L4 | COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

• COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

  • by thomas aquinas
  • seek to prove God’s existence through what he argued were necessary facts about the universe.
• 4 ARGUMENTS

  1. argument from motion
  2. argument from causation
  3. argument from contingency
  4. argument from degrees
• ARGUMENT FROM MOTION

  • We currently live in a world in which things are moving
  • Movement is caused by movers
  • Things that cause motion
  • Everything that’s moving must have been set into motion by something else that was moving.
  • Something that must have started the motion in the first place.
• INFINITE REGRESS

  • In a chain of reasoning, the evidence of each point along the chain relies on the existence of something that came before it. Which turn relies on something even further back, and so on, with no starting point.
• • Aquinas thought the very idea of infinite regress was absurd, logically impossible because, it implied that any given series of events began with…nothing. Or, more accurately, never really began. Instead, it could have been going on forever
• ARGUMENT FROM MOTION

  • There must have been a time when nothing was in motion, Aquinas thought, and there also must’ve been a static being that started the motion
  • And that being, is God – the Unmoved Mover.
• ARGUMENT FROM CAUSATION

  • Some things are caused
  • Anything that’s caused has to be caused by something else (since nothing causes itself)
  • There can’t be an infinite regress of causes
  • So there must have been a first causer, itself uncaused, and that is God.
• ARGUMENT FROM CAUSATION

  • Effects have causes.
  • Aquinas said, again: It can’t go back forever
  • There had to be a First Thing that started off the chain of causes and effects. And that Thing is God.
• ARGUMENT FROM CONTINGENCY

  • There are contingent things
  • Contingent things can cause other contingent things but there can’t only be contingent things
  • Because that would mean that there’s an infinite regress of contingency, and a possibility that nothing might have existed.
  • An infinite regress is impossible
  • So there must be at least one necessary thing, and that is God.
• NECESSARY BEING

  • A being that always existed, that will always exist, and that can’t not exist.
• CONTINGENT BEING

  • Any being that could not have existed
• ARGUMENT FROM DEGREES

  • Properties come in degrees
  • In order for there to be degrees of perfection, there must be something perfect against which everything else if measured
  • God is the pinnacle of perfection.
• ARGUMENT FROM DEGREES

  • Aquinas thought that all of our value concepts would just be floating randomly in space if there weren’t some anchor – something that defined the value of everything else, by being perfect – and that, again, is God
• DOES IT PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

  • These arguments don’t seem to establish the existence of any particular god.
  • it doesn’t look like Aquinas gets us to the personal, loving God that many people pray to
• DOES IT PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?

  • Instead, we’re left with unmoved movers and uncaused causers who seem to have little in common with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ... the God who feels emotions, and cares about his creation, and answers prayer
• • Aquinas was wrong in his insistence that there can’t be an infinite regress of anything
  • He takes it as a given that there had to be a starting point for everything.
• SELF DEFEATING

  • If everything must have been put in motion by something else, and everything must have a cause other than itself, then it seems that God should be subject to those same stipulations.