The Cosmological Argument: Proving The Existence Of God

The Cosmological Argument, also known as the First Clause Argument, is an a posteriori argument that attempts to prove the existence of God through the idea of there being an uncaused first cause (God) to the creation of the universe. Christina philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas is known for arguing in this manner in which he wrote, “The Five Ways”. From then on, the Cosmological Argument has become one of the most controversial and convincing arguments as to the existence of God. In what follows, I will argue that “The Five Ways” Aquinas’ brings up is not enough to prove the existence of God. However, I will still go over how the arguments still hold merit and provide convincing opinions. The first argument Aquinas holds is the
A contingent being cannot exist without a necessary being. For example: you are a contingent being that required reproduction through your parents and they are the same from their parents. In following this argument that would mean that there was once nothing in the universe because not every being can be contingent as we need a beginning necessary being for all of this which leads to the question of who/what is the necessary being for all beings? Aquinas would claim that, “Therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God” (p.50 Classic Philosophical Questions, Mulvaney). There are a couple objections to this argument. The first is the basic premise of his argument is that there is no being that owes its existence to itself. Yet in the conclusion, he claims that God is able to do so. Another objection is that just because it is possible for everything not to exist, how does that prove that there is existence of greater being to start it all? This goes back to the second argument and Hume's principle where this argument at best only explains that there is a necessary being, but not
Aquinas’ fourth argument deals with the measurement of qualities. An example of this would be to compare two statues and to say that one of the statues is more beautiful than the other. For these two objects, one has a greater degree of beauty than the other. Therefore, there must be a perfect quality in which he calls God. This argument is perhaps the weakest of the five as it doesn’t hold up when applied to history or region. The way that we’ve valued things have been constantly changing over time and are viewed differently in different areas. Things like racism, women’s rights, and homosexuality were all frowned upon in the past, but are all now considered just. Going back to the statue example, the idea of the statue being more beautiful than the other is also completely subjective. There is no scale as to what makes something more