Philosophy essay 09/02/2015
a) Explain the cosmological argument (25 marks)
a) St Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar and priest who produced a large amount of writing attempted to prove the existence of God. He was most well know for this through his book 'Summa Theologica' which was left unfinished when he died. Within this book he explains the 'five ways', which he used to try and prove the existence of God.
Aquinas though of the 'five ways' in order to try to prove and explain the existence of God. Within this concept it is the first three of the five ways that have been used to form the cosmological argument. Aquinas has said that it may not be possible to prove that the universe came into existence. This is supported in his book 'Summa Theologica', Aquinas says "God's effects... are enough to prove that God exists, even if they may not be enough to help us comprehend what he is".
The fist of the five ways is based on motion. Within this theory he attempts to explain that an object is only able to move if a force that s outside of the object is acting on it. He described this as being a chine of events or movements that are not able to go back to infinity. He describes that there must have been a first. He called this the 'Prime mover', the prime mover he described to be unmoved itself. As everything in existence has to be moved by something else and therefore must be linked back to the prime mover.
The second way Aquinas said identifies a series of causes and effects that occur within the universe. In this part of the argument Aquinas observed that noting was able to cause itself and therefore something would have had to exist before that existed. This become a problem for Aquinas as he rejected the idea that there was a series of infinite causes. He rejected this because he said that there must have been a first uncaused cause. Aquinas used this