. The first way in his argument is deals with motion. Aquinas says that in order for something to be in motion something had to move it because it is impossible for something to move without the presence of some sort of outside force upon it. Therefore the world around us, nature, and our very existence could not have been put into motion without the influence of the
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.
Typically, cosmological arguments occur in two different phases. The first phase’s purpose is to provide the premise that there is a ‘first cause’ or an
On the topic of the existence of God, Ernest Nagel and Richard Swinburne have construct arguments that challenge one another. In Nagel’s article, “Does God Exist?” he argues that if God is all-powerful, omniscient, and benevolent; he would know when evil occurs and has the power to prevent it. Because evil occurs, God does not exist. This is the problem of evil. Challenging Nagel, the article by Swinburne, “Why God Allows Evil,” argues that God has the right to allow moral and natural evils to occur because those evils reap greater goods that make the lives of human-beings meaningful. He extends his argument to the idea that God seeks to provide human beings with goods such as freewill and responsibility of not only ourselves, but of the world and others. While Nagel utilizes the problem of evil as an objection to the existence of God, Swinburne employs it to show that God allows evil to occur to provide human beings with goods that go beyond moments of pleasure and joys of happiness.
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.
William Lane Craig puts forth an argument for the existence of God in Kalam’s Cosmological Argument. In this, Craig argues that the universe began to exist and the cause of the universe’s existence must have been God. Kalam’s Cosmological Argument is trying to demonstrate the impossibility of an actual infinite, which states that the universe is eternal – it has always been here. Kalam’s Cosmological Argument goes as such: Whatever begins to exist has a cause – The universe began to exist – Therefore, the universe has a cause. And this cause is God.
The existence of God as puzzled minds for many years. Philosophers have argued that god may or may not exist to the human mind or that there can be more than one type of god. Our ways of thinking have gradually expanded over the years and it has allowed us to make more complex ideas on lost history but there is still some questionable knowledge on whether there is a god or not. We as humans could be missing valid information to find the correct answer. Cosmological argument refers to existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God, is deduced or inferred as highly probable from facts concerning causation, change, ect in the respect of the universe as a whole within in. My question lies, what put that there? It
When it comes to discussing the cosmological argument, I question myself why are most arguments that are for defending a higher being, in a monotheism perspective: the belief of one God. I argue that yes there is an existence of a higher being, but I also argue that there is more than one God; one God for each universe. I believe that there is a God for each universe, because there is more than one universe, therefore I argue towards the multiverse argument with a concentration of polytheism.
I am arguing that the Logical Problem of Evil (LPE) is not a successful argument to reject the existence of God. This is due to the LPE arguing with an inaccurate definition for the word “good”. With the correct definition of “good,” I will show that an all-good and all-powerful God can logically exist simultaneously with evil. A response to my objection could be the Furthermore, if we allow the inadequate use of the word “evil”, the LPE still does not constitute the immediate rejection of the existence of God due to the concept of free will. A response to this objection is that individual humans are not free and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. However, I will show that this response
The second argument is for the notion that the existence of God can be demonstrated. It states that everything has a cause. He claims that by using the theory of cause and effect we can demonstrate the existence of God. If we say that every effect has a cause, we can go further and further to infinity. But because of our own logic, we know that this is not true. We know that it must end somewhere. That somewhere is a first cause, and that cause is God. This is very similar to the idea of the unmoved mover. He goes on to say that through the effects, we can demonstrate that God does exist, but we cannot know what God is like.
In this paper I will argue for the claim that God exists. This statement is clear and argued through William L. Rowe’s “Cosmological Argument” and William Paley’s “Argument from Design. The sophisticated cosmological argument states
3. If everything can cease to exist, that means that there could have been nothing
I believe Nagel is saying that if every event must have a cause, the infinite chain of events presumably necessitated by this logic in fact follows, assuming one’s acceptance of the mathematical concept of infinity. Ergo, there does not have to be a God or even a first cause, as the cosmological argument