Cosmological Argument Flashcards Preview

OCR Year 12 Philosophy of Religion > Cosmological Argument > Flashcards

Flashcards in Cosmological Argument Deck (7)
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1
Q

Aquinas First Way

A
  • The First Way
  • This is the argument from motion, taken directly from Aristotle:
  • All moving things have a source of motion.
  • There must have been some original source of motion, unmoved by anything else.
  • This we call God, the ‘unmoved mover’.
2
Q

Aquinas First Way

A
  • The First Way
  • This is the argument from motion, taken directly from Aristotle:
  • All moving things have a source of motion.
  • There must have been some original source of motion, unmoved by anything else.
  • This we call God, the ‘unmoved mover’.
3
Q

Aquinas Second Way

A
  • The Second Way
  • This is the argument from causality:
  • Everything which exists must have a cause of its existence.
  • There cannot be an infinite chain of causes stretching back into the past.
  • There must have been some first cause uncaused by anything else.
  • This we call God, the ‘uncaused cause’.
4
Q

Aquinas Third Way

A
  • The Third Way
  • This is the argument from contingency.
  • Everything which exists is dependent on something else for its existence and might at some stage not exist (it is contingent).
  • At one stage, everything did not exist.
  • There must be some thing dependent on nothing else for its existence, the source of all contingent things.
  • This we call God, who must exist.
5
Q

Copleston’s Argument

A
  • Copleston argued from contingency relied on Liebniz’s principle of sufficient reason arguing that this could not be found within the collection of contingent beings found in the universe.
  • Liebniz asked why there is something rather than nothing – there needs to be ‘sufficient reason’ why something is the case.
  • Sufficient reason refers to a total explanation as to how the universe as a whole is in existence
6
Q

Russell’s Response

A
  • Russell questioned the need for a sufficient reason, and whether such was possible anyway.
  • He questioned if it possible to go from contingent causes within the universe to a necessary sufficient and external reason.
  • Russell maintained that the world ‘just is’ – it is a brute fact.
7
Q

Hume’s Critiques

A
  • Hume questioned why the world would need a first cause or a beginning – why is infinite regress (a never-ending sequence of cause and effect) impossible?
  • Hume also challenged our understanding of cause and effect – just as event a follows event b does not guarantee that event a is the cause of event b – the fallacy of the affirmation of the consequent. We put cause and effect together by habit rather than fact.