Success of Aquinas’s Cosmological Argument Thomas Aquinas’s cosmological argument is a posteriori argument that Aquinas uses to prove the existence of God. Aquinas argues that, “Nothing can move itself, so whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this causal loop cannot go on to infinity, so if every object in motion had a mover, there must be a first mover which is the unmoved mover, called God.” (Aquinas, Question 2, Article 3). I do agree with Aquinas’s cosmological argument in proving the existence of God with several reasons. According to the cosmological argument, first of all, Aquinas claims that, “it is impossible that a thing should be both mover and moved, namely it should not move itself.” (Aquinas, Question 2, Article 3) This part of the argument is obviously correct.
According to Aquinas, the chain of movement cannot go back to infinity. So there must have been a first, unmoved mover who began the movement of everything in the universe. Aquinas argued that this was God. Aquinas said that objects only changed because of some external force had brought about the change. He used the idea of objects having the potential to become actual but said that this could
The basic premise of the Kálam argument is that something must of caused the universe to begin to exist, this cause must be necessary therefore it is God. The Kálam argument agrees with the term infinite regression, in which is a chain going infinitely back in time with no beginning. St. Thomas Aquinas was a believer of the cosmological argument, Aquinas set out ex nihilo nihil fit, basically meaning nothing comes from nothing, Aquinas believed since nothing can come from nothing, the universe exists so therefore God must of made it. Aquinas’ theory is equivalent to the second way, in which is ‘causation’. The second way states that cause and effect are natural, whatever happens is caused by something, and something cannot cause itself because that would mean
As with all debates, however, there is more than one side, and I am going to present my arguments as rebuttals for McCloskey. According to McCloskey, We can’t say that there is a necessarily existing being that is the cause of the universe. There are a few issues with this idea. First, to say that an uncaused cause would not exist would be faulty. If you are to look at the universe and say that there was no cause, it just is and always has been, then you are making the point of an uncaused cause.
Bertrand Russell also put forth the argument that the universe is a brute fact and it created itself. He believes that there is no more reason to explain this that there is to explain that God is the prime mover
The rational mind states otherwise. It is what we say in our hearts that allow us to think that God does exist. In Samuel Clarke’s Cosmological Argument it is clearly argued that something has existed for all of eternity. Nothing was ever created without a cause therefore this is a contradiction. Yet if anything is made and there is no cause at all for it, is to say that something is affected when it is affected by nothing or at all affected.
The cosmological argument has several different forms and seeks to prove the existence of an external necessary being which caused the universe to come into existence. This external agent according to the cosmological argument is God. It is an a posterior argument meaning it is based on our experience of the universe around us. Plato and Aristotle were the first to postulate views on the idea that the universe could not exist without a mover. They both argued that the fact of motion needs a prior agency to motivate it and this mover itself would not need a further mover itself as it would be a prime mover, a necessary being.
Although this possibility does not address the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It supports certain finite causes. An infinite regress of causes for existence could have not started off from a first cause because the finite cause caused the first and a finite cause caused that find and so forth, meaning that the if you Consider C then you have to consider A because both possibilities acknowledge that there’s an infinite cause of existence. This possibility is implausible because it is already confirmed that the universe is finite and that a first finite cause caused the universe into being. This possibility infinitely fights off the problem of
It does not prove God’s existence; it argues that there must be a necessary being which created the universe. This is consistent with some views of God, however, it is far from an all-encompassing explanation. The argument is not considered to be the end-all-be-all defense for the existence of God. However, it is a good
This idea links to predestination in the fact that it believes everything in the universe- even human action- has a cause which precedes it. This is based upon science, as if it wasn’t case that one event or set of circumstances lead to another, scientific observations and conclusions drawn from that, then it would be both meaningless and pointless.