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The five Cosmological argument of thomas aquinas
The five Cosmological argument of thomas aquinas
The five Cosmological argument of thomas aquinas
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Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence 2. The universe began to exist 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of existence His defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument revolves mostly around the second premise. This is mostly due to him finding the first premise as intuitively obvious, where he claims that “no one, seriously denies it”. From experience, we find that physical objects do not come into existence without causes.
I think William Lane Craig made a strong argument when it came to a cosmological argument. He does have a point that there is an explanation of how the world came to be but there is more to it, such as dates and things like that. He says that the ultimate question in philosophy would be “why does anything exists”? He brings up that atheist think that the universe is eternal but he says there is reasons why the universe began. He says its obscured to think that its number of past events is infinite, which he says leads to self-contradictions.
The Teleological argument is also a cosmological argument it also begins with the existence of the cosmos. McCloskey rejects this argument along with the argument of design by rejecting the premise. However, “Tennant and Swinburne developed a version of this argument not as strict deductive proof but to show probability of theism” (Evans & Manis) The theory of evolution was offered as an explanation for the creation of design which was rejected because there many things before the theory of evolution. McCloskey believe there must be indisputable proof of actual evidence to prove evolution.
The objection addressed the validity of the argument which had the premise 1, nothing is the efficient cause of itself except God and premise 2, a chain of causes cannot be infinite. The argument thus concludes there must be a first cause. This conclusion agrees with my thesis that Saint Thomas Aquinas’s argument formulated in the second way leads to a valid argument, which concludes that there must be a first cause and that God
The Kalam Cosmological Argument The Kalam Cosmological Argument is a theory of religion that attempts to explain the existence of God by the following: Whatever began to exist must have a cause, unlike God, the Universe began to exist, Thus, there must be an uncaused cause of the Universe, namely God. Through examining the many criticisms of this argument, it is discernible that it is not valid and does not achieve the purpose of proving God's existence. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is favorable over Tomas Aquainas’ traditional Cosmological Argument, which says: Some things are caused, nothing can cause itself, so everything must be caused by an external force, namely God, because it is more specific, especially by encapsulating evidence
Then we look at the second argument of Aquinas, The Argument of Causation- everything that is caused has to be caused by something else, there cannot be an infinite number of causes, and same as argument number one that must mean there is a God since all effects have causes. The Argument from Contingency asks if everything already exists contingently has a reason to do so, does the universe exists for a reason and if the universe has a reason for its existence that that reason must be God. Aquinas’ fourth argument is the Argument from Degrees Aquinas says in order to compare two things in terms of good or bad, we must have something to compare it to, this would have to be an absolutely perfect thing aka God. Aquinas’ fifth and final argument is The Teleological Argument-
In this essay, I will set out to prove that Thomas Aquinas’ First Cause Argument does not show that God exists and the conclusion that God exists does not follow from the premises of the first cause argument. I do think that the conclusion is valid and could be sound/or has the potential to be, but the premises fail to provide the basis upon which to reach such a conclusion. Hence, I will be raising some objections to the premises and will try to disprove any counter-arguments that could be raised in its defense. This would be done by examining Aquinas’ First Cause Argument and trying to disprove it whilst countering arguments in its defense.
Before restating the Anselm’s argument for the existence of God, it is important to understand who Anselm was and what might have compelled him to come up with the ontological argument for the existence of God. Anselm’s background information will be helpful in evaluating the validity and reliability of his arguments. Anselm was born in Italy in c. 1033. In 1063, he entered the famous monastery. In 1093, he moved to England, having been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
The cosmological argument looks to the world to prove God’s existence rather than pure definitions. The proponent of the cosmological argument was St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian in the eleventh century CE (Solomon). He proposed that everything that exists must have a cause, and that the cause was God (Aquinas). Aquinas’ first point was based off of motion, that nothing can be both the mover and moved. An item sitting in place has the potential to be moving, but cannot move unless something that is already moving imparts motion to it
Aquinas argues that every necessary thing has its necessity cause by another and at the end of this chain of necessity, you find God. “Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God” (Aquinas 23). The fourth argument is about the gradation, or varying degrees of certain characteristics found in all beings. He reveals the idea that the maximum in anything is the cause of that thing and uses fire being the maximum of heat, therefore being the cause of everything hot as an example.
The usherance of the 21st century is heavy with expectation from the technological marvels presented in the last 100 years. From time machines, to sentient robots, to genetically enhanced humans, some of these marvels are much closer to reality than one might think. One such example, the autonomous car, has made leaps and bounds in improvement within the last decade. The current iteration of the autonomous car however, isn’t exactly smart. Sure, it may be able to drive to the location you tell it, and it may even have features like collision avoidance, or blind spot monitoring that manufacturers will market off as “highly intelligent” features.
Thomas Aquinas is the second critique of Anselm’s position. Take note that Aquinas assumed that the existence of God is obvious. He supported cosmological argument to prove that God exists. The cosmological argument uses the physical things that exist in the universe to demonstrate God’s existence. In his criticism of Anselm’s argument, Aquinas disagrees with the use of the word “God” and argues only some who hear the word “God” understands what it means (Himma, 4).
St. Anselm and Descartes are known for presenting the first ontological arguments on the existence of God. The word ontological is a compound word derived from ‘ont’ which means exists or being and ‘–ology’ which means the study of. Even though Anselm and Descartes’ arguments differ slightly, they both stem from the same reasoning. Unlike the other two arguments on God’s existence (teleological and cosmological), the ontological argument does not seek to use any empirical evidence but rather concentrates on pure reason. The rationale behind this school of thought
Furthermore, an intriguing fact is that a catholic priest chose to go beyond the usual accepted concept of the creation of the universe as well as his own christian values and challenged the beliefs which many held as to how the universe developed into how it is known today. Moreover, today, the pope supports the belief “in a supernatural God who is responsible for the existence of the universe, while our science tells us how he did it" (Pope Francis, 2017). Thus, proving that there could be a connection between god and the big bang theory. The church supports the belief that as long as Catholics believe that humans were created by god and not due to natural attributes, there should not be a collision between the Catholic principles and the big bang
Dominican philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, created the “Five Ways” of God’s existence – motion, causation, contingency, gradations, intelligence of design – in which the first two are cosmological arguments. Aquinas’s argument from motion states that it’s obvious some things in the universe are moving, and if they’re moving, something else must have caused them to move, and something else must have caused that to move… and so on. However, the pattern of movements can’t go on forever since there wouldn’t be that one thing that started the whole series. Therefore, there must be an “initial mover, an extraordinary being that started the universe moving but is not itself moved by anything else – and this being we call God,” (Vaughn, Lewis. Pg. 65).
