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Ontological, Cosmological and Teleological Arguments for God's…
Ontological, Cosmological and Teleological Arguments for God's Existence
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COSMOLOGICAL
ARGUES FROM THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD, AND ITS PERCEIVED STATE OF ORDER, TO THE EXISTENCE OF A CREATOR.
KALAMAN
THE BEGINNING ARGUMENT: Everything that begins to exist has a cause, including the universe. Infinity as a concept cannot therefore exist. The universe must have begun meaning there existed a plain before our universe. Hence, our universe was willed into being by something.
WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: The world either came about naturally or was personally caused. As the laws of nature did not exist before our universe, the world cannot have been formed due to random forces, and instead must be the product of intentional interference.
HUME: We have never experienced the creation of a universe, and so have no logical basis on which to claim that there is a 'first cause' for our own.
THOMAS AQUINAS
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(2) THE UNCAUSED CAUSER: Every effect has a cause, so there must be a first cause. This is God.
(3) CONTINGENCY AND NECESSITY: There must be a being that necessarily exists to bring the contingent world into being. This is God.
(4) EXCELLENCE: There is a varying scale, of which God must be the ultimate perfection.
(5) PURPOSE: Everything works towards purpose, therefore there is an intelligent being that directs everything towards this purpose.
VARDY: Each contingent thing must be preceded by something else to bring it into existence, yet this sequence cannot stretch back infinitely. Hence, there must be a non-contingent agent.
VARDY: Aquinas bases his theory around a contingent world, but there could be multiple causes / origins rather than one starting point. Energy and matter are eternal and redistributed differently but continuously.
KENNY: Newton's First Law Law of Motion denotes that an object can be in two states: stationary or moving at a constant rate (without external intervention). Therefore, Aquinas' claim that nothing can move itself is incorrect.
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THOMPSON There could be a theoretically infinite number of causes for each action, with an infinite number of effects. We cannot prove that there is only one, ultimate cause.
HUME "We have no experienced the creation of a universe. Yet we are prepared to argue that because there are causes of things within the universe, there is a cause for the universe as a whole."
COPELSTON
(1) Some things in the world are contingent, so there must be a necessary being that is their creator. This creator is God.
RUSSELL Necessary existence can only be applied to analytic problems, and Copelston's argument is synthetic.
Argued that Russell's view of analytic and synthetic statements was overly dogmatic. He should not reject an entire theory simply because it doesn't fit his world view. Questions about existence are not meaningless.
(2) In order to prevent an infinite chain of cause and effect, the world itself must have a non-contingent cause. This necessary being is God.
RUSSELL We should accept the existence of the universe as a brute fact. The concept of cause is not applicable to the total: nothing in the world has a single cause, so why would the universe?
Every object has a phenomenal cause, but the series of phenomenal causes is an insufficient explanation of the series. The series has not a phenomenal cause, but a transcendent one.
Animals and humans are autonomous, so self causing. Also, some things change by a process beyond themselves. eg, a wall does not choose to change colour.
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