The Cosmological

Argument For The

Existence of God
By Sarah Allen
St. Thomas Aquinas was born
in the year 1225 and died in
1274.

He was an Italian priest of the

Catholic Church.

He was the foremost classical

proponent of natural theology.
He was influenced
by Aristotle. He thought that reason and
faith are in agreement as
reason supports the belief
in God.
He has 5 main ideas but only 3Motion means the way or method by
relate. ( Summa Theologica) which something or object becomes
something else
to the cosmological argument.

These are based on motion, the

efficient cause and contingency
and necessity.
+ His 1st argument is based on motion.
Aquinas said, “The first and more manifest way is
the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident
to our senses, that in the world some things are in
motion. Now whatever is moved is moved by
another, for nothing can be moved except it is in
potentiality towards that which is moved whereas a
thing moves in as much as it is in act. For motion is
nothing else than the reduction of something from
potentiality to actuality except by something in a
state of actuality.
This simply means that things only change from
potentiality to actuality because of some external
influence.

He also says that it is therefore necessary to arrive

at a prime mover, moved by no other and this
everyone understands to be God

This in someway is like Aristotle's argument

about explaining a perfect world.
Aquinas's greatest work was the Summa, and it is the fullest
presentation of his views.
This order is cyclical. It begins with God and His existence in
Question 2. The entire first part of the Summa deals with God and His
creation, which reaches its zenith in man. The First Part therefore
ends with the treatise on man.
The second part of the Summa deals with man's purpose, the meaning
of life, which is Happiness. The Ethics detailed in this part summarize
the ethics (Aristotelian in nature) which man must follow to reach his
intended destiny.
He believed that nothing is an efficient
cause of itself and that it is not possible for
efficient causes to go back to infinity,
because if there is no efficient first cause,
then here will not be any following causes.
 In Conclusion: In the words of St. Thomas
Aquinas, “It is necessary to admit a first
efficient cause to which everyone gives
the name God” (Summa Theologica)
 Aquinas wrote: “ The third way is taken from
possibility and necessity.”
 This means that if everything has the possibility
not to exist, then at some point nothing existed!
But if nothing existed then, nothing would exist
now!!
 Clearly things exist now, so there must be
something that cannot not-exist. This must have
necessary existence which is not dependent
upon anything else – and this we call God.
 David Hume (1711-76), was a Scottish
Philosopher and Historian.
 He finished his first philosophical work, A
Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).
 He was educated at Edinburgh and lived
in France( 1734-37).
 David Hume attacked the idea that the
First cause must be God. He believed
strongly that humans should only draw
conclusions about things they had
experience of ( He was an empiricist). We
do not have experience of Universes being
created, therefore it is simply not possible
to argue from causes we witness within
the universe to causes of it.
 Hume believed that cause and effect
patterns in our universe do not require an
explanation. They either simply exist as
facts, or are the results of our human
minds trying to shape or find order in our
experience. If cause and effect
relationships cannot be assumed to be true
(guaranteed), then it cannot be argued that
there was a first cause, ie. God.
 Why not a endless series of causes?
 Can there not be something that has always
existed, but may cease to exist at some time in
the future?
 Why should the chain of causes lead back to a
single origin – might there not be a whole
collection of separate origins.
 Aquinas bases his argument on a contingent
universe – but in some ways the universe is not
contingent so not everything applies to that
theory.
 Kalam is an Arabic word which means to
argue or discuss. The Muslim scholars al-
Kindi (9th Century CE) and al-Ghazali
(1058-1111) developed the kalam argument
to explain Gods creation of the Universe.
 The Kalam argument says that everything
that exists has cause of its existence and
this includes the universe as a whole.
 Al-Ghazali also argued that the universe
must have a beginning: he rejected the
idea of infinite time because of the
unacceptable logical paradoxes that would
result from this.
 To conclude: There is a beginning to the
universe, and the universe has a cause.
This cause, at the beginning of the
universe, is God.
 William Lane Craig developed a modern
version of the argument in his book (1979)
called The Kalam Cosmological Argument.
 He argued as follows:
 The present moment would not exist in an
infinite universe since it makes no sense to
talk about adding moments to an infinite time.
 This is essentially the same as the earlier
argument but rephrased in terms of time
rather than space.
 He also argued that the present time does
exist as the result of a chronological series
of past events.
 So the universe must be finite.
 It must have had a beginning.
 Something must have cause its beginning.
 Therefore the universe had a first cause of
its existence.
 Craig also said that there couldn’t have been
an infinite series of past events because then
each subsection of events would also equal
the total number of events.

 To conclude: “Since everything that begins to

exist has a cause of its existence, and since
the universe began to exist, we conclude,
therefore, the universe has a cause of its
existence.”
 Craig’s argument has two parts: first, he
seeks to prove that the universe, logically,
must have a first cause and then he tries to
show that the act of creation must either
have been the result of choice or of a natural
occurrence. Supporters say that as the rules
of nature did not exist before the beginning
of the universe, it cannot be a result of
natural cause. Therefore it has to have come
about by choice indicating a personal God.
 In 1947, there was a debate on BBC radio
between F.C Copleston and Bertrand
Russell. Copleston supported the
cosmological argument where as Russell
opposed it. The debate focused on the
‘The Principle of Sufficient Reason’ first
introduced centuries earlier by Gottfield
Leibniz (1646-1716).
 He said: “Cause is a kind of sufficient
reason. Only contingent beings can have a
cause. God is His own sufficient reason
and He is not the cause of Himself. By
sufficient reason, in the full sense, I mean
an explanation for the existence of some
particular being.
 In other words, Copleston is saying that
the most plausible explanation of the
universe is God.
 Contingent things could have been
otherwise, and so do not contain of
themselves a sufficient reason for their
existence. All things in the universe depend
on the other and so nothing in the universe
can give a sufficient reason for its existence.
 The reason for the existence, therefore,
must live outside it. This necessary being is
God according to Copleston.
 Russell rejected the idea of contingency
and that there was a necessary being ,God
, on which all things depend. He said that
we can agree that each separate being
has a mother, but this does not mean that
humanity has a whole has one mother!
 In the same way, individual contingent
things have causes and reasons, but it
makes no sense to talk about reasons for
the universe as a whole.
 Russell concluded that “I should say that
the universe is just there, and that’s all.”
 Hume had made similar objection centuries
before.
 He also stated that if God is the explanation
of all, and everything requires an
explanation, then what is the explanation for
God? Why should God be self-explanatory
in a way that the universe is not?
 The Debate details
 There is a transcript of the debate in
the cosmological argument for the
existence of God.
 They do not come to a conclusion
but they decide to move on to
another subject.
Other Modern Arguments – John L.
Mackie
 Mackie responded to the criticisms of
Aquinas. Modern science and
mathematics had moved on from the
medieval world-view, which was very
hierarchal.
 He defended the idea that there cannot be
an infinite regression of causes.
 He also said that them movement must
begin with
 Other Modern Arguments
 Anthony Kenny – (1931 – present)
 He bases his observations on Newton’s
Laws on Motion.
 Kenny thinks that Newton’s Law proves
Aquinas wrong. It is possible that an object
can be in one of two states – stationary or
moving at a constant rate – without any
external force acting on it .
 This would appear to mean that Aquinas’
statement that nothing moves itself is
incorrect..
The End……………