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A-Level Philosophy and Ethics Mind Map on Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument, created by savanna q on 21/01/2014.

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Criticisms of theCosmological ArgumentHume thinks that the way we makeassumptions about cause and effect canbe mistaken. he argued that there is arelationship between cause and effectbecause our minds have developed a habitof seeing causes and automaticallyassociating effects with them.Hume stated that as a matter of logic one cannot always claim orassume that every effect has a cause. if this is true then itundermines ways 1 and 2 of Aquinas' argument which assumesthere's a relationship between a cause and effect.Hume says that it is not inconceivable that the worldhad no cause, or just always existed – he says “it isneither intuitively or demonstratively certain” thatevery object that begins to exist owes its existenceto a cause. He also says that like causes produce likeeffects – this seems to be true in the case of parentrabbits producing baby rabbits, for example, so asmany things in the universe seem to be the offspringof two parents, why should we assume that there isone male ‘parent’ of the universe – wouldn’t it makemore sense to postulate a male and female creatorGod?HumeThe Russell-Copleston debateCoplestonRusselImmanuel Kant rejected theargument outright not only becausehe maintained that the idea of a‘Necessary Being’ was incoherentbut also because our knowledge islimited to the phenomenal world ofspace and time and it is not possibleto speculate about what may or maynot exist independently of space andtime.KantHume argued that it wasillegitimate to move fromsaying that every event in theuniverse has a cause to theclaim that the universe has acause. Bertrand Russell madea similar point by remarkingthat this was like movingsaying that every human beinghas a mother. One cannotmove from individual causesto the claim that the totalityhas a cause.the argument is fundamentally flawed in that it works fromempirical evidence (our observations of causality) tonon-empirical suggestion (that there is a God). Since theconclusion is outside the boundaries of what we know andhave observed, we cannot know if our presumptions fromempirical evidence can extend beyond those boundaries, sothey cannot support the conclusion, which must therefore beerroneous.Rejected Copleston's argumentsand suggested that the universewas not explainable in the wayCopleston wanted.Presented areformulation of some ofthe ideas found in the 3rdWay of Thomas AquinasArgued that theuniverse can only besufficiently explainedby reference to God.God is differentfrom Contingentbeings as he is'his ownsufficient cause'Argued that explaining whythere is a universe isimportantHe argued that whether anexplanation for the universe as awhole is possible or not, theexplanation is beyond the reach ofhuman beingsIt is unnecessary for human beingsto have a sufficient explanation ofthe universe that goes beyond thecontingent universe."I should say that the universe isjust there and that is all"Double click this nodeto edit the textClick and drag this buttonto create a new node