The Cosmological Argument Analysis

Philosophy Final
1. The three views of the relationship between faith and reason are inevitable conflict, independent, and overlapping. If you were to draw a diagram representing inevitable conflict it would just be one circle with both words written in it. Inevitable conflict says that faith and reason deal with the same reality in the same way, but make different claims. In this view one is right and one is wrong. To draw a picture of the independent view, it would be two separate circles, faith in one and reason in another. In this view faith and reason are about two different things. To put it in simplest terms, Bill Nye would not argue with a child about whether Santa is real or not because they do not have anything to do with each other.
The cosmological argument proves the existence of God. It discusses contingent beings which exist, but could not have existed and necessary beings which exist and could not not exist. The cosmological says that there is a contingent being that exists. The existence of a contingent being must have a cause and the contingent being cannot be the cause of itself. The complete cause of a contingent being includes only other contingent beings or it includes a necessary being. Contingent beings alone cannot be the complete cause of a contingent being. The complete cause of a contingent being must include a necessary being. Therefore, a necessary being must exist. The cosmological argument shows that there must be a higher power, and that higher power is God. Everything that exists on earth is a contingent being. There is no person or animal that is not contingent. But what created everything to begin with if a contingent being cannot be the only cause of another contingent being? Everything on earth has a cause, but there must be a necessary being being that caused the Earth. There has to be something other than contingent beings. There has to be a necessary being that started everything. That necessary being is
Aquinas’s view on the relationship between faith and reason is that they are overlapping. He says that man should use all things he can to learn about God. Aquinas states that there is general revelation and special revelation. General revelation is anything in the world, we use logic to see these. General revelation is reason. Special revelation can be seen through scripture and religion. Special revelation is faith. Aquinas believes that we should use any means we can to learn about God, so it is essential to use both general and special revelation. Through general revelation, he believes that we can use reason to give context to our faith. We can use reason to demonstrate some truths about faith, for example, the fact that God exists. Because you cannot understand everything from reason alone, there is some part of faith that can only be shown by special revelation. Aquinas believes that some things in faith that can be explained by reason and some ideas in reason that can be explained by faith and that is where the two overlap. On the other hand, there are other ideas that only faith can explain or only reason can explain. This is why he has an overlapping view on faith and reason because some ideas over lap and some do