...Explain Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument The basis of the cosmological argument is that the universe cannot account for its own existence. There must be a reason, the argument says, for the existence of the universe and the reason has to be something which is not part of the physical world of time and space. The cosmological argument was used by Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) in his five ways, which were ways of demonstrating the existence of God through inductive argument based on observation and evidence. In Aquinas’ view, knowledge of God could be reached in two ways; one through revelation for example, through the words of the Bible and the other is through our own human reason. Aquinas thought that if we applied reason to the evidence that we see around us then we would be able to reach valuable truths. To show that God exists, Aquinas had presented it through five ways because he was convinced that although the existence of God was not self-evident, it could be demonstrated with logical thought. He wrote about the five ways in his book Summa Theologica. Of Aquinas’ five ways, the first three are different alternatives of the cosmological argument. His version of the argument was based on two assumptions: the universe exists and there must be a reason why. This was used as a starting point to explain the fact that there must be an explanation of why anything exists. In his first way, Aquinas concentrated on the existence of change or motion in the world. He considered the ways...
Words: 652 - Pages: 3
...Thomas Aquinas version of The Cosmological Argument Aquinas developed the five ways to prove the existence of God. He based his arguments on what could be observed, his observations included that the universe moves and changes. From his observations he reached conclusions about the existence of God. However, Aquinas did actually accept the fact that he may not prove that the cause of the universe is the God of classical theism. He also did not accept infinity because he believed that there had to be an explanation of the existence of things and that if the chain of movement and causes went back forever there would be no reason for the existence of the universe. He quoted ‘God’s effects are enough to prove that God exists, even if they may not be enough to help us comprehend what he is’. The first argument was based on motion, he did not believe in movement only from one place to another, but also in the movement of change of quality or quantity. Aquinas argued that everything is in motion, and for something to be in motion something must have been put in motion by some sort of object or force. He believed that the process of moving and being moved cannot be infinite. Therefore there must be a first mover or prime mover that itself is unmoved, this mover must be outside the universe. This mover is God. The second way was based on causes and effects. He said that from clear observation that every object must be created and that everything that exists has a cause. Aquinas argued...
Words: 519 - Pages: 3
...Examine the cosmological argument for the existence of God. The cosmological argument is an a posteriori argument which intends to prove that there is an intelligent being that exists; the being is distinct from the universe, explains the existence of the universe, and is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. The basic notion of cosmological arguments is that the world and everything in it is dependent on something other than itself for its existence. It explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused. Many philosophers have explored the cosmological argument, including Aquinas, in much depth, through his Five Ways in the Summa Theologica. Thomas Aquinas rejected the ontological argument of Anselm, saying that had it been convincing, the existence of God would be self-evident to everyone. He argued that the fact people deny God’s existence is proof enough that it is not in fact self evident. Aquinas believed from faith that God existed and he believed that the real world contained enough evidence for this; Aquinas wrote the Five Ways in order to prove his beliefs. Each ‘way’ of the Five Ways is an exercise of reason, not of faith; they are the classical exposition of natural theology. The first three of the five ways are based on the cosmological argument. The first way that Aquinas proposed to support the cosmological argument regarded the ‘unmoved mover’; he stated that...
Words: 1393 - Pages: 6
...The Cosmological Argument The Cosmological argument infers that the existence of the universe is due to the existence of God. Plato bought about one of the oldest arguments between 428-327 BCE. Plato believed that there is a self moving principle from which all change and motion originated. This principle is the core which is responsible for the world. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century developed Plato’s views; however this development was with a theistic principle. The first three of the five ways produced was about the cosmological argument. Aquinas believed in the god of classical theism. The cosmological argument is a probability argument because it’s an a posteriori argument which takes its principles from an observation of the world. Its premises are drawn from experience and reach an inductive conclusion but are synthetic. Aquinas was a famous 13th century philosopher who came up with one of the most famous appliable cosmological arguments. These arguments were the first 3 of the 5 ways as mentioned above in the ‘Summa Theologica’. Aquinas’ first way referred to motion. Aquinas said “something’s are in motion. Now whatever is moved is moved by another…. Therefore it is necessary at a first mover…. Everyone understands to be God”. Aquinas further explained this as the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. For example, fire which is actually hot, changes wood, which is potentially hot, to the state of actually being hot and vice versa and it must be something...
Words: 1051 - Pages: 5
...The cosmological argument The word “cosmos” means universe. The cosmological argument argues the existence of a first cause, God, from a posteriori and priori premise. It argues that the universe is contingent and therefore requires a cause, as nothing is the cause of itself. This is known as redicto- ad- absurdum. The argument is backed up by the five ways put forward by the 12th century theologian and philosopher, St Thomas Aquinas. In the 12th century, St Thomas Aquinas put forward 5 ways to prove the existence of God in his book “Summa Theologica”. Aquinas’s five ways to prove the existence of God are based on the work of Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, whose work was later translated in Arabic, by Muslim philosophers Al- Kindi and Al- Ghazali, and then translated into Latin. I will be examining three of Aquinas’ ways, uncaused cause, unmoved mover and necessary being. As well as examining these three ways to prove the existence of God, I will be looking at their supporters and critics. Aquinas’ 1st way to prove the existence of God was the uncaused cause also known as the first cause. Aquinas considers the world in terms of “cause and effect” which means that without a cause there is no effect. Everything in the universe has a cause. Human beings have a cause (their parents) too. Aquinas argued that we could follow the chain of “cause and effect” all the way back, but there cannot be an infinite chain. There must be an uncaused cause, which causes everything...
Words: 1140 - Pages: 5
...A) Outline the cosmological argument for the existence of God “ A may be explained by B, and B by C, but in the end there will be some one object on whom all other objects depend” Richard Swinburne. The cosmological argument is an a posteriori argument which therefore basis it’s conclusions on observations and experience; this is difficult to challenge. Over many years, different scholars have added their opinions to Aristotle and Plato’s contributions, making that argument stronger. The most famous version of the cosmological is associated with the Christian apologist Thomas Aquinas. In his Summa theological he sets out to demonstrate that the universe requires an explanation and this explanation demands a necessary and non-contingent being, God. This ides is key at the heart of all cosmological arguments. “The series must start with something, since nothing can come from nothing” Metaphysics. Plato and Aristotle postulated the need for a craftsman for their arguments with the fact of motion, which, they argued, needs a prior agency to motivate it. This mover would, itself, have no further mover, because it would be a primes mover, which is a self-actualising, necessary being. Neither Aristotle nor Plato understood how the universe could exist without such a mover. Aquinas further developed this idea in his first and second way. Aquinas’ first way states that all things are in motion (a state of change: for Aquinas, “motion is the reduction of something from...
Words: 341 - Pages: 2
...Outline the cosmological argument for the existence of God (21 marks) The cosmological argument aims to prove the existence of God whilst also providing an explanation for the beginning of the universe, with different views coming from various scholars. It is an a posteriori argument, meaning we can draw conclusions from experiences based on what we see around us, although it is not a fact. Despite the separate interpretations, the cosmological argument revolves around a first cause which started the universe. This cause is what we come to know as God, and the scholars mainly focus on different ways of proving his existence by looking at the world around us. When looking at the argument, Thomas Aquinas is the driving force behind most of its foundations and ideas. His first way from five in his book ‘Summa Theologica’, he outlines the need for a first cause because of the motion we see in the world. Nothing inanimate can move itself, and requires another force in order for it to go from potentiality to actuality. But everything has to be moved by something else which would go on infinitely, so something must have been the first mover. This first mover is understood to be God, who set the world in motion when he created it. This mirrors Aristotle’s ideas about planetary motion, and Aquinas believed God continues to keep the world functioning and moving. Furthermore, Aquinas’ second way also represents the cosmological argument as the way of causation. When you look at everything...
Words: 619 - Pages: 3
...Explain the cosmological argument with particular reference to: The rejection to infinite regress and god as the necessary being (30 Marks) The Cosmological Argument is a posteriori argument put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas. Gottfried Leibnitz also made a similar argument. In the Cosmological Argument, Aquinas said that he believed that all things in the world were caused to exist by something. The universe exists, so there must be something that caused the universe. He believed the first cause to be God. He said that God is the only thing that was not caused by something else. The argument seeks to prove the existence of God from looking at the world we live in and the universe as a whole. The whole theory is based on cause and effect (when one event causes another to happen, the cause is why it happens and the effect is what happens.) Aristotle believed that all movement depends on there being a mover, and there has to be something that originates this. The universe follows this principle so needs a mover – this is the prime mover. The mover caused everything to come into existence, however, needs nothing to cause it and so must be exempt from the laws of nature. Thomas Aquinas created five ways to prove the existence of God, the first proof is based on motion, It can be noted that some things in the universe are in motion and it follows that whatever is in the state of motion must have been placed in motion by another such act, and things achieve their potential through...
Words: 510 - Pages: 3
...b) To what extent was Hume successful in his critique of the cosmological argument? [10]Hume makes some very important challenges to the Cosmological argument which some believe count decisively against it. One of the key areas he calls into question is the argument’s dependence upon what Leibniz termed the principle of sufficient reason. In this principle an adequate explanation must be a total explanation. The universe requires an explanation of itself as a whole. But many would say, as Russell later told Copleston: “Then I can only say that you’re looking for something which can’t be got, and which one ought not to expect to get.” If you have explained each individual element of a series any explanation of the series as a whole would seem to be superfluous, and besides he says that ‘the whole’ doesn’t really exist anyway – it is ‘an arbitrary act of mind’ that makes things into wholes. What we term the ‘whole universe’ in modern physics may be only a bubble in a larger reality that we have no way of grasping. Also if we are only entitled to talk about causes when we have had experience of them, then this argument would seem to be over-stretching itself in speculating upon what it cannot know. On the other hand, there is of course a problem with stopping at a certain point and saying that we should seek no further explanation, in that it is a basic presupposition of all scientific work. However, even though a principle of rationality is that we can find an explanation for...
Words: 2857 - Pages: 12
...The cosmological argument (i) Examine the view that the cosmological argument provides an explanation for the world and is a trustworthy basis for belief in the existence of God. (21) The cosmological argument, also known as the first cause argument, is a classical argument for the existence of God. The word cosmological comes from the Greek for order and it is an inductive argument as the premises are true but the conclusion may not be, and it is also synthetic where the truth is determined by experience and needs to be proven. It is also a posteriori and also based on natural theology. The Cosmological argument finds its answer for the start of the universe through causes, meaning everything is caused by something, or everything is dependent on something else. The argument attempts to find proof for God’s existence stating that as something cannot come from nothing God must exist in order for anything and everything else to exist. The origins of the cosmological argument come from Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Plato 428-347 BC records one of the earliest versions of the Cosmological arguments in his book of ‘Laws’. Plato writes about the argument through an exchange between an Athenian and Clianis. The Athenian attempts to prove the existence of the gods by arguing that, of all the different types of motion, the motion “which can move itself” is “necessarily the earliest and mightiest of all changes”. It is clear from his argument that infinite regress...
Words: 1053 - Pages: 5
...The Kalam Cosmological Argument: (KCA) Of the things debated in society, perhaps nothing is more hotly contested than the existence of a God. Over the course of time there have been many arguments made from many different angles. For example, an argument in favor of existence is the teleological argument also known as “fine tuning,” or the “argument from design” argues that the universe is so organized as to suggest the necessity of a designer. (1) Likewise there are many arguments against the existence of a God; perhaps the most well know is the “problem of evil” which argues if there is an omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect being, he (or she) would know where evil is, have the power to destroy it, and being morally perfect would...
Words: 929 - Pages: 4
...The Cosmological Argument An important argument to try and prove the existence of God is the Cosmological Argument brought on by observations of the physical universe, made by Saint Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth century Christian philosopher. The cosmological argument is a result from the study of the cosmos; Aquinas borrows ideas from Aristotle to make this systematically organized argument. Aquinas’ first point begins with the observation that everything is moving. Aquinas’ says that everything that moves must be moved by another moving thing, which has to be moved by another moving thing and so on. This cannot be infinite though, because consequently the motion of the series would have no origin, and the origin of this series cannot be moving because then there would have to be something moving it. Therefore, God, being a perfect, unmoved, uncaused being, would have to be the unmoving origin, “The First Mover”, of the series of moving things. The second point made by Aquinas’ is that everything is caused and what is caused to exist has to be caused by another thing because nothing can cause its own self to exist. This chain of caused things caused by another thing cannot be endless because that would mean there would be no beginning to cause the existence therefore, the existence of the origin of this chain of caused things would have to be uncaused. So God would have to be the first uncaused, non dependent origin of all the other existing caused things. Regarding Aquinas’...
Words: 654 - Pages: 3
...Explain how the existence of God may be proved by Cosmological arguments (30) There are many arguments that can be displayed to provide evidence for the existence of God. The cosmological argument, also known as the first cause argument, is a posteriori argument. This means that the evidence used to prove the argument can be observed by anyone, which makes the argument more accessible and user friendly. The argument is also an inductive argument, which means that it can have many possible conclusions; not necessarily God. This argument is a strong argument, which tries to deduce the existence of God through cause and effect. It’s based upon the principle that everything must have been caused by something in order to exist. The cosmological argument has long history, going back to the philosophers of Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz. All of these philosophers may have had different ideas about God, although they all agreed that the universe is not self-explanatory and must have had a sole cause in order for it to come into existence. Plato was an Ancient Greek Philosopher who was considered as the father of modern philosophy. In fact, one of the earliest forms of a cosmological argument was found in Plato’s writings: Timaeus and The Laws. In The Laws, we see the argument for the existence of God being proposed as the very fact that the universe exists and it also goes on to discuss the principles of change and motion. Plato is proposing the necessity of a ‘self moved’ mover, implying...
Words: 1328 - Pages: 6
...The Cosmological argument argues for the existence of God a posteriori based on the apparent order in the universe. For Aristotle, the existence of the universe needs an explanation, a cause, as it could not have come from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing so since there is something, there must have been some other thing that is its cause. Aristotle rules out an infinite progression of causes, so, that led to the conclusion that there must be a First Cause. Likewise with motion, there must have been a first cause; Aristotle calls this the ‘Prime Mover’. There is a God, says Aristotle -for how else does motion begin? Whilst this argument does generally offer some support for the existence of God, it does not prove his existence. Aquinas believed that, since the universe is God's creation, evidence of God's existence can be found in his creation using intellect and reason, as such a concept of God is beyond all direct human experience. Hence, he devised his 'Five Ways,' 5 a posteriori arguments for the existence of God, based on our empirical experience of the universe. The Cosmological argument rests on the first three of Aquinas' Five Ways. The first way is called the argument from motion or ‘change’. It is in this first way that Aquinas follows Aristotle’s ‘prime mover’ thesis. The first way (The 'Kalam' argument) follows as: • Everything in the world is moving or changing • Nothing can move or change by itself • There cannot be an infinite regress of things changing other...
Words: 949 - Pages: 4
...Philosophy essay 09/02/2015 a) Explain the cosmological argument (25 marks) a) St Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar and priest who produced a large amount of writing attempted to prove the existence of God. He was most well know for this through his book 'Summa Theologica' which was left unfinished when he died. Within this book he explains the 'five ways', which he used to try and prove the existence of God. Aquinas though of the 'five ways' in order to try to prove and explain the existence of God. Within this concept it is the first three of the five ways that have been used to form the cosmological argument. Aquinas has said that it may not be possible to prove that the universe came into existence. This is supported in his book 'Summa Theologica', Aquinas says "God's effects... are enough to prove that God exists, even if they may not be enough to help us comprehend what he is". The fist of the five ways is based on motion. Within this theory he attempts to explain that an object is only able to move if a force that s outside of the object is acting on it. He described this as being a chine of events or movements that are not able to go back to infinity. He describes that there must have been a first. He called this the 'Prime mover', the prime mover he described to be unmoved itself. As everything in existence has to be moved by something else and therefore must be linked back to the prime mover. The second way Aquinas said identifies a series of causes and effects...
Words: 550 - Pages: 3
