Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of G-d

 Cosmological arguments prove G-d's existence by asking the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" It is argued that the universe must have an explanation and a cause, of which the best explanation is G-d.

It looks to the "cosmos" which is a Greek word meaning both "world" and "order".

It is an inductive argument, meaning the conclusion is made from probability rather than necessity.

It is built upon a posteriori knowledge, meaning it uses knowledge that is derived from observation and experience.

Aquinas and Aristotle

St Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century philosopher and theologian writing in the time of the Crusades, in which the Christian Church sieged war in the Holy Land to take it from Islamic rule. He produced influential work about how war can be conducted to be ethically in accordance with Christianity (Just War theory).

Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and ancient scientist. He was the first person to argue that the Earth was a sphere and advocated the scientific method of repeated experimentation. He lived 500 years before Aquinas.

Aristotle's writings had been lost to European thinkers, but because Arab scholars in the Holy Land had preserved them and studied them, the crusades allowed them to be redistributed among the Church. There was anxiety throughout the Church that his rationalist approach and tendency towards science, logic, and observation as opposed to blind faith would be a threat to Christianity. He was offering attractive answers to questions concerning the existence of the universe without any reference to the Christian G-d.

Aquinas disagreed with this sentiment. He understood that scientific Aristotlean reason and logic could be compatible with religious belief, and thought it would be unacceptable to ask his fellow believers to choose between the two. He argued that reason comes from G-d and so must be utilised, much like the 16th-century theologian John Calvin, who famously said, "All truth is from G-d."

In this way, Aquinas was not only massively influential as a Christian theologian but also helped science to develop in Europe.

Aquinas' Three Ways - Summa Theologica

Summa Theologica is a 4000-page unfinished book that outlines Five Ways to prove the existence of G-d, as well as Just War theory. It was written for believers, rather than with the intention to proselytise or convert. Only two pages discuss the five pages.

Three of them are cosmological arguments

First Way: motion/change/the Unmoved Mover

P - Everything in the world is moving or changing (from "potentiality" to "actuality")

P - Nothing can move or change itself

P - There cannot be an infinite regress of things changing other things

C - There must be a Prime Unmoved Mover

C - The Prime Unmoved Mover is G-d

Examples of things moving from potentiality to actuality include water melting into ice (initiated by a source of heat) or the Newtonian idea that things cannot move or accelerate without an external resultant force (F=ma).

Second Way: cause/effect/the Uncaused Causer

P - Everything in the world has an "efficient cause"

P - There cannot be an infinite regress of causes

C - There must be an Uncaused Causer

C - The Uncaused Causer is G-d

Third Way: contingency

P - Everything in the world is contingent

P - There cannot be an infinite regress of contingency

C - There must be a necessary being

C - That being is G-d

Contingent beings are dependent on something else and temporary - they didn't always exist and they won't always exist.

Necessary beings are not generatable or corruptible and cannot not be in existence - they have always existed and they will always exist.

Leibniz

Leibniz rejected infinite regression because of the need of a sufficient reason, meaning everything must have an adequate reason for its own existence. He argued G-d is the best sufficient reason and provides meaning and purpose to the universe.

The Kalam Argument (AKA 'the beginning argument')

"Kalam" is an Arabic word meaning to "argue" or discuss."

The argument was developed in the 9th century by Muslim scholars like Al-Ghazali, and then developed in the 20th century by Christian American William Lane Craig.

P - Everything that begins to exist has a cause

P - The universe began to exist (key premise)

C - The universe must have a cause for its existence, which is G-d

The Kalam argument relies on a difference between potential infinities and actual infinities. 

Actual infinity is a mathematical concept that does not really exist in the real world. It is an infinity with no beginning or end that cannot be added to or taken away from.

Potential infinity is a legitimate concept which in essence just means, "starts and goes on forever and ever without end". It can be added and taken away from, and has a beginning point.

He uses the analogy of an infinite library. You would not be able to take out a book from an actually infinite library because it would be mathematically incoherent (an infinite amount of black books, red books, and yet also an infinite amount of both added together). You would be able to take out a book from a potentially infinite library. 

He argues that because time is a potential infinity rather than an actual infinity (we are able to add time as we pass through it, days continue, etc) it must have had a beginning, and therefore must have had a cause.

The G-d of Classical theism must be, therefore:

1. The creator of the world

2. The sustainer of the world

3. Without whom we would not have motion, change, effect, or contingent things

4. Without whom we would have nothing at all (creator ex nihilo/out of nothing)

The nature of experience (a posteriori)

We often believe that if we have experienced something, it must be true, but there are problems with this thinking.

We only have partial knowledge of the world, our perception of the world is biased, and there may be limits on what we as humans are capable of understanding.

David Hume - a fierce empiricist - argued that because we have no experience of universes being made, we cannot meaningfully talk about the creation of the universe, especially using a posteriori reasoning.

John Hick also argued that the universe is "religiously ambiguous" meaning that both theistic and atheistic conclusions to cosmological arguments are equally valid because they are simply differences in interpretation of the same experiences.

QUOTE BANK!!

Calvin: "All truth is from G-d; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from G-d."

Hume: "Causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience."

Hick: "The universe is religiously ambiguous. It evokes and sustains non-religious as well as religious responses."

Aquinas: "It is necessary to arrive at a first mover moved by no other; and this everyone understands to be G-d."

Cole: "Things cannot have got going by themselves."

Aquinas: "Nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality."

Aquinas: "There is no case known in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself."

Craig: "It can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause?"

Mackie: "Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge."

Craig: ""he only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create and effect in time."

Aquinas: Motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality."

Aquinas: "It is necessary to admit an efficient cause."

Aquinas: "We cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity."

Craig: "In reality the subset cannot be equivalent to the entire set. Hence, actual infinites cannot exist in reality."

Craig: "We are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal creator."