Aquinas and Clarke's Views on Cosmological Argument for God's Existence, Lecture notes of Reasoning

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Cosmological

Arguments

Arguments that God exists:

Review

• Ontological: the existence of God follows from the very concept of God. - exp: Anselm’s Ontological Argument - This is the only a priori argument for the existence of God.
• Cosmological: The existence of God is posited to explain the existence of (change in) the world. - exp: Aquinas and Clarke - This is an a posteriori argument, in that it relies on something we know only from sense experience—namely, that there is change in the world.

The Cosmological Argument:

• An a posteriori argument because it begins

with a premise, based on observation, that the

universe exists, and is subject to change.

• It tries to show that for this to be so there must

exist something outside the universe which can

cause or explain its existence.

Aquinas’ First Cause

From The Five Ways

St. Thomas Aquinas

“ This cannot go on to infinity. ”

“ Such a series of [prior] causes must however stop somewhere…. Now if you eliminate a cause, you also eliminate its effects, so that you cannot have a last cause [or “last effect”] … unless you have a first. Given therefore … no first cause, there would be no intermediate causes either, and no last effect .”

• i.e., without a first cause, nothing else would have happened, and so nothing would be happening now.
• But things are happening now.
• So, the series cannot go on to infinity.

Why must the series “ stop somewhere ?”

• Aquinas’ Answer:
  • Because without a first cause, nothing else would ever happen - (but, as we know by experience, things have happened).
• But what is Aquinas trying to prove?
  • That there must be a first cause of the existence of thing, i.e., - that without a first cause, nothing else would ever have happened!
• What is wrong with the reasoning here?

Past Infinity

• If the series of previous causes goes backwards

infinitely in time,

• Then every cause is preceded by a previous cause, which is in turn preceded by a previous cause, etc. to infinity. - In this case, there is no such thing as a “first cause,” as every event has a previous cause. - So, if the universe has an infinitely long past history, there is a cause for everything, and yet there is no first cause to “eliminate.”
• Things would be happening now without a first cause , because the series of prior causes would extend infinitely into the past.

“Begging the Question”

• An argument “begs the question” when it implicitly assumes the very point it is trying to prove. - An argument that begs the question is still valid —i.e., if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. After all, the “conclusion” is one of the premises. - But such arguments don’t prove anything, since the “conclusion” is simply assumed to be true. - Can you see where Aquinas begs the question?

Why did Aquinas Beg The Question?

• This is a good question.
  • Can we really understand what it would mean for “the series [of past events] to go to infinity?”
  • Can we really understand what it would mean to say that an infinite amount of time has already taken place?
  • Aquinas never even saw this as an option.
  • Since Aquinas’ time, this has seemed like a viable option.

Aquinas’ Assumption

• We asked why Aquinas begged the very question he set out to show.
• Aquinas assumed without argument that an infinite past history was impossible.
• So, Aquinas assumed that everything must have a cause/explanation (we’ll come back to this), and that this series of causes/explanations cannot involve an infinite past history.

Clarke’s Cosmological Argument

• Aquinas didn’t seriously consider the possibility that the universe might have had an infinitely long past history. - Whether or not it could have is the “question” he “begged.”
• Clarke says that even if the universe has existed for eternity, we still need to posit the existence of God to explain the existence of the entire infinite series of causes and effects—that is, of the universe as a whole.

Clarke’s Cosmological Argument:

• 1. Suppose (for reductio ) that everything

there is is part of an infinite series of

dependent things

• (where each and every thing is dependent for its existence upon the existence of some previous thing, ad infinitum .)
• that is, suppose that nothing (nothing outside the natural world) caused the world.

Clarke’s Cosmological Argument:

• 2. Then the series as a whole has no cause

“ from without” (because it is hypothesized to

include everything there is), and

• 3. The series as a whole has no cause “ from

within” (If it had a cause from within, then that

thing would be its own cause, making it a

necessary being, violating the assumption).

Clarke’s Cosmological Argument

“´ c Æ” means causes “ ∞ ” means infinity “D -n ” means Dependent Event

An infinite series of dependent events:

What caused it?

∞ .... ´ c Æ D -3 ´ c Æ D- 2 ´ cÆ D -1 ´cÆ Now 0