My notes may be useful for those taking religious studies or otherwise known as philosophy and ethics at AS and A level. i hope they come in use as they also took a long time to make. enjoy!
The cosmological argument. This is when people draw
conclusions from particular
examples.
The person doing the reasoning
1.The unmoved mover uses their sensory experiences to
Aquinas’s first way was referred to as motion or change. He said that when we
make rules or predictions.
The unmoved
observe the universe, we notice that things seem to be in a state of motion or
change. Aquinas noted that things are changed or moved by something, not of their Inductive arguments lead to
own accord. Aristotle named this the prime mover and Aquinas developed this into conclusions that might be true
the unmoved mover. but might also be false
Deductive arguments
Aristotle says that things move from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality
only when acted on by the efficient cause. This where we know that if the
His example was a block of marble(potential) turning into a statue(actual) only premises are true then the
when acted on by a sculptor (efficient cause). conclusion must also be true
Aquinas example was of wood becoming hot The conclusion is the logical
consequence of the premises. It’s
based on logical processes
2.The uncaused causer Analogous arguments
This second way of Aquinas dealt with the concept of cause and effect. Every effect
Is a type of inductive reasoning
has a cause and infinite regress is impossible, therefore there must be a first cause.
Aristotle thought that cause works on 4 levels: material, efficient, formal and final. which relies on the use of
By efficient cause Aristotle meant the agent that makes something happen. analogy to arrive at a conclusion
Aquinas stated that it’s impossible for anything in the universe to cause itself. This means that similarities
Aquinas’s idea was the domino analogy, efficient cause to intermediate cause leading between two different things are
to a final cause.
used to support the conclusion
that if they are similar in ways A
3.Contingency
This means depending on something else, in philosophy we contrast this with B and C they are similar in ways
necessary (independent of everything). The universe exits contingently; it depends on D as well
external factors for its existence. Things in the universe depend on something to The strength in an analogous
bring them into existence and depend on something for the continuation of its reasoning lies in how similar two
existence
So unless there is some being that is capable of bringing things into its existence,
things really are
independent of everything, then nothing would have began.
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