Cosmological Argument Flashcards
(10 cards)
Hume: we don’t know..
‘demonstratively’ enough about the universe to assume the same quality of contingency as the observable parts of the universe.
Aquinas’s second and third way and it’s direct criticism
Aquinas: a) every single event in the universe has a cause (2nd) and it’s contingent (3rd), therefore b) the universe as a whole has a cause (god) and is contingent (necessary being = god).
Russell: a) everything in the universe has a cause/ is contingent, but b) the universe itself as a whole is uncaused/ necessary
Russell: ‘every man that…
exists has a mother… the universe has a mother’
Leibniz PSR:
Any contingent fact about the world must have an explanation
The fact that there are contingent things must have an explanation.
Contingent things cannot be explained by any contingent things.
Contingent things must be explained by something whose existence is not contingent.
C: There is a necessary being
Leibniz: ‘why there…
is something rather than nothing’
Russell: universe’s existence could be a…
‘brute fact’
Aquinas: ‘nothing would…
be in existence which is absurd’
Copleston: “In order to explain…
existence, we must come to a being who contains within itself the reason for its own existence. That is to say a being which cannot not exist.”
What did Russell claim?
that the word ‘necessary’ couldn’t meaningfully be applied to things, only to analytical propositions. He therefore rejected the notion of a necessary being and the idea existence is a real predicate.
Gerry Hughes:
suggests we should redefine ‘proof’ to include the idea of ‘overwhelming probability.’ e.g. no one has observed quarks, yet their existence is overwhelmingly probable. Similarly, no one has observed God, yet he is overwhelmingly probable as the cause of the universe (according to Hughes).
