The cosmological argument is “a posteriori” – it depends on and accords with our experience of the world around us, with our own experience of causal chains provoking questions about how we, and the universe as a whole came to be. The goal of cosmological argumentation is to attempt to prove the existence of God by showing that an infinite regress of causal chains is logically impossible and, therefore, that there must have been a first cause. It highlights the problems of infinite regress and suggests the existence of God as a solution. There are several versions of this argument, the classic being that of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Other important figures include Leibniz and Kant. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Medieval philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas provided five arguments in his book, the Summa Theologica, the first three of which are cosmological: the argument from motion, the argument from causality and the argument from necessity and contingency. In his Second Way, the argument from causality, Aquinas argues that nothing is caused, so if the universe were to exist - which it does - there must be a first cause. This is an “a posteriori” argument because it is from our own experience that we know that causes are ordered in causal chains. P1) There is an order of efficient causes (every event has a cause) P2) Nothing can be the cause of itself P3) Imagine that this order of causes goes back to infinity – then there would be no cause firstP4) If (3) were true, then there would be no subsequent causes, but this is false.C) There must be a first cause (the source of all causes) and this is what we call God. Aquinas argues that nothing can cause itself because if something were the cause of itself, it would have to be prior to itself, which is impossible. Therefore, if the universe were to exist, there must be a first cause that started a chain of causes and effects. This argument is a reductio ad absurdum. Aquinas attempts to argue that God must exist because an absurd result would follow from denying his existence; he uses premises three and four to demonstrate the impossibility of the absence of a first cause, by demonstrating that if there were no first cause, then the current state would not exist – which is obviously false . In this way, Aquinas' argument based on causality is premised on the idea that the universe cannot be infinite. In support of premises 3 and 4 of the argument from causation, Immanuel Kant also argues that an infinite chain of causes is something that, by definition, could never be completed; If the causes that led to our existence and that of the world really extended into an infinite past, then an infinity of causes would have to occur before the world could exist. Kant argues that this is impossible, because if there were an infinite number of causes before the current state, then the current state could never exist. Since the current state exists, there cannot be an infinity of causes and, in turn, there must be a first cause, which people call God. However, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz sees the internal regression of the universe, with its principle of sufficiency, differently. Reason suggesting that since there appears to be nothing in the universe itself that can explain why it exists, we can conclude that there is sufficient reason to believe in a grand cause outside the universe. In this way, Leibniz maintains that the causeless cause must exist outside the series of causes, however infinite it may be.be this series; he argues, in turn, that such a cause must be in esse. Aquinas' third path in the Summa Theologica is the argument from necessity and contingency. This is different from arguments about motion and causation in that it is based on the contingency of the universe and everything in it. P1) Everything in the universe depends on something else. P2) Being contingent means that something does not need to exist P3) If everything does not need to exist, at one time they did not exist P4) If at one time nothing existed, nothing n would exist todayP5) Things exist todayC) Therefore, there must be a non-contingent or necessary element being to explain that (God)Here, Thomas Aquinas argues that since the universe is contingent, it cannot be the cause of its own existence and is not necessary. Therefore, a necessary being is necessary to bring the universe into existence – where all things are contingent and in turn unnecessary, God on the other hand is a necessary being because he is not dependent on anything else. Another simpler version of the cosmological argument is the Kalam argument. This is an Islamic form of the argument that dates back to the Muslim philosopher Al-Kindi but has also received support from contemporary philosopher William L Craig. P1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence P2) The universe began to exist. existsC) Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existenceTo defend the second premise, "the universe began to exist", Craig follows Kant's reasoning that an actual infinite cannot exist; he states that a beginningless time series is a real infinity, and that since a real infinity cannot exist, a beginningless time series cannot exist. However, the cosmological argument also faces several objections. Perhaps the most obvious objection to Aquinas's argument about causality, known as the schoolboy objection, is the criticism that the first premise – “every event has a cause” – and the conclusion – “there must be a first cause which itself has no cause” – seem to contradict each other. In response to this, it has been argued that there must be an exception to the rule and that this is proven by its form reductio ad absurdum; If there were no exceptions, no uncaused causes, then the universe would have no cause and it could never exist. But there is also a rejoinder to this response to the objection. It could be argued that instead of God being the exception to the causal rule, the universe itself could be the exception, with only the things in it having to follow the rule. Furthermore, we could say that the existence of the universe does not need further explanation: it simply exists. Another objection comes from Hume, who, consistent with his epistemology, suggests our cognitive inability to understand the nature of a powerful metaphysical superentity. enough to bring the universe into existence. In this way, he argues that we have no reason to infer what gave rise to the universe. An unwarranted inference is necessary to assert that this is in fact God. Hume also argues that the cosmological argument suffers from the fallacy of composition, an idea later supported by Russell. The fallacy of composition is the error of assuming that since there is a property common to each part of a group, it follows that this property applies to the group as a whole. Therefore, although each individual part of the universe may have a cause, it does not necessarily follow that the universe itself must have a cause. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a personalized item, 39(4), 1-51.