The Cosmological Argument (Argument for the Existence of God)

Join George and John as they discuss different philosophical theories. In this video they will be debating the Cosmological Argument – an attempt to prove the existence of God through causation, change, motion and the contingency of our universe.

Does God Exist a Philosophical Inquiry:
This books offers an in-depth analysis of The Problem of Evil and the Three main arguments for the existence of God. The Ontological Argument, The Teleological Argument and The Cosmological Argument. Available Worldwide on Amazon…

The script to this video part of the Philosophy Vibe - "Philosophy of Religion Part I" eBook, available worldwide on Amazon:

The Philosophy Vibe Paperback Anthology Vol 1 'Philosophy of Religion' available worldwide on Amazon:

0:00 - Introduction
0:54 - Argument from Motion - Aquinas
2:04 - Argument from Causation - Aquinas
3:02 - Argument from Contingency - Aquinas
4:20 - Principle of Sufficient Reason - Leibniz
5:05 - Problems with the Cosmological Argument
8:10 - Kalam Cosmological Argument - Craig

#cosmologicalargument #existenceofGod #Philosophy #philosophyofreligion

[PhilosophyVibe]

The Philosophy Vibe Paperback Anthology Vol 1 'The Philosophy of Religion':

[jakepeto]

I have watched countless philosophy vibe videos and I think this might be the first one when John losses the debate. Actually shook rn

[SabureVlogs]

I am so happy you guys mentioned WLC 🙏🙏🙏

[susannachandra]

i have an AS exam in 8 hours..ur channel saved my life so ty

[jakesalem]

This channel is dope. You guys laid out the most basic disputes and now are going in to more modern stuff.

[Priestbokmei]

Excellent! excellent! excellent! This video really helped me grasp this argument. Thank you for putting it together!😀

[averyhennessey]

Thank you for being the saviour of my dissertation lads

[Godsglory]

Very very good video. Thank you sir for your time and the timeless wisdom.

[knights]

1) When Aquinas argues from motion it is not the same type of motion you showed as balls hitting one another forward or backward to infinity. Motion for Aquinas is the movement from potential to actuality. For example a hot cup of coffee has the potential to be a cold cup of coffee. However the potential to become cold is not the cause of the coffee getting colder if it does; it is the action of something extrinsic to it that actualises this potential to become cold; ie. for it to move from being potentially cold to being actually cold (in physics we understand this to be temperature differential). So for Aquinas the idea is that something in motion must have been put in motion by something else since 'potentiality' in and of itself has no power to move anything.
2) No decent cosmological argument (especially from Aquinas) says or ever has said that EVERYTHING has or must have a cause. What he did argue is that everything that is caused must have been caused by something else. Nothing, including God, could have caused itself. Again with 'causes' this video did the billiards ball type thing back to the Big Bang (and then God). To modernise Aquinas' argument he was talking of a simultaneous regression where all parts have to exist contemporaneously or everything ceases. I exist because of proteins, proteins because of chemicals, chemicals because of atoms, atoms because of subatominc particles, etc. If anyone of these cease existence then it all collapses. However you cannot infinitely regress this chain or we could never exist here and now. So then he concludes there must be an uncaused cause and this he calls God (cosmologists have called it things like quantum flux, singularity, etc). Big bangs, cycling universes, infinite universes, etc. are not proper defeaters for this argument.
3) Existence. I exist, a chair exists, stars exist. We all share existence yet none of these entities is the cause of its existence; but receives existence and eventually loses existence. Again via infinite regress we must conclude there must be something which is capable of giving existence but did not receive its existence and this he called God.
Despite what this video says these three arguments are 3 separate arguments and not 3 versions of the same argument. Aquinas would have argued there is no way to philosophically prove that the Universe ever had a beginning as God could have generated the Universe as eternally as He is. He only figured the Universe had a beginning because it says so in the Genesis account; but it didn't affect his argument for first cause either way. Things which are caused act in material causality. The uncaused cause, or God acts ex nihilo : causes things from nothing so is in a different class of causation anyway. The unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, the necessary existent agent, the 'I Am who I Am' is not the super-perfect being of our 'being-ness'; but is a totally different class of being from which our reality derives existence.
Once you understand the arguments properly then you will come to understand how, like this video; people like Hawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, etc. have argued against a poor understanding of them and have not given any real defeaters for them.

[amnahsheikh]

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[VivekYadavBlogger]

I'm in love with your channel, please upload some more I like to ponder philosophical questions.

[kroppraven]

please, i love you both, saving me night before A-levels

[ahmedbellankas]

1- the actual infinity objection rests on craig conception of time.
2- how we conceive of time? We can say by time we track the motion of the earth, those numbers on time ( in clocks) are just trackers of the motion of the earth, and the forward uni-directional passage of time is just our convention, there's no such thing past became present, there are only things and individuals, and those change and act, some changes and acts must be sequential, others can be co-occurrent.

[cnault]

"The Cosmological Argument (Argument for the Existence of God)"

But the Kalam doesn't present an argument for the existence of any god, and it certainly does not present any evidence for the upper-case God, which is generally used to refer to a specific god, the god of the Bible.

In it's entirety, the Kalam Cosmological Argument states:

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

It should be obvious that nowhere in the argument and it's conclusion does it mention any god or God.

It is worth mentioning that any presentation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument that contains more than those 2 premises and the conclusion presented above is NOT the Kalam.

It will be a modified & appended version of the Kalam Argument.

[georgerobertson]

All we can prove is our being and capacity for benefit or harm, all else is conjecture. All we can experience is resonance and intimation.

[munapatra]

It's very easy to understand philosophy through ur video thanks a lot.

[eklektikTubb]

0:30 "Ok, so how does it prove the existence of God?" That is simple: It doesnt. :-)
Sure, the idea of infinite regress has a problem. But the idea that time started is also problematic. Without time, nothing can happen, nothing can start existing, so how can time start existing? The answer "time was created by God" doesnt make sense either, because he didnt have time to create time or even think about doing it. Some answer could be that God was created by time... or that he IS the time. Origin of God is also questionable - "allways existed" is infinite regress and "started to exist" raises a question if he came from nothing or some higher cause created him.

[SurgeonSuhailAnwar]

I love your channel and have bought your book . I am however perplexed that you have gone through the arguments without mentioning many of the great Muslim philosophers that actually propagated them. For example you have attributed Kalam argument to WL Craig whereas it originally came from Imam Ghazali. Even WLC admits to this. Similarly you have mentioned Aquinos and Libenez in the contingency argument but not mentioned Abn Sina who initially formulated this. Please look them up and give us a true historic account.

[thyikmnnnn]

I see a lot of comments about the temporal beginning of the universe. The argument doesn't rely on the universe having a beginning. Aquinas only thought that the Universe had a beginning because of his belief that it was revealed in Scripture. His arguments don't argue for a beginning of Universe and he in fact argued vehemently against those who thought that they could prove it through philosophical arguments.

[MannieMasonSandoval]

What about Mackie’s counter arguments to Aquinas? I’m having trouble grasping it.