In this essay, I will be examining the different views pertaining to the cosmological argument for the existence of God as discussed by Bertrand Russell and Fr. Copleston. I will be agreeing with Lord Russell’s views that the cosmological argument has a few inherent problems and contradictions that are difficult to overcome. First, I will look at Russell's assessment on his points of necessary and analytic propositions as well as his belief that Copleston’s argument on contingency is a fallacy of composition. I will then concur with these ideas and offer my thinking as to why this opinion is more convincing than its counterpart.
Russell and Copleston had two major disagreements in their discussion. Firstly, it was on what can be considered …show more content…
Russell believes that the principle of sufficient reason is equivalent to the idea of a cause. This is to say that Russell is opposing Copleston’s view that God is his own sufficient reason (meaning He contains his own cause) because how can everything be dependant on something except for God. Russell continues further to say that that the dependency of everything separately is not a proper explanation for everything being dependant on something as a whole. He claims Copleston is making a fallacy of composition. He uses the “mother analogy” to defend his point stating that although every person has a mother, this isn’t to mean that the totality of all persons together has one mother; that simply would not make any sense. This discussion prompts the main root of the argument in my mind; that Russell believes that it is futile to try and give an explanation on the totality of the universe as a whole because it simply …show more content…
I concur that it is difficult to imagine that everything has a cause except for God Himself. For example, if A caused B and B caused C and so on, it would need to be asked what caused A in the first place. Moreover, even if A was a sufficient reason, this still doesn’t make A a sufficient and sustaining being like God; it could have very well just been an event that started an infinite chain of other events.
Following this, I applied the same thought process to the dependence of all things on one God and Russell’s claim of Copleston’s fallacy of composition. Everything has an independent cause, but it would be a huge assumption to then say that everything has one single cause together. If we know already everything has an independent explanation, there is no reason overgeneralize and state that therefore everything has a cause together. And even if there could be one reason for the whole universe, there is no justification for this reason being a God like Copleston is
Russell and Copleston had two major disagreements in their discussion. Firstly, it was on what can be considered …show more content…
Russell believes that the principle of sufficient reason is equivalent to the idea of a cause. This is to say that Russell is opposing Copleston’s view that God is his own sufficient reason (meaning He contains his own cause) because how can everything be dependant on something except for God. Russell continues further to say that that the dependency of everything separately is not a proper explanation for everything being dependant on something as a whole. He claims Copleston is making a fallacy of composition. He uses the “mother analogy” to defend his point stating that although every person has a mother, this isn’t to mean that the totality of all persons together has one mother; that simply would not make any sense. This discussion prompts the main root of the argument in my mind; that Russell believes that it is futile to try and give an explanation on the totality of the universe as a whole because it simply …show more content…
I concur that it is difficult to imagine that everything has a cause except for God Himself. For example, if A caused B and B caused C and so on, it would need to be asked what caused A in the first place. Moreover, even if A was a sufficient reason, this still doesn’t make A a sufficient and sustaining being like God; it could have very well just been an event that started an infinite chain of other events.
Following this, I applied the same thought process to the dependence of all things on one God and Russell’s claim of Copleston’s fallacy of composition. Everything has an independent cause, but it would be a huge assumption to then say that everything has one single cause together. If we know already everything has an independent explanation, there is no reason overgeneralize and state that therefore everything has a cause together. And even if there could be one reason for the whole universe, there is no justification for this reason being a God like Copleston is