Cosmological Argument
What is the "Cosmological Argument" for God's existence? Be sure to make the premises and conclusion clear. Discuss what you take to be the strongest objection to this argument, and explain why you think it succeeds or fails.
The cosmological argument for God’s existence differs from both the scriptural and ontological arguments in the way in which humans created it. Rather than looking at logical arguments or religious texts, the cosmological argument was derived because of humanity’s ability to project their need for cause onto the world. The cosmological argument is centered on the way in which we, humans in general, perceive there to be a need for a God due to the existence of the world around us. The cosmological argument goes back to ancient times when philosophers such as Aristotle wrote about it in several of his books. Aristotle and others argued that everything has a cause and every action has a reason behind it. This cause and action design sets up the principal aspect of the cosmological argument. If everything has a cause then we could trace back every action to the cause forming a chain of effects. And logically if we follow this chain of events back farther and farther we can determine that an infinite amount of steps backward would be impossible. And if this is the case then a single cause must be at the very start of the chain. This has been referred to as the first cause or the prime mover, or in other words a proof of an existence of God. To provide a more formal outline to the argument the first premise states that “everything is caused by something prior in the causal chain” (Hales 77). Premise two states that “it is absurd to think that the chain of causation can go back infinitely” (Hales 77). And if the chain cannot continue backwards forever premise three would then follow that “there must be some uncaused thing at the beginning that started the whole chain of causation”(Hales 77). The fourth and arguably most controversial premise
The cosmological argument for God’s existence differs from both the scriptural and ontological arguments in the way in which humans created it. Rather than looking at logical arguments or religious texts, the cosmological argument was derived because of humanity’s ability to project their need for cause onto the world. The cosmological argument is centered on the way in which we, humans in general, perceive there to be a need for a God due to the existence of the world around us. The cosmological argument goes back to ancient times when philosophers such as Aristotle wrote about it in several of his books. Aristotle and others argued that everything has a cause and every action has a reason behind it. This cause and action design sets up the principal aspect of the cosmological argument. If everything has a cause then we could trace back every action to the cause forming a chain of effects. And logically if we follow this chain of events back farther and farther we can determine that an infinite amount of steps backward would be impossible. And if this is the case then a single cause must be at the very start of the chain. This has been referred to as the first cause or the prime mover, or in other words a proof of an existence of God. To provide a more formal outline to the argument the first premise states that “everything is caused by something prior in the causal chain” (Hales 77). Premise two states that “it is absurd to think that the chain of causation can go back infinitely” (Hales 77). And if the chain cannot continue backwards forever premise three would then follow that “there must be some uncaused thing at the beginning that started the whole chain of causation”(Hales 77). The fourth and arguably most controversial premise