al-Kindi & al-Ghazali
- Whatever comes into being must have a cause
- Univ. came into being
- Univ. must have a cause
- That cause must be God
- God exists
Univ. does not depend on God now, but is original cause.
Rejects idea of infinity --> logical paradoxes.
William Lane Craig:
- temporal series that has no beg. -> actual infinite.
- temporal series of events w/o beginning cannot exist.
- finite past = existence caused; universe finite past -> been caused.
- Space + time originated within univ. = finite past. So, cause beyond space + time
- If so, science cannot expl. origin of univ. = personal agent, not physical.
Aquinas' Three Ways - First Way
Obj moves when external force applied to it, chain of movements cannot go back to infinity.
= First unmoved prime mover --> God.
Things achieve their potential through external influence - fire making wood hot.
- Fire applied to wood makes wood achieve potential to become hot.
- For thing to change, actuality required, if not change initiated within itself. be both potential + actual = reductio ad absurdum.
- Wood being hot would mean cannot change to become hot. Wood is its actuality, fire can make it hot is potentiality.
- Smth must have made fire change and alight -> each change result of earlier change.
- But no series of infinite changes; point of first movement by first mover, necessary to arrive at it - God.
Second Way - Causation
Nothing can be cause of itself, would mean it had to exist before it existed = logical impossibility.
Rejected infinite causes = first uncaused causer - God started chain of causes and caused all events to happen.
Third Way: Contingency
Contingency of mattter in univ - come to exist & cease to exist.
Infinite time - then time when nothing existed because of concept of contingency, cannot live forever.
- Time when nothing, then still there would be nothing as nothing can bring itself to existence.
- Cause of univ = external + always existed, necessary being bringing everything into existence i.e. God.
- No God, nothing would exist.
Radio Debtate btwn F.C. Copleston & Bertrand Russe
Radio debate, BBC. Copleston; jesuit priest + professor & Russell; British philosopher.
Copleston supported cosmological arg, Russell opposed.
Focused on principle of sufficient reason - Coppleston supported.
Rejecting idea of necessary being - God, on which all things depend - have to be on special category of his own; where does category come from + why accepted? Necessary being, no meaning. Just b/c humans have mothers does not mean univ. had a mother. Meaningless to ask what caused univ. b/c fallacy (mistake in arg) to assume that just b/c some parts of univ. has causes, that whole thing has one too.
Does not feel need for ultimate answers or sufficient reaons; univ. not crying out for expl. "I should say that the univ. is just there, and that's all."