God is seen as the uncaused cause who is the cause of all the other causes.
Thomas Aquinas gave his explanation of this by saying “Everything we see is subject to motion, which is a broad term for change, movement and so on.” Which is saying we can only can prove things exist by using our senses to see them, this is the way we can also prove the universe exists, we can see it.
The posterior (an argument in which the truth of a proposition may only be known to be true after empirical evidence has been used to prove the posterior is true or false) is: “Because it is based on what can be seen in the world and the universe” which is saying, that things are based on experience and the world must have been created.
This is Thomas Aquinas’ version. He believed that there was no doubt that there was a God, and these are his 5 proofs that God exists. These are:
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The first way is an argument of motion- “it’s necessary to arrive at a first mover by no other; and this everyone understands to be God”. This means that things don’t happen by themselves, something must have caused it. (Prime mover), so everything that happens has a cause and this cause in turn has a cause, so all things must have a starting point.
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The second way is an argument from the universal fact of cause and effect- “therefore it is necessary to admit a first cause, to which everyone gives the name of God”. This says that the universe must have been created, which means there had to be a creator.
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The third way follows from the fact that things in nature come into existence and go out of existence- “necessary, having of itself its own necessity…this all men speak of as God”. There needs to be a necessity being, which people believe was God, he thought there was a time that the universe did not exist, and so God must have created it.
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The fourth way from the fact that things in nature come into existence and go out of existence- “Therefore there must be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God”.
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The fifth way is based on the fact that everything in the world-both animate and inanimate things-acts towards an end- “therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this we call God”.
“The weakness of this argument is that there is a difficulty of excluding as impossible an endless regress of events requiring no beginning.”- Everything you see in the world had a beginning at one time or another, so it’s reasonable to assume that the world itself had a beginning, then somebody must have begun it.
“Bertrand Russell and Professor Copleston declared that the universe was a brute fact, and we should simply accept its existence, without seeking for any further meaning”.
No one actually knows how the universe got there, either God created it, or it is infinite and has always and will always be there, we just have to accept the fact, that people believe what they want to believe, but no one actually knows.
William Lane Craig stated that the universe must be finite, must have had a beginning and that God was the first cause.
Ed Miller argued that time began when the universe began, and again the first cause was God.
Leibiniz put forward his argument about the cosmological argument as follows:
“Suppose the book of the elements of geometry to have been eternal, one copy having been written down from an earlier one. It is evident that even though a reason can be given for the present book out of a past one, we should never come to a full reason”
Here he’s saying that nothing takes place without a sufficient reason (a full explanation). If there was a sufficient reason for the book, then you have to go back to when something is not dependant on anything else.
There have been other explanations of whether God did exist or not, but there is no proof that there is, or isn’t a God. My overall conclusion of this is that I do believe that something caused the world to happen. I personally do believe that God created the universe, but it is up to the individual to what they want to believe, but I do also think that God is not the only solution to the existence of the universe. Influence from your family may influence your opinion, but it is not there decision, you can only make that choice, not your family.
