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Thomas Aquinas Cosmological Argument

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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In William Craig’s ‘kalam’ version of the cosmological argument he argues that “the universe has a cause of its existence.” His argument relies on two crucial premises which state that “whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence” and “the universe began to exist” (Craig). In this paper, I will begin by breaking down Craig’s take on the cosmological argument. I will then propose an objection to his argument that questions why there must be a cause of the beginning of the universe, and furthermore, why this cause must be God. I will conclude with a response Craig would give to this objection.

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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-

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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.

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“Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God” (Aquinas 22). The third argument deals with possibility and necessity. He argues that it is possible for everything to be and not to be. These things cannot always exist though, and they cannot never exist because then nothing would exist.

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The second portion of the argument asserts that God’s existence is either possible or impossible, and if possible, then He exists necessarily (445). Moreover, it eliminates the thought, that God can be conceptually possible and that He may or may not

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The traditional claim of all Cosmological Arguments is defined as “something outside the universe is responsible to explain the existence of the universe” (PowerPoint 380). In the “causal argument,” or the First Cause Argument on the cosmological argument, “something” outside of the universe that is supposed to inform us about the existence of the universe is argued to be explained as God. As the first cause argument goes into depth and with the help of Thomas Aquinas, it is easy to see how God is responsible for explaining the existence of the universe around us. Within the first cause argument on the cosmological argument the following premises and conclusions are discussed: Premise 1: There exists things that are caused. Meaning that

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In this argument we already assumed that there may be possibility that God exist and finally we reached where we started. So this argument does not give us the exact information about existence of God. There are many objections on this argument but still it is a powerful argument. In my opinion, this argument is not much satisfactory. It describes that existence is greater than imagination.

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