A defender may say that “ Reductio Ad Absurdum “ covers this and that it is impossible to conceive the universe as being a product of its own creation , this retaliation still leaves a loophole as it is simply an assumption to think that a reasonable human being is only able to think of God as being the first cause.
Another criticism is from David Hume, a Scottish philosopher who states a peculiar view. Hume stated that for example, just because when we hit one snooker ball into another, the “hit” ball moves, this does not necessarily mean that the motion of the second ball was due to the impact of the first; Hume believed that we only see such events as this because our minds impose causation upon our perception as a result of our experience of it appearing so throughout life, so often. With this view Hume shows that he believes that no being depends on another cause for its existence.
An understandable opposing point to this of Hume’s view is that it is impossible for us to imagine an event such as a snooker ball moving on impact of another as not being a result of a cause ( the first snooker ball hitting it) , Hume’s point is seemingly ridiculous here as science has proven otherwise.
Thirdly, some critics may argue that Aquinas failed to grasp that an infinite regress does not need support from a being such as God as it never ends and never begins , Aquinas seems to confuse infinite regress with a very long finite series in which a first cause would be relevant ; by this logic, Aquinas does not in any way disprove that infinite regress is an impossibility and therefore the universe could quite possibly have always existed .
Lastly, Aquinas contradicts himself again by suggesting in one way that “ everything at some time does not exist” and then “ at some time everything doesn’t exist” , these two statements shown by his way of “contingency” do not suggest at all that whilst one human being may die , another few billion may not be walking and talking; he simply makes it known that at some point every being will exist and cease to exist but not necessarily at the same time as another being, by this logic the universe can thrive without God as humans are always reproducing and the population thrives without needing an ultimate being to resurrect “corrupted beings” as they do not all die out at the same time , it is a never ending cycle unless all humans become extinct at one time.
To conclude, the criticisms of the Cosmological arguments go quite far to weaken the arguments, this is because , like the criticisms of the ontological arguments , such criticisms address the mostly Atheist view that God’s existence is not necessary however , a determined theist would state that God is a necessity ( due to their beliefs). One criticism which is not very effective in weakening the Cosmological however, is that of Hume’s which states causation is not existent, as this is illogical.
