Aquinas rejects the idea of infinite regress as there can be no first cause in an infinite regress. The third way he describes God is by saying that God is necessary and he has the quality of aseity.
“The third way is taken from possibility and necessity. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to be corrupted, and consequently, it is possible for them to be and not to be. Therefore if everything an not-be then at one time there was nothing in existence. (And) it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist and thus even nothing would be in existence, which is absurd. Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of God”.
He is saying that all living creatures depend on something else for its survival. He says that God is not contingent but the necessary being. If he didn’t exist then we wouldn’t exist. F C Copleston also agrees that there has to be a necessary being.
“We do not explain the presence here and now of beings capable of existing or not existing. Therefore we must affirm the existence of a being which is absolutely necessary and completely independent”.
F C Copleston
B) This world had to be created by a God, as it could not have had been caused by itself. Anything that exists had to be caused due to the fact of change. The universe could not have happened suddenly from nothing if there was nothing to change or cause it. This is the more reason to believe that there was a god who created the world and the universe. Gottfried Leibniz was a polish philosopher who also rejected the idea of infinite regress as he believed that there had to be a sufficient reason for everything. He thought that the universe had always existed and an example that he uses, is of a geometry book. He says that likewise a book was created by someone so did the world have to be created by some one, which points towards a God. If we were to believe in infinite regress then we would keep going back and back, we would have to come to a starting point even if we were to go back infinite years. This is not a good explanation because there has to be a starting point, that starting point has to be a causer which is God. Later on another philosopher called J.L. Mackie illustrated Aquinas and Leibniz rejection of infinite regress with a modern analogy; he used an example of a train carriage by saying that imagine an infinite railway carriage all puling one other. The movement is partly explained by saying that the one in front is pulling the on behind it. This does not make complete sense to us unless there is an engine pulling the carriages. We wouldn’t expect the carriages to move without an engine. The existence of the engine would be a full or sufficient reason for the explanation. This analogy was used to demonstrate the principle of dependency. If there was nothing in the fist place then how could some thing have been caused? We can not explain this as we have never experienced any thing of this type. Since we can not explain how some thing can happen from nothing we come to the assumption that there has to be a god who created this world. If in front of our eyes we could see something come from nothing then we could say that the universe happened with out a causer. Richard Swinburne is another philosopher who assumes that God exists. He says that it is best to look for the simplest answer.
“It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing. No universe, no god, nothing. But there is something and so many things. If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simply being which keeps them in existence, we should do so”
Richard Swinburne
Modern science (big bang theory) backs up the idea of the universe of having a finite history and a beginning point, and not infinite regress of events.
C) I personally think that the strengths don’t out weigh the weakness but the weakness out weigh the strengths. If we were to agree that the universe was created by a God, then how do we know that the god who created the world is not the God who we think he is? How do you know that the universe was created by 1 God and not 10 gods? David Hume challenges two basic assumptions. Accepting the existence of a necessary being and that the principle that nothing causes itself.
“If all that we know from experience in the universe can cease to exist or can change, how can we think that the deity (if he exists) is (or was) any different.
David Hume
He also says that just because in our experience things happen in this way (we need a mover to move, a causer to cause, etc) this doesn’t mean that things outside our experience have to happen I the same way. Bertrand Russell was another philosopher who supported Hume’s argument. His argument was that just because things are how they are in this world doesn’t have to mean that they are the same for the out side world. He wrote a letter to copleston and said
”why he argued, did the universe have to have a sufficient reason for existing? The universe may well be a brute fact and for him that is all that there is to say on the matter”
Scientist are saying that there little particles which have caused them self’s from nothing with out a cause. The kalam argument relies on science. The kalam argument says that everything that exists must have a cause. But we have seen that that is no longer true. The theory of the big bang, that the universe started in a little point and then exploded and is getting bigger. Scientists are saying that the universe is getting bigger suggests that there was a starting point, which is the big bang. But the big bang is only a theory and hasn’t been proven. One of the main strengths of the cosmological argument is that how could any thing come from nothing. If using the big bang theory, how did the big bang happen itself? I believe in 1 God but think that the weaknesses are stronger than the strengths.