To What Extent Are Hume's Challenges to Causation When Critiquing the Cosmological Argument Successful? 10 Marks

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I disagree that Hume's arguments to causation are successful to a full extent due to the fact that Hume's challenges criticise causation from the point of view that empirical evidence is our only source of knowledge, suggesting we cannot know whether the effect due to cause can be discovered because "the effect is different from the cause, and so can never be discovered." Yet why should we apply the limitations of our ability to state that God does not exist? To further evaluate, Hume states we are bound by empirical data and so we will only be able to 'induce' that the regress of cause and effect exists and so this regress falls foul to Hume's Fork. The criticism of Hume's challenge is formulated in the sense that because philosophically and empirically "we will never know the true origins of the universe" it does not mean that "the universe is the "brute fact" as stated by B. Russell. A second challenge of Hume is that we are able to possibly imagine that something can cause itself into existence. This challenge severely weaken's Aquinas argument from cause as it suggests that in fact there is no need for a fist cause as regress of cause and effect is disrupted. Anscombe's response to Hume is, in "When there is a beginning there must be a cause: Hume's argument exposed," that it may be possible to imagine this being the case but it is illogical to suppose that this is the case as it is a "contradiction to absurdity" to decide that "it could be" therefore "it is." It is similar to imagine that a magician may be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat without any prior knowledge of its existence but to suppose it is the case that this has happened is illogical. However modern theoretical and quantum physicists have begun to produce evidence that it is perhaps evident that energy has the ability to come into existence of its own accord which would
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