The Student Room Group
Reply 1
There is someone out there who knows what is right and wrong-bringing order to our lives erm people who do wrong don't get away with it! Humans are not in charge but rather someone perfect is. There is a greater meaning to life-greater reason to do right-improve our nature.

Erm this is worried me actually I'm going to revise! Sorry if it's useless.
Reply 2
1. Logical progression to the conclusion (valid argument).
2. Principle of sufficient reason (leibniz), gives example other than infinite universe - satisfies human demand for explanation.
3. Agrees with the big bang theory (chain of cause+effect).
4. Simple explanation..
Reply 3
I don't mean to be pedantic or anything (I don't really have a clue about this either), but are those valid strengths?

1. Logical progression to the conclusion (valid argument).
People like Hume and Kant deny the fact that we can apply cause and effect all the way back to the beginning of the universe. "Just because every human has a mother doesn't mean that the human race had a mother", or something.
And the cosmological argument assumes some kind of uncaused-cause in order to bring the otherwise infinite regress to a halt. But if this uncaused-cause is infinite, then is that not just as illogical as an infinite universe?

2. Principle of sufficient reason (leibniz), gives example other than infinite universe - satisfies human demand for explanation.
Does satisfying the human inclination to avoid infinity necessarily give an argument a strength? It gives an example that avoids the infinite universe, granted, but is there something inherently wrong with an infinite universe?
Furthermore, the uncaused-cause would need to be infinite also.

3. Agrees with the big bang theory (chain of cause+effect).
The big bang theory doesn't necessarily present a case for a finite universe - one might say that there have been an infinite number of big bangs and so on and so forth, which is just as bad as infinite regress.

4. Simple explanation..
Again, I'm not sure if simplicity warrants merit. The simply way to explain something is often wrong - in nature, we can neglect the effects of air resistance in calculations because it makes things simple. But that means that our predicted answer via calculation will be slightly off due to the simplification.

For the sake of an examination, at what point is a strength considered valid? Will any sort of superficial strength be worth writing down? Or is it only strengths that cannot be refuted easily. When I try to write essays about strengths of a certain argument, I tend to write down very few, as a strength that can be refuted is more of a weakness than anything else...
Reply 4
Perhaps not every superficial strength is worth writing down, but similarly not every argument is worth defending.

If these simple ideas are the reasons people are accepting the Cosmological argument, then they need to be dealt with. Often it isn't the strongest argument, but the most widely accepted than you need to destroy.
And ultimately when it comes down to it, not every position is equally defensible. There is nothing wrong with destroying an argument rather than adopting a balanced position if you genuinely think it's dumb.
I hear what you're saying rabite, but ultimately you have to write something.
Reply 5
Hahaha philosophy is so unbearably futile.
Reply 6
My strengths based on Aquinas:
1. The a posteriori knwodlegd is observable by everyone. As WIlliam Craig would have put it, "it is intuititvely true" and it seems absurd to contradict them.
2. The cause and effect observation is the whole basis of science. It's hard to contradict this as contradicting this is like contradicting Newton nd his theory of gravity.
3. it rejects infinite regress which is supported by a lot of phoilosophers such as william craig, (the analogy of red and green books!)...plus it is supported by big bag, which is the universally accepted theory for the start of universe.
4. Leibniz's sufficient reason..as a lot of people have pointed out
Reply 7
The Big Bag theory - the universally accepted theory for the start of the universe.
"Now young deities", said God one day, "what have I got in my big bag today? Would you like to see?"
Reply 8
What exactly did Coppelstone (sorry for a misspelling) add to the discussion?
In this book, there's only a brief section on him, and it seems as if he's just restating what those before him have already said - but that's probably because he only has a paragraph and a half dedicated to him.
Was there any significant idea he developed?

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