The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
... is the effect of previous causes, and these causes are the effects of earlier causes, and so on. This shows that causation must have a starting point, and that there must be a first cause that is not caused by anything else. God is the only being that is capable of being an uncaused cause, so therefore, God exists. Finally, the third way to prove the existence of God, according to Aquinas, is called the argument of contingency. This claim also argues using the notion of a sequence of causes. Aquinas states that things in our world owe their existence to something else in the world. He calls this the belief of possibility and necessity, meaning that all things made possible, necessarily attach their existence to something that existed beforehand. God is the only being that can be the cause of all things since he has his own necessity and does not need something else to cause his existence. All things existing can trace themselves in a sequence back to God. Once again, I would like to carefully scrutinize this argument. Some things in the universe are capable of existing and not existing, and these things go out of existence at some point. If all things were capable of not existing, then consequently, there was a time when nothing existed. However, anything that does not exist can only come into existence through the action of something that does exist. Therefore, there must be something that always exists because otherwise, nothing would ever come into existence. The necessity of some things that are necessary is caused by an outside source, but there also must to something necessary whose necessity is not caused by an outside source. God is the only being that is capable of being necessary in itself and of being the cause of the necessity and existence of all other beings; therefore, God does, in fact, exist. The next essay found in The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion that holds a great deal of importance is “P.T. Geach’s Commentary of Aquinas.” Peter Geach, a renowned philosophy professor, helpfully analyzes St. Thomas Aquinas’ five ways by attempting to clarify and reason with his notions. Geach seeks to show that Aquinas did not aim to prove that God exists by tracing back through generations upon generations ending with a heavenly being. Instead, he claims that world is perhaps an object which provokes many questions. Geach states, “If the world is an object, it again seems natural to ask about it the sort of causal questions which would be legitimate about its parts. If it began to exist, what brought in into existence? In any case, what keeps in from perishing, as some of its parts perish? And what keeps its processes going? And to what end?” (Burrill 63). In my opinion, I believe that Aquinas was aware that his arguments had their limitations. He never intended to use the arguments to define God, but rather to point towards the existence of something that could be called God. Geach goes on to help Aquinas by explaining the theory of God as the “Maker and Sustainer of the world”. He claims that although the word “God” commonly refers to the “Maker and Sustainer of the world”, it is not the actual definition of the term. He then goes on to say that the word “God” refers to the life of the “Maker and Sustainer of the world” instead of the acts of making and sustaining preformed by such a high being. He describes this using the example of helium. Geach starts his next approach by analyzing the verb “made”. He asks, “What is the relevant sense, and how can it be learned and taught?” (Burrill 59). Subsequently, he uses the analogy of both the minstrel and the blacksmith. Geach claims that the use of the verb “made” when connected to God is “more like ‘the minstrel made music’ than ‘the blacksmith made a shoe’” (Burrill 60). He gives an explanation of this by saying that the shoe is made out of something that has already existed, and after it is created, it continues to exist without the blacksmith. On the contrary, the music is not made out of something that has already existed, and it stops when the minstrel stops. To sum it all up, God did not make the world out of something that existed beforehand, and “its continued existence depends upon his activity” (Burrill 60). As we move on to the next excerpt, which is David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, we begin to see the criticisms of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. After doing some extensive research on Hume, I have come to learn that this particular philosophical piece was not published during his lifetime. It is not known why he made the decision not to publish it, but one speculation is that he was concerned that it would be too controversial. Whether that is true or not, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion has become a standard work in the philosophy of religion. Hume hides his own opinion underneath a literary piece because the work is written as a dialogue with his point of view left unknown. There are three characters in Hume’s dialogues. Demea defends the cosmological argument by arguing for God’s existence through reasoning (a posteriori); Cleanthes argues for God’s existence through the design argument (a priori), which is known as the teleological argument; Philo is the skeptic who claims that none of the arguments for the existence of God are convincing. It should then be clear to readers who are familiar with Hume’s beliefs that Philo is in indeed Hume himself, although the other two characters possess some Humean beliefs. Hume’s critique of the cosmological argument can be summarized by saying that necessary existence is impossible. First, his character Cleanthes argues that an a priori argument for the existence of anything is impossible. Cleanthes states, “Nothing that is distinctly conceivable implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent. There is no being, therefore, whose nonexistence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being whose existence is demonstrable. I propose this argument as entirely decisive, and am willing to rest the whole controversy upon it” (Burrill 87). This argument basically implies the following. We conceive of God’s existence. If we can conceive of something’s existence, then we can conceive of it’s nonexistence. If we can conceive of God’s existence, then God’s nonexistence does not involve a contradiction. If God’s existence is necessary, then God’s nonexistence involves a contradiction. Therefore, according to Hume, God’s existence is not necessary. The next excerpt that is portrayed is Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which is a significant criticism of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Kant’s main goal of this critique is to create a connection or dependence between the cosmological argument and the ontological argument. After giving an overview of the cosmological argument, Kant beings his analysis by saying, “In order to have a secure foundation, this proof takes its stand on experience, and pretends to be different from the ontological proof, which places it whole confidence in pure concepts a priori only” (Burrill 94). He goes on to say, “In this conclusion it is simply assumed that a concept of a being in the highest reality is perfectly adequate to the concept of absolute necessity in existence; so that the former might be concluded from the latter. This is the same proposition as that maintained in the ontological argument, and is simply taken over into the cosmological proof, nay made its foundation, although the intention was to avoid it” (Burrill 95). With these two very important quotes, Kant makes it clear that the key link between the two arguments is the idea of necessary existence. According to the ontological argument, since God's existence is a part of his nature, we can say that not only that God exists, but that he exists necessarily. In the same sense, the cosmological argument claims that something exists necessarily with which we can identify with God. Hence, it appears that the same idea is apparent in both arguments. Furthermore, Kant rejected the cosmological argument because he had already previously rejected the ontological argument. He based this on the fact that the cosmological still needs the idea of an uncreated, self existent, divine being to be the first cause of everything else. In my opinion, I do not believe that this claim is enough to show that the cosmological argument depends on the ontological argument. Moving on to the “contemporary rejoinder”, we come to learn about Paul Edwards, Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College. The excerpt in The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion mainly deals with the cosmological argument as being the “causal argument” and “the argument from contingency”. Aquinas believes that if there were no first cause, the whole causal series would not exist. Edwards notices that this is true only for finite causal series. He then goes on to present an analogy to clarify this statement. Edwards says, “The advocates of the causal argument in either form seem to confuse an infinite series with one which long but finite” (Burrill 111). Consider a finite series of books, each of which is supported by a previous one. If there was no first book supporting all the others, the whole serie...