When was the cosmological argument

The application of this definition to finite and infinite sets yields results that Craig finds counter-intuitive but which mathematicians see as our best understanding for comparing the size of sets. They see the fact that an infinite set can be put into one-to-one correspondence with one of its own proper subsets as one of the defining characteristics of an infinite set, not an absurdity.

Cantorian mathematicians argue that these results apply to any infinite set, whether in pure mathematics, imaginary libraries, or the real world series of concrete events. Thus, Smith argues that Craig begs the question by wrongly presuming that an intuitive relationship holds between finite sets and their proper subsets, namely, that a set has more members than its proper subsets must hold even in the case of infinite sets Smith, in Craig and Smith Further discussion is in Oppy — Loke 55—61; see Craig and Sinclair, —6 replies to the above objections by arguing that what is mathematically possible is not always metaphysically possible.

Loke proceeds to argue that concrete infinities violate metaphysically necessary truths concerning causal powers. Craig is well aware of the fact that he is using actual and potential infinite in a way that differs from the traditional usage in Aristotle and Aquinas [Craig and Sinclair For Aristotle, all the elements in an actual infinite exist simultaneously, whereas a potential infinite is realized over time by addition or division.

Hence, the temporal series of events, as formed by successively adding new events, was a potential, not an actual, infinite Aristotle, Physics , III, 6 ]. For Craig, however, an actual infinite is a timeless totality that cannot be added to or reduced.

The future, but not the past, is a potential infinite, for its events have not yet happened. Turning to premise 7 , why should one think that it is true that a beginningless series, such as the universe up to this point, is an actual rather than a potential infinite? For Craig, an actual infinite is a determinate totality or a completed unity, whereas the potential infinite is not. 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 Furthermore, Martin wonders whether complexity is an issue at all. According to Swinburne, as free God can create any kind of world or no world at all. But then the existence of God is compatible with any number of scenarios: the existence of no world, a simpler world than we have, one like ours, or any number of more complex universes.

Put another way, adding the existence of God to our background knowledge does not increase the likelihood of there being a complex universe, let alone of there being this particular universe or a universe at all This introduces the theme of simplicity, to which Swinburne devotes much attention.

Swinburne goes on to argue that a personal explanation in terms of God satisfies condition 2 because of its simplicity. If one is going to construct an explanatory hypothesis using the criterion of simplicity, God rather than science is more likely to be the focus of the true explanatory hypothesis.

God is one and of one kind; polytheism is ruled out. Moreover, God is the simplest kind of person there can be because a person is a being with power to do intentional actions , knowledge, and freedom to choose, uncaused, which actions to do , and in God these properties are infinite, and having infinite properties is simpler than having properties with limits, as humans do.

Furthermore, God engages in simple causation, that is, causation by simple intention. Swinburne concludes that although the prior likelihood of neither God nor the universe is particularly high, the prior probability of a simple God exceeds that of a complex universe.

Hence, if anything is to occur unexplained, it would be God, not the universe. Swinburne , Theism does not make [certain phenomena] very probable; but nothing else makes their occurrence in the least probable, and they cry out for an explanation. A priori , theism is perhaps very unlikely, but it is far more likely than any rival supposition. Hence, our phenomena are substantial evidence for the truth of theism.

Swinburne In his critique of Swinburne, J. Mackie wonders whether personal explanations are reducible to natural, scientific explanations. To implement intentionality requires an entire system of neurological and macro-biological conditions.

Not only does God as nonphysical lack these biological conditions, but these conditions are exceedingly complex, not simple. When we incorporate these features, the simplicity disappears. Swinburne replies that Mackie has misunderstood his argument. Even if we understand all the neural connections and firings, we may not achieve any better explanation of why persons intended to act as they did than simply asking them why they acted as they did. This indicates that the existence of intermediate physical causal links is not an essential part of personal explanation.

In fact, Swinburne argues, since it is easier to understand the function of intention without invoking any physical causal limitations, it makes it easier to understand the case of God who as nonphysical has no need for intermediary physical processes. Thus, he claims, Mackie missed the point about God when he invokes the complexity of physical accounts. The point is that God can will to act on his intentions directly, and this provides a simple account or explanation of why things came to exist.

Swinburne has at least six understandings that one hypothesis is simpler than another. This is a quantitative understanding. Swinburne holds that the appeal to God as an explanation is simpler in all of these ways.

The explanation itself is simple. God can bring about the effect by himself alone. Several important questions about simplicity arise. First, is simplicity the criterion we should use to decide between hypotheses? For one thing, simplicity is not always a reliable criterion for determining which hypothesis is true or which hypothesis provides the best explanatory account.

The rise of quantum explanations suggests that the simplest account of the universe, for example, that of Newton, is not a complete and fully adequate account. The events in the subatomic realm are far from explained simply. For another, although an explanation in terms of four factors might make an explanation simpler, the reverse might hold: an explanation in terms of ten factors might be simpler than an explanation in terms of four because the relationships that hold between the ten factors are less complex than those that hold between the four, making for a simpler explanation Ostrowick Second, why think that theism is simpler than naturalism?

Oppy argues that whereas both naturalism and theism equally fit the data and have the same scope, naturalism is simpler, for theism is. In conclusion, Swinburne contends that it is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but more likely that God would exist uncaused. It is likely that if there is a God, he will make something like the finite and complex universe. The puzzling existence of the universe can be made comprehensible explicable if we suppose it is brought about by a personal God with intentional beliefs and the power to bring intentions to fruition Whether simplicity can bear the weight of his argument is the key matter in question.

Finally, even if the cosmological argument is sound or cogent, the difficult task remains to show, as part of natural theology, that the necessary being to which the cosmological argument concludes is the God of religion, and if so, of which religion.

Rowe suggests that the cosmological argument has two parts, one to establish the existence of a first cause or necessary being, the other that this necessary being is God 6. It is unclear, however, whether the second contention is an essential part of the cosmological argument. Although Aquinas was quick to make the identification between God and the first mover or first cause, such identification seems to go beyond the causal reasoning that informs the argument although one can argue that it is consistent with the larger picture of God and his properties that Aquinas paints in his Summae.

Others have proposed a method of correlation, where to give any religious substance to the concept of a necessary being, one conducts a lengthy discussion of the supreme beings found in the diverse religions and carefully correlates the properties of a necessary being with those of a religious being.

This is done to discern compatibilities and incompatibilities Attfield Regardless of the connection of a necessary being with religion, it is necessary to flesh out the nature of the necessary being if one is to hold that the cosmological argument is informative. VAT reg no Main menu. Subjects Shop Courses Live Jobs board.

View shopping cart. View mytutor2u. Account Shopping cart Logout. Explore Blog Reference library Collections Shop. Religious Studies. Cosmological Argument. Jim Riley 1st March Share: Facebook Twitter Email Print page. He proposed his argument in a BBC radio debate in 1 There are things in this world that are contingent — they might not have existed e.

Religious Studies Jim Riley. Our subjects Our Subjects. It is a form of argument from universal causation. Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist.

Thus, according to Aquinas, there must have been a time when nothing existed. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist a necessary being whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is derived.

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz made a similar argument with his principle of sufficient reason in The sufficient reason […] is found in a substance which […] is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.

The difference between the arguments from causation in fieri and in esse is a fairly important one. In fieri , the process of becoming, is similar to building a house.

Once it is built, the builder walks away, and it stands on its own accord. It may require occasional maintenance, but that is beyond the scope of the first cause argument.