Explain the cosmological argument for existence of God

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Explain the cosmological argument for existence of God

The cosmological argument is an a posterior argument which has a long history, going back to the great classical philosophers of Plato, Aristotle, Leibnitz and Kant. All of them believed that the universe was the result of a transcendent being called G-d. Although these philosophers may have had different ideas about G-d, they all agreed that the universe was not self explanatory and must have had a sole cause in order for it to come into existence. Although the cosmological argument had various forms, each version focused on a key fundamental question: Why the universe began, why it was created and who or what created it. The case for the Cosmological Argument is best and most famously put forward by St Thomas Aquinas in his book Summa Theologicae which contained the ‘Five ways’

The argument starts off with his rejection of the ontological argument, as he says “[...] an argument that says G-d’s existence is self-evident we cannot use [...] as we can’t see the self evidence.” He argued that one first needs to argue about G-d from evidence we find in the world today. This is quite an Aristotelian concept; Aristotle was a philosopher who Aquinas studied in Cologne and translated his works.

His first argument was the “Unmoved mover” argument. The argument is concerned with things which change. Everything that is in motion is moved by something else, infinite regress is impossible; therefore there must be a first mover. The movement, to which Aquinas is referring, is the movement from one state to another, from potentiality to actuality. This is not an argument relating to the beginning of the universe; rather it relates to the way everything depends on something else for the changes to occur. For Aquinas, the changes that occur from moment to moment depend on the first mover (i.e. G-d).

This first argument is very similar to the next argument which Aquinas called the uncaused cause, or the first cause argument. In the world we find an order of efficient causes. There is no case where a thing is found to be its own efficient cause; it would have to exist before itself, which is impossible. Efficient causes cannot go to infinity because the first cause is the cause of middle and the middle cause of end cause. Without a cause, there is no effect. If causes went to infinity, there would be no intermediate cause and no present effect for us. There must be a first efficient cause, which is in itself uncaused.  The focus of this argument is again on dependency, that everything depends upon something else to cause it. The difference between this argument and the first argument is that this argument is focused upon the things that causes something to change, rather than the things themselves which change which is what the unmoved mover is concerned about. The Unmoved mover focuses on the present moment whereas the first cause focuses on the past up to the present moment. It is therefore logical to see how the two fit together to give a greater understanding. For example wood has the potential to turn into fire, but it needs the cause of a spark in order to move from potentiality to actuality and turn into the fire.

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The third part of his argument is the necessity and contingency argument. The argument states that some contingent beings exist, if any contingent being exist, then a necessary being must exist (because contingent beings require a necessary being as their ultimate cause), therefore there exists a necessary being (which is the ultimate cause of the existence of contingent beings). C.S. Evans expounds the argument “[...] Ultimately the explanation of contingent beings’ existence will be incomplete unless there exists a necessary being, a being which cannot fail to exist, who is the cause of all contingent beings[...].” The argument needs ...

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