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Criticisms of the
Cosmological Argument
- Hume
- Hume thinks that the way we make
assumptions about cause and effect can
be mistaken. he argued that there is a
relationship between cause and effect
because our minds have developed a
habit of seeing causes and automatically
associating effects with them.
- Hume stated that as a matter of logic one cannot always claim or
assume that every effect has a cause. if this is true then it
undermines ways 1 and 2 of Aquinas' argument which assumes
there's a relationship between a cause and effect.
- Hume says that it is not inconceivable that the
world had no cause, or just always existed – he says
“it is neither intuitively or demonstratively certain”
that every object that begins to exist owes its
existence to a cause. He also says that like causes
produce like effects – this seems to be true in the
case of parent rabbits producing baby rabbits, for
example, so as many things in the universe seem to
be the offspring of two parents, why should we
assume that there is one male ‘parent’ of the
universe – wouldn’t it make more sense to postulate
a male and female creator God?
- Hume thinks that the way we make
assumptions about cause and effect can
be mistaken. he argued that there is a
relationship between cause and effect
because our minds have developed a
habit of seeing causes and automatically
associating effects with them.
- The Russell-Copleston debate
- Copleston
- Presented a
reformulation of some of
the ideas found in the
3rd Way of Thomas
Aquinas
- Argued that the
universe can only be
sufficiently explained
by reference to God.
- God is different
from Contingent
beings as he is
'his own sufficient
cause'
- Argued that explaining why
there is a universe is
important
- Presented a
reformulation of some of
the ideas found in the
3rd Way of Thomas
Aquinas
- Russel
- Rejected Copleston's arguments
and suggested that the universe
was not explainable in the way
Copleston wanted.
- He argued that whether an
explanation for the universe as a
whole is possible or not, the
explanation is beyond the reach of
human beings
- It is unnecessary for human beings
to have a sufficient explanation of
the universe that goes beyond the
contingent universe.
- "I should say that the universe is just
there and that is all"
- Rejected Copleston's arguments
and suggested that the universe
was not explainable in the way
Copleston wanted.
- Copleston
- Kant
- Immanuel Kant rejected the
argument outright not only because
he maintained that the idea of a
‘Necessary Being’ was incoherent but
also because our knowledge is
limited to the phenomenal world of
space and time and it is not possible
to speculate about what may or may
not exist independently of space and
time.
- the argument is fundamentally flawed in that it works from
empirical evidence (our observations of causality) to
non-empirical suggestion (that there is a God). Since the
conclusion is outside the boundaries of what we know and
have observed, we cannot know if our presumptions from
empirical evidence can extend beyond those boundaries, so
they cannot support the conclusion, which must therefore
be erroneous.
- Immanuel Kant rejected the
argument outright not only because
he maintained that the idea of a
‘Necessary Being’ was incoherent but
also because our knowledge is
limited to the phenomenal world of
space and time and it is not possible
to speculate about what may or may
not exist independently of space and
time.
- Hume argued that it was
illegitimate to move from
saying that every event in the
universe has a cause to the
claim that the universe has a
cause. Bertrand Russell made
a similar point by remarking
that this was like moving
saying that every human
being has a mother. One
cannot move from individual
causes to the claim that the
totality has a cause.
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