Copleston put forward a defines with was based on some ideas of the third way of Aquinas’ ways. Russell disagreed with Copleston’s argument and suggested that the universe was not explainable in the way Copleston described. In their debate was the issue of contingency and necessity and a reason to explain why anything exists. Copleston explained Leibniz’s “Principle of Sufficient Reason”, which is the claim that there has to be a full explanation for everything. There are things in the world that do not have the reason or cause of their existence, this mean that some things in the world are contingent - they might have no existed.
Liberty univerity online | A Disagreement to McCloskey’s Theist View and Why Atheism is Better | A look at why McCloskey’s proof and evidence of God’s non-existence is false from a theist view. | | Troy Shepherd | 3/1/2015 | Phil 201 McCloskey reminds atheist why theism is wrong and why atheists are correct to believe in no God or any supreme being is argued from a theist approach and understanding. | INTRODUCTION In 1968, McCloskey wrote an article which he stated was to “remind fellow atheist (McCloskey, 1968)” why atheist believe in no God and why God doesn’t exist. Did McCloskey find the need to remind other atheist why they don’t believe in a higher being such as God, was he losing other fellow atheist to the “other side” or was he simply reminding himself of why he didn’t believe? Only McCloskey knows why he wrote this article with his reasons for not believing as he did write this piece as if he had been appointed to provide why and what their foundational arguments are against theists’ beliefs in God.
He also says there are a chain of causes and effects leading back to the beginning of the Universe. He did not believe in infinite regress, and so, for him, there had to be a first cause, and that first cause has to be God. Aquinas’ Cosmological argument has many positive points which could be used to prove the existence of God, and his argument is both logical and convincing. However, I believe there are some major flaws within it, and I hope to use these flaws to show that Aquinas’ Cosmological argument does not prove the existence of a God. The first point to Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological argument is about Motion.
Paley believed that no one else would have been intelligent enough to create the order and complexity of the universe. Aquinas also argues the point that the order and purpose of the world proves that there must be a designer behind it. He believed that God was the answer to the unexplainable and that all natural bodies act for an end. An example for
All types of evil have the potential to cause contradiction between reality and the established conception of a personal God. In the following I will examine the problem of evil and attempt to establish why the presence of evil is the most potent argument against theism. The classical notion of a monotheistic God ascribes certain divine qualities to Him and I will proceed with the assumption that he possesses these qualities. God is conceived as an ultimate perfectly good being, with the unique characteristics of omnipotence and omniscience. God is the knower of all things past and present and has the divine power to do anything.
In the philosophical view of determinism with respect to free will, it focuses more on the circumstances surrounding the agent instead of just the individual agent. A strength to determinism is that there is a cause for everything, therefore nothing is left to chance and that there is always a reason to be traced back to. On the other hand, the same theory states that agents are not responsible for their own actions because previous events dictated their behavior, and that is considered by many to be a weakness of determinism. Critics of determinism claim that having a universal view of determinism will lead to moral irresponsibility and moral decay (Nichols and Knobe 664). Compatibilism, also referred to as soft determinism, is “the view that all events, including human actions, are caused.
Here, he rejects infinite regress and argues that the “Unmoved Mover” is the reason for the existence of the universe. In the Second Way of Aquinas’ argument, he attempts to argue for the “Uncaused Cause”. Aquinas goes on to explain that everything is caused by something else, almost like a domino effect. He also explains “it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause to which everyone gives the name God”. By this, he is rejecting infinite regress, which is influenced by Aristotle’s idea of a prime mover.
This being would be omnipotent or all-powerful, he would be omniscient or all knowing, he would be omnibenevolent or all good, and finally he would be omnipresent or everywhere you could imagine. By definition then if all of these factors make up God then evil will not and cannot exist. Alas there is evil in this world we live in from minor evils like cheating on a test to major evils such as murder and terrorism. A God who is omnipotent has the power to stop all evil from even being conceived. A God who is omniscient would know everyway evil could come into existence and would know how to stop every form of these evils.
He also has some strong opinion on the solutions that the theists have on the resolution to the problem of evil. He states that "If we use the cosmological argument at all, all we are 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." He also states that theists come up with what he believes is "unintelligent" instances of how we find reasons to believe in God and how he can exist in a world that has evil involved in people's lives. These instances of how evil can exist while GOd can to at the same time include, being punishment for people's wrongs or the consequence of having free will. But here I would like to put in my own opinion much like McCloskey has throughout his article.
Aquinas’ 3 ways make far too many leaps and assumptions. For Example, in the 2nd way – from Cause, the argument clearly states that everything has a cause, that cause must too have a cause, there cannot be an infinite number of causes therefore there must be an uncaused cause. The logic in this argument is sound however, when Aquinas makes the leap from there being an uncaused cause to that uncaused cause being God this is where I feel it falls. This leap is unjustified and therefore I don’t feel it is sufficient to be convincing as proof to the existence of God. Bertrand Russell would argue against the 2nd way with fallacy of composition.