Cosmological Argument

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Cosmological arguments are a series of arguments which argue for God's existence based on a First Cause. The roots of these arguments can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Al-Ghāzāli further improved on these arguments. Today, modern proponents of the cosmological argument include: William Lane Craig, Alexander Pruss, and Norman Geisler.

Contents 1 Argument from Contingency 2 Kalam Cosmological Argument 3 Leibnizian Cosmological Argument 4 References

Argument from Contingency

See main article: Argument from Contingency

The argument from contingency is perhaps the oldest version of the cosmological argument, having its roots in Plato and Thomas Aquinas. Unlike Leibniz's argument from contingency, Aquinas's contingency argument is based on the Thomistic principle of existential causality as opposed to the principle of sufficient reason. The argument from contingency differs from the Kalam argument because it does not require the universe to have a beginning in time.

This argument is based on the idea of something that is contingent. A contingent event is one which may or may not happen. Not everything is contingent. Some things are necessary. Examples of things which are not contingent are the laws of logic and mathematics. The argument proceeds by suggesting that everything which is contingent has a cause. A contingent being is thus caused to be and is still caused to be in terms of its existence being sustained.

One formulation of this argument is given as [1]:

Everything that exists contingently has a reason for its existence. The universe exists contingently. Therefore: The universe has a reason for its existence. If the universe has a reason for its existence then that reason is God. Therefore: God exists.

One objection to this argument is over how the theist reasons that the universe must be contingent. In response, the theist can retort that the universe is composed of matter, of which the chief characteristic is mutability (it changes). Whatever changes is changed by another, and thus any change in the universe must originate from an external source which is itself unchanged. Additionally, it is also possible to conceive of a possible world in which the universe does not exist. Therefore, the universe is contingent.

Kalam Cosmological Argument

See main article: Kalam Cosmological Argument

The Kalam cosmological argument has undergone a resurgence under William Lane Craig, who formulates it as:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

In defending premise (2), Craig gives two main lines of argument ^[1]: The first is to argue on philosophical grounds that an actually infinite number of things or events does not, and cannot, exist. The second is that the empirical evidence suggests this conclusion.

Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

See main article: Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

The Leibnizian cosmological argument is based on the principle of sufficient reason, which states that anything which exists has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Since the universe exists contingently, it must have an explanation for its existence. According to Alexander Pruss, a basic Leibnizian argument would contain the following premises [2]

Every contingent fact has an explanation. There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts. Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact. This explanation must involve a necessary being. This necessary being is God.

Proponents of the Leibnizian argument typically assert the existence of the universe to be contingent, for it is possible for the universe to have not existed. One possible atheistic response would be simply to posit the universe as a necessary being which explains its own existence in terms of its own nature. The problem with this objection is that it is simply ad hoc and arbitrary. There is no good reason to think of the universe as necessarily existent, nor does any of the properties of matter seem necessary in any way. Conceivably, there could have existed a different universe with a different arrangement of matter and a different set of physical laws.

References