Islamic philosophy enriches the tradition, developing two types of arguments. Arabic philosophers falasifasuch as Ibn Sina c. The world is composed of temporal phenomena preceded by other temporally-ordered phenomena. Since such a series of temporal phenomena cannot continue to infinity because an actual infinite is impossible, the world must have had a beginning and a cause of its existence, namely, God Craig
In them Philo, Demea and Cleanthes discuss arguments for the existence of God. Hume was a sceptic and therefore doubtful about the claims of religion. The cosmological argument rests on certain principles of causation. In particular that any existent thing must have a cause or reason for its existence this is what Leibniz points to in his principle of sufficient reasonand that there cannot be more in the effect than there is in the cause.
Hume challenges these assumptions in his Dialogues. There are three main categories of criticism that Hume makes of the argument. Firstly he has general concerns about the way it is structured, and believes that this structure is fallacious, secondly he has more specific concerns related to causation and finally he raises challenges to do with the concepts of contingency and necessity.
He gives the example of a collection of twenty particles — if an explanation is found for each particle individually he says it would be wrong to then seek an explanation for the whole collection, because you have already explained it by explaining each particle.
So to look for a cause of this whole arbitrarily defined by us would seem to be mistaken. Hume also has some challenges to the notion of causation, which the cosmological argument relies heavily on.
In the Dialogues Demea puts forward an analogy of a house needing an architect — likewise the existence of an ordered universe requires a divine architect. Hume had developed a theory of causation that was based on our epistemological limits as human beings — to talk about the origin of the universe is to go beyond the scope of human understanding and observation, as it is impossibly remote and unavailable to us.
The empirical method is based on the ability to make observations to explain the causes of things.
This is only possible for particular effects in the universe. He gives the example of a billiard ball hitting another — all we can observe is that the motion of one ball follows the motion of the other ball — we link the two in our minds and say that one causes the other to move, but there is no evidence of a link.
Therefore, to base an argument on causation would be foolish, as we could never be sure that causation is anything other than a psychological effect. In other words why posit a necessary being rather than a necessary universe?
The five ways are: argument for an unmoved mover, argument for an uncaused causer, argument from contingency, argument from gradation and argument from teleology. It is the first three that support the cosmological argument to explain the existence of God. A Critique of the Cosmological Argument. Paul Edwards. I. The so-called “cosmological proof” is one of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God. Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument are found in his book Dialogues on Natural Religion. In them Philo, Demea and Cleanthes discuss arguments for the existence of God. Hume was a sceptic and therefore doubtful about the claims of religion.
There is a deeper problem with the idea of a necessary being too. Any being that exists can also not exist, and there is no contradiction implied in conceiving its non-existence, but this is exactly what would have to be the case, if its existence were necessary.In natural theology and philosophy, a cosmological argument is an argument in which the existence of a unique being, generally seen as some kind of god, is deduced or inferred from facts or alleged facts concerning causation, change, motion, contingency, or finitude in respect of the universe as a whole or processes within it.
The History of the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God - Early elements of the Cosmological Argument were developed by the world renowned philosophers Plato and Aristotle between the years and BC (Boeree).
A Critique of the Cosmological Argument. Paul Edwards.
I. The so-called “cosmological proof” is one of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God. David Hume’s Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument. The essence of the cosmological argument that “Nothing can come from nothing” (Ex nihilo, nihil fit) is founded on two major principles of causal reasoning which can be found in Aquinas’ Cosmological arguments (the first three ways) as well as Copleston’s version of the argument.
Cosmological Argument Page 1 of 5 Aquinas had five proofs for the existence of God, of which three are cosmological; they are the First Cause Argument, the Prime Mover Argument and the Argument One of the remaining criticisms of the argument is that, if God caused the universe, who caused God?
The answer from the proponents of the. The cosmological argument is less a particular argument than an argument type. It uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from particular alleged facts about the universe (cosmos) to the existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God.