The Cosmological Argument For The Existence Of God

As regards the cosmological argument itself, McCloskey states that "all we entitled to infer is the existence of a cause commensurate with the effect to be explained, the universe, and this does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause." (p.63) This is indeed true, there is no reason to necessarily infer a God person, however; the inference is of the nature that suggests (hence the term infer) a cause of such magnitude that it is practically God-like. Moreover, his words do not disprove the rational of a God. Entitlement not to call this cause "God" is neither entitlement to deny calling this cause or considering this cause to be "God."

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).

Therefore, it is more believable that the universe had a beginning and a personal creator. The third of Aquinas' ways is the argument of contingency. The world consists of contingent items- items that have a property are items referred to as 'being.' These items are generated and perish; they have a beginning and an end.

The cosmological argument takes the suggestion that the beginning of the universe was uncaused to be impossible. The idea of an uncaused event is absurd; nothing comes from nothing. The universe was therefore caused by something outside it, God. Without God there would be one entity, the existence of which we could not explain, namely the universe; with God there would be one entity the existence of which we could not explain, namely God. Positing the existence of God, then, would raise as many problems as it solved, and so the cosmological argument would leave us in no better position than it found us.

The First Cause Argument is troubled with the idea that all things have a cause and if we trace back the chain of causes, there must be an original cause which began everything else. People take this ‘cause without a cause’ to be God. In a similar way the Prime Mover Argument declares that everything has to be moved by something and then a chain of movement is constructed up with each items movement resting on the movement of the item before it. Since the Cosmological Argument rejects infinity, this chain of movement must have been started by something, because it is by our own experience that all things

The Cosmological Argument takes several forms but is basically represented below. Cosmological Argument Things exist It is possible for those things not to exist Whatever has the possibility of non-existence, yet exists, has been caused to exist. Something cannot bring itself into existence because it would have had to exist to do

     There is, however, a way to fix Aquinas’ theory. If we take his logic into account we can say that there was a time when the universe did not exist. But, the universe exists now therefore it must have had a beginning. By definition a necessary being has no beginning and now end. Due to this definition we can say that the universe is not a necessary being. This leaves us with one of three options: there is a necessary being, the universe has always existed, or something can come into existence out of nothing. Due to the big bang theory we can eliminate the theory of the universe always existing. Therefore, there is a necessary being or something can come into existence out of nothing. Because we know that something cannot come into existence out of nothing we determine that there must be a necessary being. However, the necessary being is either God or the universe. Because the universe had a beginning it can not be necessary, therefore God is the necessary being and he must exist.

The cosmological argument thus provides us with the grounds to believe in the existence of a “beginningless, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, enormously powerful, Personal Creator of the Universe” (Craig). This explanation can point to none other than

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

Critique of Aquinas's Cosmological Argument Aquinas's 3rd way suggests that the world consists of contingent beings. As all contingent beings have a cause, namely another contingent being, there must have been a time when nothing existed, (unless contingent beings exist as a brute fact). Therefore, contingent beings could not have come into existence unless there is a necessary being which is non- contingent that caused them. Aquinas named this being God. The problem with Aquinas's view is that as physicians have suggested matter is eternal and therefore a necessary being is not required to cause contingent beings.

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”.

It is not reliant after expelling a connection from the causal series or arrangement; rather, the arrangement itself is not clarified without anyone else and can't be on the grounds that it is not the pith thereof to exist. For example, if you asking me for an eraser, and I do not have the effect of having an eraser, thus it is not satisfied. No matter how many people and questions has been asked, there will be never be an eraser, unless someone has it. Take this example and replace it with presence or existence. "In a sense, I received existence from my dad, and he from his dad, from his dad, from his dad, etc. But this cannot go to infinity, else the present effect of your existence would not occur. Edwards fraudulently contends Aquinas is taking ceaselessly the set to demonstrate God. That is not the situation by any stretch of the imagination. On the off chance that we have an unbounded arrangement of presence, it is either self-brought about, uncaused or it originated from nothing. On the off chance that self-created, it would need to exist ontologically before itself to bring itself into presence which is a level

His argument is if one justifies a cause then it would require a God who created the universe. His argument continues with the statement that even if there was a God, we have no reason to assume that He is all-perfect or all-knowing. However, many know that for one thing to happen something must have caused it. It is like a domino effect, they cannot be knocked down without someone push the first one over. McCloskey claims that the cosmological argument, “does not entitle us to postulate an all-powerful, all-perfect, uncaused cause” (McCloskey, 51).

His argument is very simple and makes sense, but it does not prove the existence of god. His argument only proves that something must have created the universe, but that doesn’t mean it must have been a god. Also his argument raises the question “then what created god?” Stating that god must have created himself contradicts this argument, since it also states that nothing can be the cause of itself. Another cosmological argument by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz is: “why is there something rather than nothing?

The Cosmological argument can be simplified into three reasons that everything that begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. Using the first proposition and the basis of metaphysics, something cannot come from nothing. If this were possible, everything and anything that comes into being emerges from nothing. Some may argue the quantum theory, which gives particles the ability to come into existence from nothing, but these particles do not materialize from nothing. Instead, they appeared from a quantum vacuum. So again, everything that exists has to have a cause. If everything were caused by something else though, then there would be no first cause, and if there were no first cause, then the first effect would not exist. Therefore, the ultimate cause of the universe then must be uncreated. A being that does not exist in time so therefore does not come into existence. In this case, God is the ultimate creator because he exists outside of time and has neither beginning nor end. This type of argument argues the existence of contingent things on the necessity of a God being the ultimate