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A:The Cosmological Argument forthe existence of God was stated by St Thomas Aquinas, although he did not claim to be the first to use the Argument. Reduced to its simplest possible form, it can be stated as:
  • Some contingent beings exist
  • Contingent beings require a non-contingent ground of being in order to exist
  • Therefore a non-contingent ground of being exists. For Aquinas, this can only be God.

Theists hold that everything (contingent beings) must have a creator (the "first cause"), but the creator (non-contingent ground of being) does not require to be created.

An argument against the Cosmological Argument says that it has three serious defects:

  1. the first premise (Some contingent beings exist) is either unintelligible or is a truism. If it is unintelligible, it is not deserving of serious consideration. If it is a truism, nothing of importance follows from it.
  2. It does not help the argument to decide on God as a "first cause", because it is at least as easy to regard the existence of being as uncaused.
  3. The conclusion of the argument is so ambiguous that it seems quite impossible either to affirm or deny it.

Even if we accept the Cosmological Argument, the non-contingent ground of being does not have to be a deity - we can think of it as the Big Bang. If it is a deity, then it does not have to be the Abrahamic God - we can think of it as Brahma, Ahura Mazda or any other creator god.

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