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.
Samuel Clarke's Modern Formulation of the Cosmological Argument offers a concise, seemingly logical, argument favoring the existence of what is, for all intents and purposes, a God; that is, an “unchangeable and independent being” (37) who (which) is the originator of all subsequent, dependent beings. The word “seemingly” is used here because, while Clarke's arguments appear sound on the surface, the reality is that they make certain “leaps of faith” which are incongruent with the true application of logic; that is to say, he does not actually use logic effectively to prove his assertion that there exists such an independent, unchanging being (God) and therefore, his argument falls flat. This paper will present his argument and then note the areas in which weaknesses exist. In doing so, the concept of Brute Facts, as well as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) will be utilized. Clarke's Cosmological Argument begins with an interesting assertion; interesting for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that merely asserting something is by no means equivalent to proving it via logical reasoning.
Throughout this essay I will share with you the ways that the cosmological, design, and ontological arguments are the same yet different from each other. You may find that these arguments are confusing, contradicting, incoherent or just plain unconvincing, once you unpack the truth that God actually does exist. The cosmological, design, and ontological arguments all agree with each other. Each of these arguments is the same in the way that they use unfounded assumptions to prove what cannot be proven. These arguments never get to any particular God.
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.
However some philosophers such as Richard Dawkins have challenged such arguments. Dawkins stated that if God is to be omniscient, whether possessing self-knowledge or not, then He must know what shall happen. Even if there is a variety of possibilities you could choose from God would still know every single one, so no matter which one you choose God will already have known that specific
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.
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. The world is the real or imagined of individual objects, and none of these have the reason or cause of there existence and they depend of other causes. The universes explanation therefore must be eternal and self explanatory to be complete, necessary being - God and he is his own sufficient cause. Copleston redeveloped Aquinas’ argument by concentrating on contingency: 1)There are things in this world that are
These other objects, in turn, was put into motion by still another object preceding it, and so forth. This series cannot go on backward to infinity, though, since there would otherwise be no first mover and thus no subsequent movement. Therefore, we must conclude that there is a first unmoved mover, which we understand to be God. Second, we observe that everything has an efficient cause and that nothing is or can be the cause of itself. It is impossible, though, that the series of causes should extend back to infinity because every cause is dependent on a prior cause and the ultimate cause is thus dependent on a previous cause.
Response to Being an Atheist Christina Yarbrough PHIL 210 Liberty University H.J McCloskey wrote an article entitled “On Being an Atheist” which dealt with the atheist approach to the cosmological and teleological approaches and the problem of evil. He calls his view of the arguments proofs, as he feels that the arguments offer no proof for the existence of God. He believes that atheism is a more comfortable way to believe than that of theism and that those who believe in theism should be upset just because they believe in God. I believe that McCloskey has a fallacy in his arguments and that the existence of God can not be proven through any one argument, and that all we can do is defend our beliefs within the realm of our own understanding. McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God.
The roles of the PM are linked to the roles of god but the 2 must not be confused. As the PM is transcendent he cannot interact with the human world as he is the greater entity. Aristotle’s concept of the Prime Mover found its way into the medieval theology of Thomas Aquinas and his cosmological proof for the existence of God. Likewise, Aristotle’s teleological arguments found their way into Aquinas’ Natural Law. An accidental universe is as likely as a caused one There are many modern scientific theories that attempt to grasp why the universe is here, who put it here and who created everything in it.