Explain the main properties of the cosmological argument.

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A Explain the main properties of the cosmological argument.

The cosmological argument began with Plato and ever since been defended and attacked by many great philosophers.
One of the supporters was Leibniz.
The cosmological argument is basically an argument about causation. Its major supporter was Thomas Aquinas though Gotfried Leibniz also put forward a simplified version of Aquinas's cosmological argument. The major critics of the argument have included David Hume and Bertrand Russell who question the basic principle that the argument works from.

While the arguments of Aquinas assume that the universe cannot be temporally infinite, there is a version of the cosmological argument (supported by Leibniz (1646-1714) among others) that allows that the universe is temporally infinite.
Leibniz regards the cosmological argument as a strong argument because there has to be an explanation for life.

In 1710 Leibniz furthered Aquinas’ third “way” (self existence) into what he called the “Principle of Sufficient Reason”. By ‘Sufficient Reason’ he meant “complete explanation”.  He thinks it is logical that there is a reason for existence.

Leibniz put forward a very simple and understandable version of the cosmological argument, which states that there must be a reason, why things exist because there must be a reason why anything happens and why one thing happens rather than another.  If something exists, it is that something faced with the possibility of making it exist or not making it exist chose to make it exist. Ultimately as things exist, there must be a first-mover that itself was not caused to exist.  This first-mover is what we understand by God. As things exist, God must exist.

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Some great base must exist, he said, that was in itself the ultimate reason, the ultimate “brute fact”. Coppleston, in his famous debate with Bertrand Russell, described Leibniz’s logical end as a “necessary being” or a “being, which must and cannot not exist”.

However many major thinkers have rejected the cosmological argument such as David Hume.
Hume states that it is illogical to think of God. God is just claimed as an excuse because of the need for a first mover. God is just a name to a process we can’t define.
Hume is an empiricist (bases everything on experience).

Empiricists ...

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