Karen asked:

Could you please explain the Cosmological argument and the objections to it?

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It is an argument which purports to prove the existence of God. There are several ways of putting it;
two of the best known are the formalisations offered by Leibniz and Kant. The one by Leibniz is
analysed by Russell in his popular book, A History of Western Philosophy.Kant's version occurs in
the Critique of Pure Reason,Part I, "Transcendental Doctrine of Elements", Book II, Chapter III, sect.
5. Both of these are almost short enough to be quoted here; but rather than this overt "lifting", I'll give
a rough and ready guide and leave you the pleasure of reading the full text in the books referred to.

The argument proposes that, if anything at all exists, then a 'necessary' something (e.g. God) must
also exist. For example, I exist, but I did not come to be from self-causation. Rather, I came to be
from a contingent cause, the more or less accidental mating game enacted by my parents. They in
turn came to be from similarly contingent causes. Pursue this strain through to its end: somewhere
along this line of argumentation you come to molecules, atoms, electrons, fundamental particles, big
bang, what have you. All these are "occasions" which depend on other causes. Where does this
so-called "infinite regress" end? According to the cosmological argument, with a creator who is
uncaused, but provides the initial impulse to set this whole chain in motion. If you're religious, you
might call this creator "God", if not, you might be content with the "quantum flutter" of Hartle/ Hawkins.

Clearly this whole argument rests on logical principles as well as on a linear conception of infinity.
Kant demonstrates among several other refutations that this linear causality is conceptually
inadequate. He mentions in his criticism that the ontological proof is unsatisfactory because it
requires us to accept an a priori necessary existence, and that the cosmological proof was introduced
because its saving grace is the actual and known existence of some beings, so that rather than
arguing in an intellectual vacuum, we can have recourse to this known existence and argue
backwards. In the end, however, both proofs, ontological and cosmological, suffer from the same
defect of infinite regress.

Now one reason why this has always been felt to be inadequate (even in ages when faith in God was
unquestioned) was that these proofs rather obviously do not solve the problem they tackle: God (the
uncaused cause) is always a privileged entity. But once you are on course of admitting such an
exception, then you are effectively free to apply the notion of privilege to any link in that chain. More
recently, in the wake of complexity theory, the notion of dispositionhas taught us that "privilege" and
"hierarchy" are in a much greater way than ever before considered fundamental principles of
organisation throughout the cosmos, in every dimension, and therefore just the thing to upset neat
logical proofs which taper off into infinity. But this is a chapter I might now leave you to research on
your own. Check out your study resource for "first cause" and "infinite regress" and go from there.
Happy hunting!

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney