Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT (((((((1) Aquinas' 3rd Way claims that…

- - - - 1) Hume is assuming that where Aquinas in Way 3 argues that God is a necessary being, Aquinas means that God's existence is 'logically' necessary
        Hume now insists that all statements about existence are 'synthetic' - they are based on sense experience, they're not analytic (they can't be logically true)
        None of the statements are true - we can only know if they're true or false by experience
        
        1) Aquinas' 3rd Way claims that God's existence is 'metaphysically' necessary not logically necessary, so Hume's criticism fails
        Metaphysical necessity: form of necessity that derives from the nature or essence of things
        The Cosmological Argument is claiming that:
        1) In our experience, everything is contingent
        2) The existence of contingent things requires the existence of a being whose necessity is from itself and who causes necessity in others - THIS IS GOD
        
        2) Hume suggests that the universe itself may be a necessarily-existent being.
        If something has to be necessary, why can't that be the matter that makes up the universe? Why does it have to be God
        
        2) For Aquinas, matter will be a caused necessary being, and would still need God, an uncaused being to cause its existence
        
        3) Science works on the assumption that there are no brute facts, otherwise science wouldn't work
        
        3) Russell suggests that the universe is a 'brute fact' - the simplest explanation of what caused the universe and why it exists is that there is no explanation