Before analyzing further the first of Aquinas' Five Ways, let us examine some of the Aristotelian underpinnings at work within St.
Thomas' philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas also believed in the importance of the senses and sense data within the knowing process. Aquinas once wrote nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses. Those who place priority upon sense data within the knowing process are known as empiricists. Empirical data is that which can be sensed and typically tested. Unlike Anselm, who was a rationalist, Aquinas will not rely on non-empirical evidence such as the definition of the term "God" or "perfection" to demonstrate God's existence.
Thomas will observe the physical world around him and, moving from effect to cause, will try try to explain why things are the way they are. He will assert God as the ultimate Cause of all that is. For Aquinas, the assertion of God as prima causa first cause is not so much a blind religious belief but a philosophical and theoretical necessity.
God as first cause is at the very heart of St. Thomas' Five Ways and his philosophy in general. One last notion that is central to St. Thomas' Five Ways is the concept of potentiality and actuality. Things will grow and tend to become as they exist. The more complete a thing is, the better an instance of that thing it is. We have idioms and expressions within our language that reflect this idea.
For example, we might say that so-and-so has a lot of potential. We might say that someone is at the peak of their game or that someone is the best at what they do. We might say It just does not get any better than this if we are are having a very enjoyable time. Aristotle alludes to this commonly held intuition when he speaks of organisms moving from a state of potentiality to actuality.
When Aquinas speaks of motion within the First Way the cosmological argument he is referencing the Aristotelian concepts of potentiality and actuality. Notes on the Five Ways and the associated problems. English theologian and philosopher Samuel Clarke set forth a second variation of the Cosmological Argument, which is considered to be a superior version.
Every being that exists is either contingent or necessary. Not every being can be contingent. Therefore, there exists a necessary being on which the contingent beings depend. Therefore, God exists.
One is that if it is not possible for a person to conceive of an infinite process of causation, without a beginning, how is it possible for the same individual to conceive of a being that is infinite and without beginning?
The idea that causation is not an infinite process is being introduced as a given, without any reasons to show why it could not exist. Clarke has offered a version of the Cosmological Argument, which many philosophers consider superior. Since not every being can be contingent, it follow that there must be a necessary being upon which all things depend.
This being is God. Even though this method of reasoning may be superior to the traditional Cosmological Argument, it is still not without its weaknesses.
The form of the mistake is this: Every member of a collection of dependent beings is accounted for by some explanation. Therefore, the collection of dependent beings is accounted for by one explanation. This argument will fail in trying to reason that there is only one first cause or one necessary cause, i. There are those who maintain that there is no sufficient reason to believe that there exists a self existent being. If there is a cause for everything then what caused the first cause god.
If the first cause can be thought to be uncaused and a necessary being existing forever, then why not consider that the universe itself has always existed and shall always exist and go through a never ending cycle of expansion and contraction and then expansion big bang again and again!!! If there is to be a deity that is the exception from the requirement that all existing things need a cause then the same exception can be made for the sum of all energy that exists, considering that it manifests in different forms.
What the counter argument does is to indicate that the premises of the cosmological argument do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that there is a being that is responsible for the creation of the universe. The first mover or first cause is devoid of any other characteristic.
So the cosmological argument is neither a valid argument in requiring the truth of its conclusion nor is it a satisfactory argument to prove the existence of any being that would have awareness of the existence of the universe or any event within it. These questions are considered as "loaded questions" because they loaded or contain assumptions about what exists or is true that have not yet been established.
Why is it that the idea of a "force " or agent" is even in the question? Why operate with the assumption that there is such or needs to be such? We do not know that there is a force "behind" the expansion and contraction. Since the past events of a beginningless series can be conceptually collected together and numbered, the series is a determinate totality 96— And since the past is beginningless, it has no starting point and is infinite.
If the universe had a starting point, so that events were added to or subtracted from this point, we would have a potential infinite that increased through time by adding new members. The fact that the events do not occur simultaneously is irrelevant. Bede Rundle rejects an actual infinite. His grounds for doing so the symmetry of the past and the future , if sustained, make premise 7 false. He argues that the reasons often advanced for asymmetry, such as those given by Craig, are faulty.
It is true that the past is not actual, but neither is the future. Likewise, that the past, having occurred, is unalterable is irrelevant, for neither is the future alterable. The only time that is real is the present.
For Rundle, the past and the future are symmetrical; it is only our knowledge of them that is asymmetrical. Any future event lies at a finite temporal distance from the present. Similarly, any past event lies at a finite temporal distance from the present. For each past or future event, beginning from the present, there can always be either a prior past event or a subsequent future event. Hence, for both series an infinity of events is possible, and, as symmetrical, the infinity of both series is the same.
It follows that although the future is actually finite, it does not require an end to the universe, for there is always a possible subsequent event Similarly, although any given past event of the universe is finitely distant in time from now, a beginning or initial event can be ruled out; for any given event there is a possible earlier event. However, since there is a possible prior or possible posterior event in any past or future series respectively, the universe, although finite in time, is temporally unbounded indefinitely extendible ; both beginning and cessation are ruled out.
Hence, although the principle of sufficient reason is still true, it applies only to the components of the material universe and not to the universe itself. No explanation of the universe is possible. However, one might wonder, are the past series and future series of events really symmetrical? It is true that one can start from the present and count either forward and backward in time.
Craig says no, for in the actual world we do not start from now to arrive at the past; we move from the past to the present.
To count backwards, we would start from a particular point in time, the present. From where would we start to count were the past indefinitely extendible? Both to count and to move from the past to the present, we cannot start from the indefinitely extendible. One cannot just reverse the temporal sequence of the past, for we do not ontologically engage the sequence from the present to the past.
Morriston constructs an argument to show that, contrary to Craig, there is no relevant difference between a beginningless past and a determinate, endless future, such that if one is impossible because of absurdities so is the other, and if one is possible so is the other. He creates a fictional scenario where God commands angels Gabriel and Uriel to praise God alternatively for an eternity.
Morriston — However, an actually infinite number of future events is not impossible; it can be envisioned and determined by God. Morriston proceeds to note that puzzles or absurdities parallel to those Craig finds in the concept of an actual infinite of past events also occur in the infinite series of future events. Suppose that. God could instead have determined that Gabriel and Uriel will stop after praise number four.
Infinitely many praises would be prevented, and the number of their future praises would be only four. In this case too, infinitely many praises would be prevented, but the number of future praises would instead be infinite. Morriston Although this shows that an infinite future can have inconsistent implications, God could still bring it about that these angels utter distinct praises, one after another, ad infinitum.
But then, Morriston concludes, since these inconsistent implications do not count against an actual infinity of future events, the puzzles Craig poses do not count against the possibility of an actual infinity of past events, i.
If an infinite future is possible, as Craig concedes, so is an infinite past. God can determine that an infinite number of praises will be sung.
The non-existence of past events does not prevent us from asking how many have occurred. Nor should the non-existence of future events prevent us from asking how many will occur. According to Craig, an actual infinite is a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number, whereas a potential infinite is a collection that is increasing toward but never arriving at infinity as a limit Craig ; Craig and Sinclair For one thing, there is no limit to which the future praises grow.
The collection of praises continues to grow as the praises are sung, but it does not approach a limit, for always one more praise can be sung. The series of future praises is actually infinite. Craig responds that Morriston is really attacking his notion of a potential infinite by claiming that no relevant distinction exists between a potential and an actual infinite.
But this, he says, rests on confusing an A-theory with a B-theory of time. An infinite directed toward the future would be actual only on a B-theory of time, but not on an A-theory Craig — On an A-theory of time, a change of tense makes a difference.
That something actually has happened differs significantly from what may even if determined happen. Cohen argues that this begs the question. Craig thinks otherwise Craig and Sinclair , tacitly defending the principle in that temporal becoming sees to it that what has not occurred or is not occurring but is future is merely potential, even if determined or foreseen by God. The collection of historical events is formed by successively adding events, one following another. The events are not temporally simultaneous but occur over a period of time as the series continues to acquire new members.
Even if an actual infinite were possible, it could not be realized by successive addition; in adding to the series, no matter how much adding is done, even to infinity, the series remains finite and only potentially infinite.
One can neither count to nor traverse the infinite Craig and Sinclair However, notes Craig, significant disanalogies disallow this conclusion. Morriston argues that premise 10 presupposes what is to be shown, namely, that there is a beginning point. He asks,. At every point in such a series, infinitely many years have already passed by Infinity is already present in the series. Before the present event could occur, the event immediately before it would have to occur; and before that event could occur, the event immediately before it would have to occur; and so on ad infinitum.
One gets driven back into the past, making it impossible for any event to occur. Thus, if the series of events were beginningless, the present could not have occurred, which is absurd. To require a reason for the series of past events arriving at now is to appeal to the principle of sufficient reason, which he deems both suspect and inappropriate for Craig to invoke Morriston It takes him a year to write about one day of his life, so that as his life progresses so does his autobiography in which he gets progressively farther behind.
Russell concludes that. However, Oderberg claims, Russell seems to have fallaciously moved from 1 For every day, there is a year such that, by the end of that year, Shandy has recorded that day, which is true, to 2 There is a year such that, for every day, by the end of that year Shandy has recorded that day. Indeed, if he has been living and writing from infinity, his autobiography is infinitely behind his life. Contrary to Russell, there will be days—an infinite number—about which he will be unable to write.
As can be imagined, this example has been greatly contested, modified, and has generated a literature of its own. For samples, see Eells , Oderberg , and Oppy Waters reformulates the paradox, attempting to avoid problems with earlier formulations. Since the universe is expanding as the galaxies recede from each other, if we reverse the direction of our view and look back in time, the farther we look, the denser the universe becomes.
If we push backwards far enough, we find that the universe reaches a state of compression where the density and gravitational force are infinite. This unique singularity constitutes the beginning of the universe—of matter, energy, space, time, and all physical laws. It is not that the universe arose out of some prior state, for there was no prior state.
Since time too comes to be, one cannot ask what happened before the initial event. Neither should one think that the universe expanded from some state of infinite density into space; space too came to be in that event. Since the Big Bang initiates the very laws of physics, one cannot expect any scientific or physical explanation of this singularity. One picture, then, is of the universe beginning in a singular, non-temporal event roughly 13—14 billion years ago.
Something, perhaps a quantum vacuum, came into existence. Its tremendous energy caused it, in the first fractions of a second, to expand or inflate and explode, creating the four-dimensional space-time universe that we experience today. What advocates of premise 2 maintain is that since the universe and all its material elements originate in the Big Bang, the universe is temporally finite and thus had a beginning.
By itself, of course, this reasoning, even if accurate, leaves it the case that premise 2 and hence conclusion 3 are only probably true, dependent on accepted cosmogenic theories. Several replies to this argument can be made. First, questions have been raised about the adequacy of the theory of inflation to explain the expansion of the universe.
One problem is predictability, for on this view anything that can happen will happen, an infinite number of times Steinhardt Further, the argument presupposes that the General Theory of Relativity applies to the beginning of the universe, but some doubt that this is so, given that it cannot adequately account for the quantum gravity involved. The traditional idea of an oscillating universe faced significant problems.
For one, no set of physical laws accounts for a series of cyclical universe-collapses and re-explosions. That the universe once exploded into existence provides no evidence that the event could reoccur even once, let alone an infinite number of times, should the universe collapse. Second, even an oscillating universe seems to be finite Smith, in Craig and Smith Further, the cycle of collapses and expansions would not, as was pictured, be periodic of even duration.
Rather, entropy would rise from cycle to cycle, so that even were a series of universe-oscillations possible, they would become progressively longer Davies 52; Tolman If the universe were without beginning, by now that cycle would be infinite in duration, without any hope of contraction.
Fourth, although each recollapse would destroy the components of the universe, the radiation would remain, so that each successive cycle would add to the total. Responding to these issues, recently proposed cosmologies based on string theory have given new life to a cyclic view. For example, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have proposed a cyclic cosmological model where the universe repeatedly transitions from a big bang to a big crunch to a big bang, and so on.
They contend that. The transition from expansion to contraction is caused by introducing negative potential energy, rather than spatial curvature. Furthermore, the cyclic behavior depends in an essential way on having a period of accelerated expansion after the radiation and matter-dominated phases.
During the accelerated expansion phase, the Universe approaches a nearly vacuous state, restoring very nearly identical local conditions as existed in the previous cycle prior to the contraction phase. Steinhardt and Turok 2. Dark energy becomes a key player in all of this. The universe is not cyclical but will die a cold death. This specific cyclic theory has been challenged, and other cyclic cosmological theories have been proposed.
Thus, while Craig and Sinclair —74 critically evaluate current contenders as not being viable, changes in and development of these theories and the inevitable development of others make for unending point-counterpoint. An event takes place within a space-time context. However, the Big Bang has no space-time context; there is neither time prior to the Big Bang nor a space in which the Big Bang occurs.
Hence, the Big Bang cannot be considered as a physical event occurring at a moment of time. As Hawking notes, the finite universe has no space-time boundaries and hence lacks singularity and a beginning Hawking , Time might be multi-dimensional or imaginary, in which case one asymptotically approaches a beginning singularity but never reaches it.
And without a beginning the universe requires no cause. The best one can say is that the universe is finite with respect to the past, not that it was an event with a beginning. Rundle chap. In the Big Bang the space-time universe commences and then continues to exist in measurable time subsequent to the initiating singularity Silk As such, one might inquire why this initial state of the universe existed in the finite past.
Likewise, one need not require that causation embody the Humean condition of temporal priority, but may treat causation counter-factually, or perhaps even, as traditionally, a relation of production. Any causal statement about the universe would have to be expressed atemporally, but for the theist this presents no problem provided that God is conceived atemporally at least prior to creation and sense can be made of atemporal causation.
Then, by his reasoning that events only arise from other events, subsequent so-called events cannot be the effect of that singularity. If they were, they would not be events either.
Whereas behind premise 1 of the original argument lies the ancient Parmenidean contention that out of nothing nothing comes, it is alleged that no principle directly connects finitude with causation. They contend that we have no reason to think that just because something is finite it must have a cause of its coming into existence.
Theists respond that this objection has merit only if the critic denies that the Principle of Causation is true or that it applies to events like the Big Bang. And if we cannot ask that question, then we cannot inquire whether the Big Bang was an effect, for nothing temporal preceded it. Questions about creation occur in time in the universe, not outside of it Hawking — However, as Craig observes, the series is finite, not infinite, even though it includes all past instants of time.
Beginning to exist does not entail that one has a beginning point in time. Something has a beginning just in case the time during which it has existed is finite. It is not that premise 1 is false; it is just that it is unsupported and hence loses its plausibility.
It has the same plausibility or implausibility as creation ex nihilo. Morriston thinks that premise 1 fares equally poorly if Craig attempts to justify it empirically, for we have many situations where the causes of events have not been discovered, and even if we could find the causes in each individual case, it provides no evidence that causation applies to the totality of cases the universe. See our discussion of this argument in 4.
Finally, something needs to be said about premise 3 and conclusion 5 , which asserts that the cause of the universe is personal. Defenders of the cosmological argument suggest two possible kinds of explanation. We have seen that one cannot provide a natural causal explanation for the initial event, for there are no precedent natural events or natural existents to which the laws of physics apply.
If no scientific explanation in terms of physical laws can provide a causal account of the origin of the universe premise 4 , the explanation must be personal, that is, in terms of the intentional action of an intelligent, supernatural agent.
Craig argues that if the cause were an eternal, nonpersonal, operating set of conditions, then the universe would exist from eternity. Below freezing temperatures will always freeze whatever water is present. Since the universe has not existed from eternity, the cause must be a personal agent who chooses freely to create an effect in time. However, notes Morriston, if the personal cause intended from eternity to create the world, and if the intention alone to create is causally sufficient to bring about the effect, then the universe would also exist from eternity, and there would be no reason to prefer a personal cause of the universe over a nonpersonal cause.
So the distinction in this respect between a personal and a nonpersonal eternal cause disappears. Craig replies that it is not intention alone that must be present, but the personal agent must also employ or exercise its personal causal power to bring about the world.
However, Morriston retorts, exercising personal causal power is an action in time, a view that is unavailable to Craig, for there is no time when God would restrain his causal powers. Paul Davies argues that one need not appeal to God to account for the Big Bang. Its cause, he suggests, is found within the cosmic system itself.
Subsequent explosions from this collapsing vacuum released the energy in this vacuum, reinvigorating the cosmic inflation and setting the scenario for the subsequent expansion of the universe.
However, what is the origin of this increase in energy that eventually made the Big Bang possible? Cosmic repulsion in the vacuum caused the energy to increase from zero to an enormous amount. This great explosion released energy, from which all matter emerged. Craig responds that if the vacuum has energy, the question arises concerning the origin of the vacuum and its energy.
Merely pushing the question of the beginning of the universe back to some primordial quantum vacuum does not escape the question of what brought this vacuum laden with energy into existence. A quantum vacuum is not nothing as in Newtonian physics but. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever beings to exist has a cause.
Craig, in Craig and Smith — One might wonder, as Rundle 75—77 does, how a supernatural agent could bring about the universe. He contends that a personal agent God cannot be the cause because intentional agency needs a body and actions occur within space-time.
However, acceptance of the cosmological argument does not depend on an explanation of the manner of causation by a necessary being. When we explain that the girl raised her hand because she wanted to ask a question, we can accept that she was the cause of the raised hand without understanding how her wanting to ask a question brought about her raising her hand.
Similarly, theists argue, we may never know why and how creation took place. Nevertheless, we may accept it as an explanation in the sense that we can say that God created that initial event, that he had the intention to do so, and that such an event lies within the power of an omniscient and almighty being; not having a body is irrelevant. Whereas all agree that it makes no sense to ask about what occurs before the Big Bang since there was no prior time or about something coming out of nothing, the dispute rests on whether there needs to be a cause of the first natural existent, whether something like the universe can be finite and yet not have a beginning, and crucially the nature of infinities and their connection with reality.
There would be a hidden contradiction buried in such co-assertions…. However, in their respective proofs defenders of the deductive cosmological arguments make a claim about incoherence, namely, that it would be contradictory for the same person to affirm the premises of the argument and to claim that God or a personal necessary being does not exist. Has Swinburne shown incoherence? An argument that one person takes as being sound another might believe not to be sound, in that the person rejects one or more of the premises or holds that the conclusions fail to properly follow; arguments are person-relative in their persuasive value or assessment of coherence.
Swinburne himself notes that arguments of coherence and incoherence are persuasive only to the extent that someone accepts other statements inherent to the proof as coherent or incoherent and that one statement entails another Elsewhere Swinburne admits to having. In place of a deductive argument, Swinburne develops an inductive cosmological argument that appeals to the inference to the best explanation.
Swinburne distinguishes between two varieties of inductive arguments: those that show that the conclusion is more probable than not what he terms a correct P-inductive argument and those that further increase the probability of the conclusion what he terms a correct C-inductive argument. In The Existence of God he presents a cosmological argument that he claims falls in the category of C-inductive arguments.
From the logically necessary only the logically necessary follows. In making this claim about the need for an explanation of the universe, however, it is hard not to see that he invokes some formulation of the PSR.
Swinburne begins his discussion with the existence of a physical universe that a contains odd events that cannot be fitted into the established pattern of scientific explanation e. It is not logically necessary that the existence of the universe needs explanation; we could accept this universe as a brute, inexplicable fact, but Swinburne thinks that to do so fails to accord with the example of the sciences, which seek the best explanation for any given phenomena.
To find the explanatory hypothesis most likely to be true, especially about something that might be unobservable, he claims to follow the example of science. A hypothesis is more likely to be true 1 in so far as it has high explanatory power, in that it makes probable the evidence of the observation; this may be predictive but can be postdictive as well Swinburne 34, 80—81 , and insofar as the evidence is very un likely to occur if the hypothesis is false.
And 2 , it has a greater prior probability. The prior probability of a hypothesis encompasses three features: a how well it fits with our background knowledge The broader the scope, the less relevant this criterion becomes For example, all crows are black is less likely to be true than all crows along the upper Mississippi River are black.
Since both scientific naturalism and theism have the same scope—explaining the universe, this does not factor into his calculations for explaining the complex universe 82 ; and c simplicity, which for Swinburne holds the key 82— A scientific explanation fails to give a complete explanation.
It presents us with the brute fact of the existence of the universe, not an explanation for it. On the other hand, a personal explanation, given in terms of the intentional actions of a person, is simpler and no explanatory power is lost. Further, a personal explanation can be understood, as in the case of explaining basic actions, without knowing or understanding any of the natural causal conditions that enable one to bring it about. In the case of the cosmological argument, personal explanation is couched in terms of a being that has beliefs, purposes, and intentions, and possesses both the power to bring about the complex universe and a possible reason for doing so.
Swinburne argues that a personal explanation of the universe satisfies the above probability criteria. It satisfies condition 1 in that appealing to God as an intentional agent has explanatory power. It leads us to have certain expectations about the universe: that it manifests order, is comprehensible, and favors the existence of beings that can comprehend it.
It makes probable the existence of the complex universe because God could have reasons for causing such a universe, whereas we would have no reasons at all if all we had was the brute fact of the material universe. Michael Martin objects at this point. Martin contends that if Swinburne is to compare the a priori probability of there being a complex universe given our background knowledge with the a priori probability of a complex universe given our background knowledge and the existence of God, he has to be clear on how he interprets the probability.
Martin notes that herein lies crucial ambiguity that disables calculating the a priori probability. If one compares the very many possible complex universes with there being no universe, on the basis of assigning equal probability to all possibilities the probability of there being a complex universe is nearly 1. However, if one compares the probability of there being a complex universe with there being no universe at all, it is 50 percent Martin Aquinas therefore devised his 'Five Ways,' five a posteriori proofs for the existence of God based on our empirical experience of the universe.
Fredrick Copleston reformulated Aquinas' argument by concentrating on contingency. He proposed his argument in a BBC radio debate in Russell however refused to accept the notion of a necessary being as one that cannot be thought of not existing, and concluded that the regress of causal events could not be held responsible for the existence of everything in the universe:.
Just because each human has a mother does not mean the entire human race has a mother. He reduced the universe to a mere, brute fact, of which it's existence does not demand an explanation. Russell saw the argument for a cause of the universe as having little meaning or significance. Hume was famous for recognising when a line of argument disobeys the rules of logic and instead of moving from one step to the next makes a great leap. To move from 'everything we observe has a cause' to 'the universe has a cause' is too big a leap in logic.
This is the same as saying that because all humans have a mother, the entire human race has a mother. With today's knowledge, we may think this is a given, but we should keep in mind that for the longest time secular scientists thought the universe itself was eternal. Now, most scientific models for the origin of the universe, such as the Big Bang model, support the view that the universe had a beginning, but the Kalam Cosmological Argument uses a philosophical approach towards the concept of 'infinity' to show that the universe indeed had a beginning.
Two separate philosophical arguments are used in this approach: The first argument states that an actual infinite cannot exist. A part of an infinite set is equal to the whole of the infinite set, because both the part and the whole are infinite. Imagine for example an infinite collection of red and black balls. The number of red balls in this set is equal to the total number of all balls in the set, because both are infinite. The same holds for the number of black balls in the collection.
Thus, the number of red balls equals the number of black balls equals the sum of all red and black balls. Obviously, the idea of an actual infinite collection leads to absurdities. This is also true for a set of historical events: it can be derived that the occurrence of a truly infinite set of events happening before a certain moment in time is impossible.
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