Aristotle was of the view that: ‘nothing can come from nothing’, in which he means that how else did the chain come into existence unless it was caused by something external, i.e. God. If we reject infinite regress then there must be cause and a reason so there is therefore ‘sufficient reason’ to suppose that where once there was nothing there is now something and there must be reason for the fact of its existence.
Another strength of the Cosmological Argument comes from Richard Swinburne. Swinburne says that God is quite simply the easiest explanation for everything. He bases his ideas on the fact that if a single sufficient explanation for can be found, then there is no gain in exploring other more complex explanations. Swinburne expresses this in the following quote: “if we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so even if we cannot explain the existence of that simple being.” Coplestone rejected the idea of infinite regress on the basis that an infinite chain could only ever consist of contingent beings, which could never have brought about their own existence. But if the explanation for the universe’ existence cannot be found within the universe it is logical to look outside for the cause?
Despite this many other philosophers would disagree and see the argument as weak. For example, Bertrand Russell famously refused to even debate the issue since as far as he concerned, it was something we just couldn’t ever know for sure, and therefore wasn’t even worth talking about, as Russell said: “The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.”
Coplestone also argues that partial explanations are unsatisfactory and that an adequate explanation is one to which nothing further can be added therefore the idea that the universe ‘just is’ is insufficient. This though is completely ignoring one of the key points of the cosmological argument, the concept that God is self-causing and does not need an explanation.
It can be considered a ‘logical’ argument as of course we see order, cause and effect all around us everyday. This is the basis of the actual argument itself, leading one to logically assume that this theory is strong and plausible. This combined with the fact that science is yet to come up with a better explanation (as the big bang needed a cause) are reasons why the argument comes across in strong vein.
The other problem we see again with arguing from science is that even if we accept that there is some kind of prime causer, who caused the big bang, we still can’t prove that this was the God of classical theism, all we know is that something caused it. This is the same problem we see with most of the Cosmological Argument, as soon as we go from “there must be something which caused the first thing to happen” to “the God of classical theism was the first cause”, we are making a leap of logic without any factual basis for this.
A key version (and now weakness) of the Cosmological Argument is Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason. Leibnitz proposed this argument in his book ‘Theodicy’, in it he says if that the natural state of “things” is for there to be nothing, surely it’s easier for there to be nothing than something? Leibnitz on does though go on to say that nothing can’t turn itself into something (since by the very nature of nothing it has no ability to cause itself to change), and our very existence shows that nothing did turn into something, there must have been some external force which caused it to do so – which is what the cosmological argument is based upon. This may suggest he saw the cosmological argument as strong, as it proposed how nothing turned into something, but this isn’t really the case as he believed that infinite regress would be impossible as if God exists he would always be there, so Leibniz states some of the strengths and weaknesses in this book.
One of the remaining criticisms of the argument is that, if God caused the universe, who caused God? The answer from the proponents of the argument is that God is omnipotent and the rules which apply to our world don’t apply to them, therefore God can be without cause. But, as David Hume said: “But if we stop, and go no further, why go so far? Why not stop at the material world?” What Hume is saying is that if we are willing to accept that God is uncaused, why can’t we accept that the universe is uncaused to? In some ways this is using the idea of Oakham’s Razor (simplest explanation is the most satisfactory), usually used to support the Cosmological Argument against the proponents by saying surely the easiest way to stop looking for causes is simply to accept that the universe is uncaused.
