Cosmological

• Aquinas' 3 ways

  1. Motion (God is the 'unmoved mover') - all things have a source of motion, the origin must be unmoved (God)
  2. causality - everything has a cause, must be a first cause uncaused by anything else (God)
  3. contingency - everything which exists is dependent on something else for its existence, there must be something that is dependent on nothing else for its existence, this we can call God who must exist, the universe requires a cause and an explanation (God)
• Pros of Aquinas' 3 ways

  • a posteriori, based on experience
  • inductive, probabilistic
  • synthetic, requires evidence and is not purely logical
  • belief in the Big Bang, prestige
  • Coplestone - if all things have a cause, surely it makes sense for the universe to have a cause
• Temple - comment on infinite regress

  • the alleged impossibility of an infinite regress
  • it is important to distinguish between something impossible to picture in our minds and actually being impossible
  • 'it is impossible to imagine infinite regress but it is not impossible to conceive it'
• Liebniz - principle of sufficient reason

  the universe is a harmonious whole and is essentially good, God created this world to be the best of all possible worlds
• Cons of Aquinas' 3 ways

  • Kant - causality is not truly real
  • All the argument proves is a cause, fails to prove God's existence
  • Russel - the world is just here, no need to ask why, it is a "brute fact"
• Tillich - speaks of God as the 'Ground of Being'

  • God alone explains what exists
  • explanation involves not only origins but intentions, plans, contingency, and so on
  • we ask why, not just how
• Necessity and Contingency

  Aquinas - everything in our experience is contingent, but not everything can be so contingent

  • there must be something necessary
  • there is no reason to assume there was a time when there was nothing
• Hume

  1st challenge -

  • questioned whether it is possible to make the jump from what Aquinas observed and the God that Christians believe in, it is an error in logic
  • the effect can't point to a particular cause
  • rejects Aquinas
  • it is not necessary to suppose everything has a cause at all

  2nd challenge

  • 'the Fallacy of Composition'

  3rd Challenge

  • it is illogical to suppose that there is any being whose nature requires a contradiction, 'why does God have to be necessary?'
• Radio debate - Coplestone FOR

  • some beings in the world which don't contain in themselves a reason of their existence
  • the world is imagined totality of individual objects
  • God is a supreme personal being
  • Affirmative position
  • God is a problem of great importance
• Radio debate - Russel AGAINST

  • God is a supreme personal being
  • Agnostic position
  • Contingency argument
  • Doesn't admit the idea of a necessary being and any particular meaning in calling any other beings contingent