1. Outline the key ideas of the cosmological argument and identify at least two of its strengths?

The cosmological argument is an a posteriori and inductive argument. An a posteriori is one in which the truth of a statement may only be known after empirical evidence has been used. It is only through past experiences that you are able to make the conclusion. Inductive arguments are often considered to be better than deductive arguments as they strive to provide something new in their conclusions. The conclusion goes one step further than the premises.

         It assumes that the universe has not always been in existence but is ultimately explained by a necessary external agent. The argument runs as follows: everything that exists in the universe became because it was caused b something else, and that something was itself caused by something else. However, it is necessary for something to have started this all off. In philosophical terms the universe is contingent, dependent upon other beings or events. God, however, is a necessary being, a being who is not dependent on other beings but who is self-caused and self sustained.

        The cosmological argument can be found in Aquinas’s Five Ways, Aquinas argued that because things in the world move and change and come into being there must be a first mover or a first causer. This is because nothing can move itself or cause itself. Aquinas rejected the possibility of an infinite regress of movers because this would not allow for any subsequent movers in the chain.

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        The basic form of the theistic cosmological argument may then look like this:

 

  P1: All events require a cause.

  P2: The universe is an event.

  Conclusion: God is the first cause of the universe. 

If we accept these two premises, then it may be that we will consider the conclusion to be at least probable, if we have good reasons to think that God is a likely, or even most likely, cause of its existence. In conclusion Aquinas drew the conclusion that the first mover and the first cause had to be God, the ...

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