Post on 23-Feb-2016
description
The Cosmological Argument
Science can offer us explanations of things that are within the universe, but does the universe as a whole have an explanation?
Cosmological Argument Is an argument which says that God has to exist because the world exists.
The world couldn’t exist without God because he created it
This argument is based on Cause and Effect.
Have you ever wondered…..
“What caused the universe to exist?”
“That’s easyThe big bang!!”
We need to take the scientific approach to thisScience tells us that everything has a cause. Let that be your starting point.
What caused the big bang??
And what causedThat cause?
And what caused that cause?
Science teaches us thateverything has a cause.
Make that your starting point.
My name is St. Thomas Aquinas
But right now I am going to follow the scientists advice.
Aquinas’ Cosmological Arguments
Thomas Aquinas was probably the most important philosopher of the medieval period.
Aquinas was trying to connect/join the Christian faith with the philosophy of Aristotle (an ancient Greek philosopher/scientist/mathematician) whose works had just been ‘re-discovered’ and were being taught in the religious universities of Europe.
Everything has a cause
Somethingmust have caused the universe
Somethingmust have causedthe big bang
Somethingmust have causedthat cause
Yes, the big bang
Somethingmust have causedthat cause
Somethingmust have causedthat cause
something must have caused that cause
something must have caused that cause
something must have caused that cause
something must have caused that cause
something must have caused that cause
something must have……….
This is getting boring.
Yes I agree(Remember me? St Thomas Aquinas)
but I have a solution!!
It’s just sillyIf we keep asking“What caused that cause,”Then we’ll never stop asking it! (Infinite regress)And that just doesn’t make sense
The only sensible explanationIs that there must have been…………
a first cause uncaused by anything else !!!Let me explain it in
black and white……
At the beginning - a first cause,uncaused by anything else. That first cause
was the creator God.
Everything has a cause. The Universe exists so it must have a
cause. You cannot have infinite number of causes. Therefore there must be an uncaused
cause, which causes everything to happen without itself being caused by anything else.
Such an uncaused cause is what people understand by ‘God’.
The Cosmological Argument
Cosmological Argument
The Universe Exists
Nothing can cause itself to exist
Everything is caused by something otherthan itself
The universe was causedby the Big Bang
What caused the Big Bang?
Cannot have aninfinite series ofcauses
Cannot have caused itself
Caused by somethingexternal to it
Something thatis outside theuniverse
Something thathas caused itself
That somethingis GOD
The Uncaused cause in simple talk means…
Everything has a cause… even a cause has a cause.
BUT
Something had to make the first cause happen. That something is what we know as ‘God’.
The strength of the argumentIs that it is based on the scientific principle that everything has a cause.The second strength of the argument is that it starts off by saying, “the universe exists.” That can’t be denied, we are part of it.
The argument has two weaknesses
Firstly, you may have proved a “first cause” but that doesn’tmean it still exists or that it was God.It may have died or disappeared.
The second weakness is this.You start off by saying“everything has a cause,”
It doesn’t make sense, and it’snot logical to then say“something has no cause.”
How did Aquinas claim that God was the First Cause of the universe? 4KU
What are the weaknesses of the First Cause argument? 4KU