The Cosmological Argument

Perhaps the best example of the Cosmological Argument comes in Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’:

• The unmoved Mover
• The Uncaused Causer
• Possibility and necessity
• Goodness, Truth and Nobility
• Teleological.

The first three ways are different variations of the Cosmological Argument.

1. The first Way – The Unmoved Mover (The Unchanged Changer/The prime Mover).

Everything in the universe exists in an actual state (the actus) however Aquinas argues that everything has the potential (the potentia) to become something else. What is needed to turn it from its actual to potential state is a changer (the motus). Nothing is able to change without a force changing it. Aquinas calls this the unchanged changer, God. According to Aquinas, nothing would exist unless God had the power to change it. He created the universe as it is by continuously changing actus into potentia. It was he who at the beginning turned the gases into the world; he was the motus for the creation of the universe.

2. The Second Way – The uncaused Causer (The first Cause Argument).

If we trace back our origins from generation to generation we can always establish what caused us to come into existence. If we are to believe scientists in there explanations then all humans were caused from a single celled organism. If we continue to search for causes we then look to the big bang as the ultimate cause of the universe. Aquinas’s second way begins to answer the question, how did the gases come into existence.

Aquinas argues that at some point there must have been something that was uncaused. He states infinite regression is impossible, everything has to have a cause, and therefore there is an uncaused God. Aquinas calls him ‘The Uncaused Causer’, for he has no origins (causes) yet caused the chain of events that we term ‘the Big Bang’.

3. The Third Way – Possibility and Necessity (Contingency).

Contingency means, a being that perishes.

A necessary being, is a being that doesn’t die.

Aquinas argues that the world consists of contingent beings. If all beings were contingent then at one point nothing would have existed because contingent beings rely upon birth and death. Aquinas states that there has to be a necessary being, in order for the universe to of come into existence. Aquinas calls this necessary being, God.

4. The Fourth Way – Goodness, Truth and Nobility.

Aquinas’s fourth way simply states that if you look around the world you can see that God made the world good, therefore you can conclude that God is good.

5. The Fifth Way – Teleological.

God made the world with ‘Telos’ purpose. Aquinas states that the purpose of the world is shown through its design.

The Kalam version of the cosmological argument is a more modern version. It has it roots in ancient Arabic philosophy. ‘Kalam’ is an Arabic term meaning to ‘argue’ or ‘discuss’. The argument was developed by the Muslim scholars Al-Kindi and Al-Ghazali.

William Lane Craig has done more than anyone to bring the Kalam argument to the attention of contemporary philosophers. Craig's argument has a very simple structure.

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Craig regards the first premise as intuitively obvious. Most of his effort is devoted to the defense of premise. Craig gives two main philosophical arguments for saying that the universe has not always existed – one based on the supposed impossibility of an actual infinite, the other based on the claim that even if an actual infinite were possible, it could not be ‘formed by successive addition’. This part of the Kalam argument can be split up into the following:

• The present would not exist in an actual infinite universe, because successive additions cannot be added into an actual infinite.
• The present does exist, as a result of a chronological series of past events.
• The universe had a beginning.
• Whatever began to exist had a cause, as things cannot cause themselves to exist.
• Therefore the universe had a first cause of it s existence.
• This first cause was God.

Another modern analogy of the cosmological argument was developed by J.L. Mackie using the idea of a train. J.L. Mackie argues that God has to be the first cause and therefore is a supporter of the cosmological argument. His famous analogy is that of the train, he simply states that if you were sat on a hill watching endless amounts of carriages go past on a track, you would not question that they were being pulled by an engine. Mackie argues that this is the same as the universe. Our lifetime is as he states a thousand carriages down from the front, and just because the engine cant be seen (God), it does not mean that we are not being powered by some other being. Mackie states that this is proof for the existence of God because everything, train or universe, has to have a first cause.

The strengths of the Cosmological Argument lie in both its simplicity and easily comprehensible concept that there cannot be an infinite number of causes to an event. Some arguments for God's existence require more thought and training in terms and concepts, but this argument is basic and simple. Also, it is perfectly logical to assert that objects do not bring themselves into existence and must, therefore, have causes.

However it has many weaknesses. A number of objections have been raised against the cosmological argument, which those who support it have had to counter. One of the major objections to this argument has been the suggestion that infinity is impossible and that the universe had a beginning. Many philosophers point out that Aquinas and Craig contradict themselves when they reject the possibility of the infinite. They both deny the infinite and yet argue that God is infinite. Supporters of the argument point out that god is unique and that laws of nature do not apply to God.

Anthony Kenny said that Aquinas’s principle that nothing moves itself, goes against the fact that people and animals move themselves. He pointed out that Newton’s law wrecks the argument of the first way. “For at any given time the rectilinear uniform motion of a body can be explained by the principle of inertia in terms of the body’s own previous motion without appeal to any other agent. His basic point was that there doesn’t have to be an engine, there could be some other motion.

David Hume asked why must we conclude that the universe had to have a beginning. He said that even if the universe did begin, it does not mean that anything caused it to come into existence.

Immanuel Kant said you can’t believe in something you can’t see. He argued that the idea that every event must have a first cause only applied to the world of sense experience. It cannot apply to something that we have not experienced.

Some philosophers argue that even if there was a first cause, there is no proof that this is God of classical theism. The first cause could be physical or natural.

Brian Davies backs the position that the cosmological argument cannot stand alone for the existence of God. He says that as an ‘argument for first cause’, the cosmological seems a reasonable one. But it does not by itself establish the existence of god with all the proportions ascribed to them.

There is also a list of many criticisms of Aquinas’s arguments directly:

• Some scholars have argued that Aquinas’s arguments rest on assumptions that are no longer widely held. His view rested on a medieval science hierarchy – that everything can be ranked, things are better than others. This is not on time today, in modern world.
• There doesn’t have to be a first cause. Why only one cause, why not a series of causes throughout the universe.
• Why couldn’t god have made the earth & universe, and then died. After all, a mother causes a child but then dies.
• If everything came from something where did God come from.
• Trying to put into words concepts we don’t understand. The argument begins with ‘this world’ and concludes with concepts of which we have no experience, e.g. uncaused, infinity.
• Since everything in the universe is contingent, everything could cease to exist simultaneously, and then the universe itself would cease. But if it can cease to exist, then it must be contingent. Recent thinking in physics has also questioned the eternal nature of matter.

These weaknesses are fairly successful in weakening the argument. They highlight that points made by Aquinas and Craig can never actually be proved, and the effectiveness of the cosmological argument will always depend on people’s opinions of points made by others, and never on fact.