Exploring the Possibility of Updating the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

Exploring the Possibility of Updating the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

The term cosmological comes from the Greek language, meaning ‘world’

or ‘universe.’ The argument is based on facts about the world. The

topic of cosmology refers to the study of the universe.

The cosmological argument begins with a general claim about the

physical universe e.g. that some events have causes and that there

must be a supernatural agent to somehow explain this fact.

The argument seems to say that there cannot be an infinite series of

causes, they have to stop somewhere. One scholar who supports this

idea is St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas invented the ‘five ways’ by which he tried to demonstrate

god’s existence philosophically. Aquinas’ third way was the most

thoroughly examined of all his ways. This way was his argument from

contingency and necessity. It states that some things are contingent,

and if everything were contingent there would have been a time when

there was nothing. Something now exists and not everything is

contingent, so there must be a necessary thing, which gets its

necessity from itself. Aquinas’ third way however, has bad reasoning.

Aquinas is arguing from “for everything there is a time for everything

when it doesn’t exist” to “there is a time for everything when it

doesn’t exist.”[1] Even if we agree that everything occurs at some

time, there is no reason to think that there is some one time when

everything has occurred. For example, everything has a time when it

doesn’t exist, but it is a different time for each thing.

Another criticism of this third way is the issue of the infinite past.

If the past is ...

... middle of paper ...

...d be anything. For example, David Hume argued that the first cause

could be the material physical world rather than god. This is just as

satisfactory an explanation as God.

The success of the different versions of the Cosmological Argument

depend on a willingness to ask the question, 'Why is there a

universe?' If you simply accept that the universe is just there and

does not need an explanation, or that it is explained by an infinite

regress, then the Cosmological Argument fails. God must also be shown

to be a simpler or better ultimate explanation than the brute fact of

the existence of the universe.

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[1] St. Thomas Aquinas, Teacher’s notes

[2] The Puzzle of God, Peter Vardy, Chapter 8

[3] The Puzzle of God, Peter Vardy, Chapter 8