Cosmological argument
Text from today's slides
Text from today's slides
•
Cosmological
Argument
•
Stephen
Law
•
Cosmological
arguments
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Cosmological
arguments attempt to establish the existence of God by noting:
•
(i)
that the universe exists, and
•
(ii)
inferring that it must depend for its existence on something else,
that something else being God.
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Aquinas
THE
ARGUMENT FROM CAUSATION
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Some
things are caused.
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Everything
that is caused is caused by something else.
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An
infinite regress of causation is impossible.
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Therefore,
there must be an uncaused first cause of all that is caused.
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This
cause is what we call God.
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The
ancient Hindus
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All
unsupported things fall.
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But
the Earth does not fall.
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Therefore
the Earth must be supported.
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Therefore,
there must exist a cosmic elephant that supports the Earth.
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The
ancient Hindus
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But
what supports the Elephant?
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The
ancient Hindus
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A
cosmic turtle!
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But
what supports the turtle?
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The
ancient Hindus
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The
Hindus made the turtle the exception to the rule that all unsupported
things fall.
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Were
the ancient Hindus justified in supposing there’s a cosmic elephant and
cosmic turtle?
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The
ancient Hindus
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The
moral is: if we are going to play the “exception to the rule” card, we should play it as early as
possible.
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You
shouldn’t “bolt on” an elephant and a turtle and then play the exception
card.
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So
why “bolt on” God as first cause, and then stop there?
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Why
not just make the universe the exception to the rule that everything has
a cause?
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Perhaps
we can fix the argument by showing that ONLY God can be the exception to
the rule that everything has a cause – the universe itself can’t be the
exception?
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Copleston
– argument from contingency
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1)
There are things in this world that are contingent – they might not have
existed, and depend for their existence on something else e.g. I might
not have existed (if my parents never met).
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2)
All things in the world are like this – everything depends on something
else for its existence.
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3)
Therefore there must be a cause of everything in the universe that exists
outside of it.
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4)
This cause must be a necessary being – one which contains the reason for
its existence inside itself.
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5)
This necessary being is God.
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Copleston
– argument from contingency
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This
argument avoids making God an arbitrary, bolted-on stopping point
by saying the chain of causes must terminate with a necessary being.
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Reason?
Only a necessary being requires no independent cause.
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The
universe is not a necessary being. But there must be one = God.
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Russell’s
objections
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To
Copleston’s argument, in 1947 radio debate.
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FALLACY
OF COMPOSITION
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Russell
rejects principle that if everything in universe contingent/has a cause then
universe has a cause.
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Just
because every human has a mother does not entail human race has a mother.
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The
existence of the universe may be brute fact.
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Hume
and Kant
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Hume
too questions the jump from everything in the universe has a cause to the
universe has a cause (again: FALLACY OF COMPOSITION).
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Kant
too: concepts of cause and effect apply only within the spatio-temporal
universe and cannot be coherently applied outside of it.
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Does
the question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” make sense?
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Cosmological
arguments start with a mystery: “Why is there something (a universe)
rather than nothing?”
•
But
does this question make sense?
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Does
the question make sense?
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Some
questions that seem to make sense turn out not to.
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Compare:
“What is North of the North Pole?”
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Or
Wittgenstein’s “What time is it on the sun?”
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They
do NOT need ANSWERS. Rather we need
clarification, so see we can see the question does not make sense.
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A
radical approach to dealing with philosophical questions! Don’t answer. Rather
show they don’t need answers!
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Absolute
Nothing
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This
is a peculiar kind of nothing. Usually when we talk about “nothing” we mean an
empty bit of space or period of time when nothing was going on.
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This
is a much more radical “nothing” – absolute Nothing – in which there is no time
or space.
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Can
we make sense of this notion of absolute Nothing/Something?
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Try
thinking of absolute nothing…
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Does
the question make sense?
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What’s
the difference between thinking of Nothing, and not thinking of anything? Is
there a difference?
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“We
arrive at idea of absolute Nothing by subtraction.”
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Can
we do this? Can we mentally remove not only everything on the stage, but the
stage itself – time and space?
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Bede
Rundle: No! Absolute nothing is inconceivable.
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The
radical approach to the question:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
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Me:
Perhaps the question makes no sense.
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In
which case do not need answer.
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In
which case do not need God to be the answer.
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What
is established?
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At most,
only a first cause and/or necessary being.
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But
why must it be, say, the Christian God? Or even a person/agent/god?
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And
might not that particular God be ruled out e.g. on the basis of
observation?
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Even
if we cannot solve mystery, we may be able to rule out certain answers.
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Text
from these slides will be posted tonite on www.stephenlaw.org
•
Twitter:
@stephenlaw60
Comments
If nothing else, we need to get better at calling this the observable universe, and not simply the universe, which might be much bigger, weirder and stranger than we think.
Cheers!
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask why is this kind of existence real instead of some other kind of existence?
Isn't that question essentially asking,Why is there existence rather than non-existence?" if so, then how can non-existence (meaning that which cannot possibly be existent) be expected to be existent?
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask why is this kind of existence real instead of some other kind of existence?