A contingent being is referred to as us, humans, as we all have a beginning and an end. A necessary being is referred to as God, as he is infinite.
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 is no doubt that there is a God, and these are his 5 proofs that God exists. Three of which are relevant to the cosmological argument. 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. A God.
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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. A God.
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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. A God.
Another Philosopher that contributed to the cosmological argument was Leibniz. Leibniz explained that the cosmological argument is the ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason’. He said that even if the universe has always been in existence, it would still require and explanation, no a sufficient reason for its existence, wince we need to establish why there is something rather than nothing. By going backwards in time forever we will need arrive at such a complete explanation, for there is nothing within the universe to show why it exists- so the reason for its existence must lie outside of it.
Richard Swinbourne argued that the answer lies in the fact that there ought, actually, to be nothing rather than something. The fact that there is something suggests a creator.
People often say that ‘things cannot have got going by themselves’. This argument can be called ‘the beginning argument;, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Kalam cosmological argument’ which is popular in the religion of Islam.
Since everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence, and since the universe began to exist, the universe has a cause of its existence. Transcending the entire universe that exists as a cause which brought the universe into being.