The Cosmological Argument (2 of 2) | by MrMcMillanREvis
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- Опубликовано: 1 авг 2024
- Part 2 of my Introduction to the Cosmological Argument. For Part 1 please follow the link ( • The Cosmological Argum... ). This overview is designed for students studying Philosophy of Religion for AS Level (particularly the Edexcel Specification, but also other exam boards, e.g. OCR, AQA)
The Audio-only podcasts can be found at mrmcmillanrevis.podbean.com/
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! MAY THE NECESSARY BEING BLESS YOU!!!
Ah, a Philosophical Blessing! What more could I ask for?
i like how it acknowledges the significance of Islamic philosophers
My exam is next week. This is my saviour.
Thanks for the feedback. You are correct that Aquinas' argument did not rely on the assumption that the Universe had a beginning. Rather he wanted to show that the Universe was dependent on a First Efficient Cause. Please bear in mind that my video is aimed at students studying for AS Level in UK exams, which means they are about 16-17 years old. Therefore its not possible to go in to some of the finer subtleties of contingency and efficient causes, etc. I am probably guilty of over-simplifying
Can you please do one for utilitarianism/ situation ethics?
Extremely clear, and simple, and effective. I wish I had had access to materials like these when I was in high school, in Italy some fifteen years ago. I would have understood much more, much sooner, and with much less effort.
You are my hero, great to watch your videos the night before the exam just to consolidate knoweledge
I can't believe I didn't find these videos sooner - it is one day before my AS Philosophy exam and I am wishing my teacher had shown these to us in September!
These are absolutely brilliant! I was stressing so much and I now can breathe!! Thank you so much!
I barely understood the Cosmological Argument until watching these videos - so helpful!!! Thank you :)
A really engaging and satisfying video to watch. Love the back-to-school crash course format. The necessary being will be pleased. 😆
Your videos really clear things up...thank you so much!
Thanks! These videos are absolute lifesaver... been watching them for quite a lot of weeks and its really helped my weak understanding on the arguments! I showed your channel to my philosophy teacher and now she shows them to all her classes.
You should make more! They're great!!! Thanks! :) :) :)
Continue to spread the word!
I love this video it's so helpful! Could you please do one on utilitarianism?
This is fantastic mate 😊, this is really going to help me out for my AS level in 2 months time.
will you do an as level video of the moral argument by kant
very well explained like all your other videos. very helpful for my GCSEs
My exam is tomorrow morning, this has saved my life!! Thank you so much!!
im i able to print the slides off? if not could you please allow it so i can revise off them please
Fantastic!!! Perfectly explained!
Can you please do one for the OCR new specification?
Thank you so much for this! I have my Philosophy exam in exactly one week so this is a really fantastic summary, I'm downloading the podcast as I type :)
Good Luck Next Week! Let me know how it goes!
Please can you make a video on the criticisms of the argument? I've found these really helpful with my revision!
Hi Claudia, the section at the end of the video is an attempt at evaluation, and covers the main criticisms, although admittedly, not in much detail. Hopefully that will give you some ideas to start with.
Hi,
I've just added the link for the audio podcasts to the video description above.
Hope that helps
Thanks! Really helpful. Going to look through your other revision videos now - last minute revision for resit tomorrow. Good luck to everyone retaking! We can do this!!!!!
Hope you did well.
finally a not biased version
Lifesaver!🙌🏻
this is really helpful!! thank you, can you do a similar thing to situation ethics please.
Hi amazing video!! Could you provide a link for the podcast been searching for it and it can't find it :(
Thanks so much for the help, this may well save my IB grade
Glad you like the video John. However, my job as an educator is not to try to argue people to my point of view, but to present the ideas as best I can and let people make up their own minds. I'm not sure if I have succeeded, but I've tried my best.
This was fab, thank you!
beautifully explained!!!
I think I know where the confusion may have arisen. I have said in the video that most forms of the Cosmological argument rely on a rejection of 'infinite regress' - as Soyeong TK put it "It is impossible to have an infinite series of necessary things casually ordered per se without a primary cause". This is not necessarily a rejection of an "infinite past". The only point in the video where this connection is made is when I summarise the criticisms of Bertrand Russell, who in his debate with...
On another note, the comparison to mathematics is interesting. Bertrand Russell (the atheist mentioned in the video) was a Mathemetician, and wrote a book on the basic principles of maths. He said that there were certain principles we had to accept as true in order to understand or trust Mathematics, even though they themselves were not necessarily verifiable. Because of this there are still many areas within Maths which are debated amongst Mathemeticians.
I recently lost my job and have been contemplating studying whilst "searching" for work. Finding work is proving hard due to being a criminal. sooo, I have money set aside from a payout from work, so thought i may as well study religious studies at A level; whilst being unemployed ! What are your thoughts, im 25 and not sure how homeschooling experience would be. Would you recommend philosophy in general or this course ? My passion is for religious philosophy though, however i am dyslexic and worry about the impact it will have on my examinations. - Also props to WLC
It's the OCR AS exam tomorrow, both of them together in the morning. Thank you so much and why didn't I find you earlier? :)
You're welcome!
...Aquinas' argument to then show the distinction between that and the Kalam argument, which did assert that the Universe had a beginning.
Can you please show me which Theologian ever proposed “everything that exists has a cause”
....dats before my exam and i reach my saviour!!! Praise Jesus!!!
How appropriate! Good luck in your exam!
After looking at the debate transcript, it looks like Copleston was actually arguing from the 2nd Way, but called it the argument from contingency. Normally, the 2nd Way is called the argument from causality and the 3rd Way is the argument from contingency, hence the confusion.
So helpful!!
This is absolutely inspired!
Thanks! Although I think Einstein said something like success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration! There's a lot of hard work goes in to them!
if you are interested in the cosmological argument, Andrew Loke’s God and Ultimate Origins: A Novel Cosmological Argument is a good book for further study. :)
The strength of an argument depends on how willing people are to grant the premises, so because people are less willing to grant the universe had a beginning, I consider the Kalam to be inferior to Aquinas' arguments. It is important to consider if that premise is granted, does the argument prove what it sets out to prove? The goal is to show not that God probably exists, but that He necessarily does, so it is a deductive argument rather than inductive.
There wouldn't be a mind/body problem if everyone had Aquinas' understanding of causality, so it shouldn't be glossed over.
If something is contingent at some time it won't be. It is possible for every contingent thing to not be at the same time, and if there is an infinite past, then it is meaningless to say it is possible, but that it never would happen. Therefore at some point in the past no contingent thing would exist and there would be no way for anything new to be brought into existence.
I think the reason there is no consensus is because if our (classical theist) definition of God is reliable then almost by definition the statements 'God exists' or God does not exist" are unverifiable (they are outside the limits of our experience). That is why the Logical Positivist philosophers said the question "Does God exist?" is meaningless. Your question is something that would hopefully be raised in a study of 'religious language' (probably at A2 Level on most exam boards)
Aquinas never argued that everything that exists has a cause, but that everything that begins to exist has one. It was unnecessary to assert that the universe had a beginning, but simply that if it began to exist, then it had a cause. I don't know if it was you or Freddy, but that was a poor representation of Aquinas' Third Way. The possibility that the universe had a infinite past would have fit just fine with him.
This is probably a bad thing but I found the hyphen you used in the double negative "cannot-not" the most interesting part of this video :/
What effect should this correction have on how one views this video? In any case, If there's something incorrect in your video then I think that you should correct it regardless of the age you're targeting because there's enough confusion about this argument and all ages will benefit from a correct presentation.
What’s the difference between deism and theism?
deist believs in god but does not believe in religions. theist believs in religions
...Copleston (and elsewhere I believe) argued against the need for a first cause because he believed it was plausible that the Universe had an "infinite past". Perhaps the mistake then is Russell's, in presuming "infinite past" and "infinite regress" where the same thing? He thinks by showing the Universe might have an infinite past he has shown it could have an infinite regress, and therefore requires no first cause.
this was ledgit amazing , thanks
Glad you liked it! Always nice to get a positive comment!
He may have been responding to the 2nd Way instead of the 3rd, which would have made a little more sense, but it still doesn't help him. Aquinas thought infinite regress was theoretically possible casually ordered per accidens, such as someone who begets someone who begets someone else, but not per se because a chain of secondary causes necessitates a primary cause.
Great video.. but i think the overall idea that the CosmologicalArgument is a philosophycal one falls a bit short. Lots to say there on the scientific models on what 'the beginning of the universe' means. And many more scientific critiques on our notion of 'causality'.
Imo, there lie the true weapons against this argument. It fails to grasp the difference between our mondain intuitions and even our best actual, current understanding of nature. Even worse, it dismisses all the wonders we do not fully know yet (cfr multiverses,...)
In this argument you state that a baby has uncovered a weakness in Acquinas' argument - namely that if everything that exists has a cause, then God must have a cause. BUT in your previous video on this subject you stated that Acquinas identified the need for an Uncaused Cause / an Uncreated Being = God. The two positions are different
id say the cosmological argument is the only argument for good that has any legs what so ever. but the legs are very short and can not walk very far. so it is a good argument but it wont help any other theist argument more spesific to there religions.
here's the thing. The law of cause and effect says that the cause must always happen before the effect. But, we know that time (and space) started in the big bang , so there was no "before" the big bang, and you can't look for a cause, because it's impossible (of course, this is if you agree that big bang was the beginning of existence for the universe) . Also, because everything in the universe have a cause, this doesn't mean the universe has a cause. I can't understand why you should call god a necessary thing, when you can say universe is a necessary thing.
Do YOU think the cosmological argument "works"?
(continued)
This is not the case, therefore there exists something the existence of which is necessary. It is impossible to have an infinite series of necessary things casually ordered per se without a primary cause. Therefore there exists something that has in itself its own necessity, which it does not receive from another, but causes others their necessity, and this is what we call God.
"Because of this there are still many areas within Maths which are debated amongst Mathemeticians."
I hope that the debated areas of math aren't being used to build airplanes.
dat voice go brrrrr
I would have to say that if Bertie the earl Russell can say "the Universe is Just there and that's all" then I can say that "God is Just there and that's all".
there is archaeological evidence for the bible too.
and if you are married and have kids you know that you had to do something to create those kids, you have to make/build/create a house, car, computers, OS, and Etc.. You could also say it takes two Humans to create Humans so how are people going to say that we came from one cell?
Yeah that's what Occam's Razor basically states too. It 'shaves' away any excess explanations and just concludes it's God
Dreadful....
The cosmological argument requires the use of the special pleading fallacy...
The Kalam simply tries to avoid this problem with the insertion of the words "begins to".....
But its still special pleading
got me an A
Hi, I took AS last year and the advice I would give is to remember to always focus on the question- Signpost every paragraph to the title to show you are answering it! That makes it look like you've not learnt everything parrot fashion and you know your content well, and you can confidently and coherently relate it to any given question. Also, including as many quotes, examples and scholarly information help get you the high marks! good luck!
How did you find it then? Hope it went well!
The assertion "ONE cause" is already invalid. Why does nobody admit that the number of reasons is unknown, and if uncaused-first-cause exists, then it is an unknown number of them which had coincided wirth the effect, to bring the Universe into existence. Btw, the "unknown number" includes - cleverly, so to speak - the possibility of "zero". Kind regards from GERMANY.
Bertrund Russell argued that the human race did not have a mother, but it does - God. God is the mother of humanity.
brandonashplant depends on your point of view clearly your religious and feel that what you have said is correct but be aware that the answer to that question is beyond our knowledge as human beings and you should not be so defensive of what we do not know
MegaPlika I'm agnostic, and therefore it isn't 'clear' that I'm religious - Lets agree God created humanity, then in essence God conceived human beings! I feel Russell's arguments are weak, for instance; not accepting the words 'necessary' and 'contingency'.. That's ridiculous, again; Russell believes in infinite regression - how can the Universe have existed completely without a beginning?! even profound atheists such as Richard Dawkins agree in a beginning, whether God is the explanation, the big bang, a combination of both or neither, there must be some reason, and not just plain existence! Russell is the perfect example of the people I so perplex about, he could have argued with reason and rationality, yet chose the path of inconsistency.
brandonashplant How many G-Ds?
kleenex3000 What?
brandonashplant If you are AGnostic (actually EVERYBODY is) then you do not know how many G-Ds.
Sir I really like your videos. However the problem..." What caused God" was solved by Aquinas Himself...Since.
1. God is the necessary being.
2. God is Actuus Purus...pure actuallity.
3. God is the Sheer act of Being or "To Be itself"
....these are the answer to your problem...it is written in the 1st three article of Summa Theologica..
Great! But there is no explanation other that god exists and whether this is proof that god exists or not. One thing that would be AMAZING would be a) your opinion and b) a theory like: you cannot go back in time before the big bang (or thereabouts) , being like time 0 seconds past 0 minutes past 0 hours since the beginning of time. Don't necessarily believe this purely some random guy put it in the comments of an AWESOME video, and I'm sure there must be some logical explanation against this theory I've just come up with spur of the moment kinda thing.
this still makes no sense to me..
Oh alright.
Perhaps then, as an educator, you can explain to me why after 2400 years of going around the same basic argument, reasonable (are they?), competent people are unable to reach a consensus about this. Is it because philosophy is flawed in some fundamental way and simple doesn't work? Or is something else going on? Imagine mathematicians were still debating the sum of the angles of a triangle. Wouldn't that undercut our trust in mathematics?
Nice music!
This is fantastic mate 😊, this is really going to help me out for my AS level in 2 months time.
+Michael Wyatt still dont get it