Thomas Aquinas Cosmological Argument

Invalid Cosmological Argument There are many philosophical proofs for the existence of God. Each one relies on your spiritual intuition to just know that God exists. In this essay, I will be explaining and arguing against Thomas Aquinas’ cosmological argument for the existence of God. This argument says that everything in the world has to have a cause, but nothing can be caused unless it is caused by something else. From this, there are two possibilities, an infinite series of causes or a first cause. According to this argument, the infinite series is not possible, so the only alternative has to be true, which is a first cause, or God. This argument points to the conclusion that a first cause, or an unmoved mover, God, exists and created the

He concludes his third argument by saying, “Wherefore, it is necessary to posit something which is necessary through itself, not having the cause of its necessity from elsewhere, but is the cause of necessity to other things, which is what everyone calls God” (135). Moad refutes this by saying for something to be necessary, it means it is not possible that it doesn’t exist and that “a contingent thing might be caused to exist by something else, and yet not be necessary through that cause, if it remains that it might not have been cause to exist by it” (135). If this is true, then we can come to the conclusion that God involuntarily causes the existence of other voluntary creators. This is something that Aquinas would refute because he believes in a God who has complete voluntary control over everything that exists. This last premise doesn’t explicitly say that God involuntarily causes things to happen, it just recognizes the possibility that this idea could be true. It all depends on how you interpret the premises, which is something Aquinas should’ve stated more clearly so anyone who reads his argument knows exactly what he’s trying to

Entailment, Determinism, and a Cosmological Argument, explains and proves that “there exists a first cause or causes” (207). Dumsday supports the idea that “past causal chains cannot extend back infinitely, but must instead terminate in first uncaused cause (or causes)” (193). By using syllogistic reasoning (“if p then q, if q then r, therefore if p then r”), Dumsday proves that entailment is transitive (196-7). To add support to his argument, he writes:

“past causal chain[s] whose members are not merely causally linked, but linked by relations of entailment (hence transitively). Any past casual chain of that sort will, necessarily, not admit of an infinite past, and hence will have to have a first member…a clear case of such can be found in causal chains present within a casually closed deterministic physical universe” (197).

Dumsday believes that because all chains have to have a first cause, the idea of the universe having a first cause has to be true also, because they are related transitively. This article supports Aquinas’ argument and proves that there is a first cause, but it doesn’t prove that the first cause is