The Cosmological Argument has two parts; the first part tries to establish the existence of a self-existent being and the second part attempts to prove that the self-existent being is the theistic God. The first part focuses on cases of: "explained by another," "explained by nothing," and "explained by itself." This sets up the argument of deductive validity and trying to conclude if it is true even if the premises are false. By proving that the first part is true Rowe introduces Principle of Sufficient Reason. I do not agree with this principle because it is trying to make its conclusion true without stating any good evidence. There does not need to be an explanation for why something exists because, in the end, a person could argue that "God exists because he just does." So far the first premise of the argument denies that there exists a being whose existence hs no explanation. For the second premise, he states that "a living thing perhaps, that was brought into existence by something else which perished shortly after it brought the [other one] into existence." This makes me wonder because everyone knows that we as human beings were created by our parents, then we can go all the way back in time and say that God created Adam, but then we can ask ourselves, "Who created God?" The Cosmological Argument is a myriad of assumptions and in the end, it could still be false which gets us nowhere in proving that God exists.
Udayana states that there are seven ways to prove that God is in existence; effects, atomic combination, suspension, human skills, authoritative knowledge, Revelation, and atoms. He also calls Him the "all-knowing, imperishable God." He is imperishable God because he is the only one who could create atoms because humans are not able to. Also, humans can not break atoms or destroy them and he is stating that the only person that can do that is God because he created atoms. He mentions the difference between the cause and effect to validate if there is a God. He brings up the argument that "Things like the earth must have a cause, because they are produced by a body (101)." Some deity had to have made the earth for their pleasure. He also relies on objections to prove that God is real. Udayana does bring up good ideas to prove that God is real. The best argument to me is that he created atoms. Humans are unable to destroy atoms or to create them; so they had to be...
I agree with your final point describing the cosmological argument as merely assumptions and that these assumptions do not necessarily lead to proving the existence of a God. Even if we consider these assumptions as truth they lead to a vague idea that could be argued as something other than 'God'.
ReplyDeleteI agree also, the assumptions lead us into a never ending thought pyramid, for example even though we have no proof of a "God' or a higher being one questions that if there is a God that created the universe and then us to live on the universe then who created God or this higher being and what was their purpose, was there a universe for this God? We assume that there was once another being other than God. One would have to think no one was "magically"placed here. Then you could also wonder who created the creator of God and did they create a universe and so on, so we basically end up with a continuous cycle of questions and assumptions that we will more than likely never be able to answer or prove.
DeleteI agree with both of you guys. I feel like the Cosmological Argument leaves a lot of ideas very vague and open for interpretation. After studying Hume's Teleological Argument, it was easy to see how Hume could disagree, or argue against, the Cosmological Argument. Even though the Cosmological Argument attempts to answer certain things, it tends to lead the reader to another question.
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