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COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS

Ratio Christi Texas A&M

BACKGROUND:COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS

Show that the universe needs a cause or explanation for its existence

2 Types:

Kalam

Began in 2nd and 3rd century, further developed by medieval Islamic thinkers

Leibnitz

Also called the Horizontal cosmological argument

GOAL

What are we trying to show?

There is a powerful, transcendent, and personal First Cause.

We eliminate religions dependent on an eternal universe as well as atheism.

THE ARGUMENT

1.Everything that begins to exist, has a cause.

2.The universe began to exist.

3.Therefore, the universe has a cause.

CAUSATION?

Being begets being, and does not come from non being

Things do not pop in to being uncaused out of nothing

If something can come in to being uncaused out of nothing, why doesn’t everything do so?

DID THE UNIVERSE HAVE A BEGINNING

The impossibility of actual infinities existing.

The impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition.

versus

is an actual infinite

is a potential infinite

Hilbert’s Hotel

Infinity Library

SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION

Standard Big Bang Model

General relativity predicted expanding universe.

Red Shift provides empirical evidence of expansion + single point origin.

Alternative models have failed leaving the Standard Big Bang model.

BVG Theorem

Any universe which has been, on average, expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past.

This holds for multiverse scenarios as well.

(holds for non-quantum theories)

CONCLUSION

Therefore, the universe has a transcendent cause.

Properties of such a cause

SpacelessTimelessImmaterialUncausedPowerful

These properties coincide strongly with traditional theism.

LEIBNIZIAN COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Ratio Christi Texas A&M

FORMULATIONS

Why do contingent things exist?

Why does the physical universe exist?

Why is there something rather than nothing*

*beware of Platonists

STATED

1. Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, either in the necessity of its own being or in its contingency on an external entity.

2. If the universe has an explanation for its existence, that explanation is what we call God (a necessarily existing, personal being)

3. The universe is an existing thing.

4. From 1 and 3 it follows: The universe has an explanation of its existence

5. From 2 and 4 it follows: The explanation for the existence of the universe is God

PREMISE I

‘The Principle of Sufficient Reason’

Undergirds all philosophical and scientific inquiry

Denial would be immensely anti-intellectual

Contingent

A thing is contingent if it could exist and it could have failed to exist.

A thing’s existence is contingent if there is some possible world where it exists and some possible world where it doesn’t exist.

Similarly, a contingent truth is something that is true in some possible world and false in some possible world.

Necessary

A being’s existence is metaphysically necessary if it cannot fail to exist; the being exists in all possible worlds.

A truth is metaphysically necessary if its truth can’t be and couldn’t have been otherwise; it is true in all possible worlds.

PREMISE I

Objections usually fall into one of two categories

God is exempt from PSR (inconsistent)

Universe is exempt from PSR (God of the Gaps)

PREMISE II

Implicit affirmation

If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation; it simply exists as a brute fact.

Toned down

God = ‘transcendent personal cause’

Conclusion is at least a bizarre form of atheism

PREMISE II

The logical possibility of alternative composition is evidence against the universe’s necessity

The finite past is evidence for the universe’s contingency

PREMISE III

That the universe exists is rather self-evident, making this the most difficult premise to deny.

One could say tongue in cheek that if the universe doesn’t exist then neither does the person raising this objection…

ALTERNATIVE FORMULATION

1. There are contingent constituents to the universe

2. Given the contingent constituents of the universe, the existence of the universe is highly unlikely under the hypothesis that these constituents are themselves uncaused or self-caused.

3. Given the contingent constituents of the universe, the existence of the universe is not unlikely under the hypothesis of a first uncaused cause

4. Therefore, the existence of the universe strongly supports the existence of a first, uncaused cause over the existence of a non uncaused cause.

(Max Andrews, sententias.org)

QUESTIONS?