The Reasons Why Some Thinkers Rejected the Cosmological Argument

The Reasons Why Some Thinkers Rejected the Cosmological Argument

Aquinas’s argument was as follows: If the universe was infinite, it

would have an infinite number of days. The end of an infinite series

of days can never be reached, so today would never arrive. However,

today has arrived, so the past cannot be infinite. Time began when the

universe began, which was an event. Events are caused; therefore there

must have been a first cause. This first cause was God.

Tennant said there are things in the world which are contingent. These

are "might not have beens" because they might have not existed.

Secondly, "The world is a real or imagined totality of individual

objects, none of which contain within themselves a reason for their

own existence." Here, he is saying that everything within the universe

is not self explanatory. He moves from saying that some things depend

on others, to saying that all things depend on others. All things can

only be explained by something external to them.

Third he said that the explanation for the existence of everything in

the universe must be external to the universe. If we accept both the

second premise, and the theory of Sufficient Reason, then it says that

outside the universe there must be a cause for everything inside the

universe. He then goes on to say that this explanation must be an

existent being which self explanatory is. This, Copleston refers to as

a necessary being. If everything within the universe is contingent or

dependant, then if we have accepted his ideas, the final explanation

must not be necessary. In other words, the final explanation could not

not exist. It could not fail to e...

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principle. The separation therefore of the idea of a cause from that

of a beginning of existence is plainly possible for the imagination,

and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far

possible that it implies no contradiction or absurdity. By this, he

means that we can easily have had a universe without it being caused,

as we can imagine something without it actually happening. This was a

very strong argument.

Another formidable critic of the Cosmological argument was Anthony

Kenny. In "The Five Ways" Kenny pointed out that Aquinas' point about

nothing moving itself contradicts the fact that humans and animals

move themselves. He used Newton's first law of motion, in which he

explains how movement is caused by the body's inertia from previous

movement, to disprove Aquinas' theory.