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.
As Paley explains, just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watchmaker, so likewise the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker. I will examine the argument presented by William Paley, in which he offers an argument from design that claims to show a clear reason why one should believe in God, due to the natural features of the world. I disagree with Paley in that there are many flaws to his argument. In my opinion Paley's argument is a deductive argument, in the sense that he first establishes a belief and uses it in order to reach his final conclusion, hence a deductive argument in which Paley’s premises might be somewhat true but his conclusion is false. .
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.
Although, these three arguments all agree in the way that they use unfound assumptions to prove what has yet to be proven; they do disagree on the studies of how to prove what really is God. The ontological argument believes that God is a “being”. The cosmological argument believes that God is “the universe”. Then there is the design argument which needs evidence to prove that there is a God. The Ontological argument seeks to prove that God does exist by proving, that He cannot not exist.
The design argument (DA) starts from the observations about the world from there towards the conclusion that God exists. This argument appeals to the world as proof of Gods existence and therefore relies on our experiences. The DA is a posteriori argument for the existence of God; it seeks to prove that there is evidence for a designer in the world and used external imperial evidence as its proof. It is an inductive argument, which means it’s based on experience and the most probable explanation. William Paley is a classical contributor to the DA and like St. Aquinas he believed that the world is too complex and well ordered to have happened by chance therefore it must have designed by a greater being, ‘God’.
He then goes on to say that it is always greater to exist in reality (in re) than just in the mind (in intellectu). The last part logically concludes that if there is no greater being than God, then God must exist in both the mind and reality. If God was to only exist in in our thoughts and not in reality then we would be able to think of a greater being, e.g. the prime minister because he exists in both reality and our minds. But because it’s impossible to conceive a greater being that God he must exist in both reality and our minds.
Explain Anselms ontological argument Part A The ontological argument is used as a rational explanation to support the existence of God. Anselms ontological argument is known as a “classic “explanation of the ontological argument and is used widely to support the existence of God. The ontological argument is a priori argument meaning that theories are developed to prove the existence of God using nothing but intellectual insight and reason: it does not depend upon our experience of the world to be verified. Anselm defines God by saying God is that “which nothing greater can be conceived.” A way to simplify this explanation is thinking of God as being the greatest thing there can be, i.e. defining God as maximal perfection, there literally cannot be anything greater than God as God is the greatest thing that can possibly exist.
in order to be valid it has to be deductive in order to be sound it has to be valid. premises must be true in our world with no changes for the argument. if the premises can be made true and the conclusion is true it's valid soundness is a further feature of validity. jackson reading- the mind is above the physical.it has to be experienced 1. Darwins dangerous idea was that he asked the question who created life, and his response was that no one did which in it's nature denies the supernatural explanation of the universe.
The Muslims who initiated the kalam cosmological argument believe that it is obvious that God is the cause for the universe and so they do not look for evidence instead they believe God simply is the answer. Furthermore, why shouldn’t the cause be Gods hands? William Craig would agree with this viewpoint as he says “It is so intuitively obvious that I think scarcely anyone could sincerely believe it to be false” suggesting that any cause other than God is false. The cosmological argument is a posterior argument this means that the argument is based on experience and is based upon the observation that every event has a cause. Everyone who exists sees the existence of the world and simultaneously sees the existence of a cause.
Explain key criticisms of the Cosmological Argument Although with each of his ‘ways’ in the Cosmological argument Thomas Aquinas gave what he believed to be evidence to back his points up, the argument was still open to criticism and did receive it. One of the first criticisms of the argument was around the ideology of infinite regress. Aquinas believed that the idea of infinite regress was not possible – the cause and effect chain had to have a beginning, which would have been caused by God (the first cause.) William Lane Craig (1949-) agreed with this idea, stating that infinite regress cannot exist in actuality. For example, if a library was to house an infinite number of books and a book was taken off the shelf, or the library was completely emptied, it would still have to contain an infinite number of books, which therefore shows that infinite regress cannot exist within our living universe.