Cosmological Argument for God's Existence

As probably the most widely used argument for God's existence, the Cosmological Argument attempts to reconcile observed facts with the existence of God. We observe that there is a universe and that the universe appears to follow some kind of rules of behavior (if not, we could not really say anything about it). What caused the universe to be? What designed it to be the way that it is? We observe a set of facts (the existence of the universe, the apparent design found in nature and a universal sense of morality) and attempt to induce the existence of god. Where the Ontological Argument is a deductive, a priori argument, the Cosmological Argument is an inductive, a posteriori argument.

The Cosmological Argument usually takes of one of three forms:

• Argument from Contingency
• Argument from Design (teleological)
• Argument from Morality

In a nutshell, the Argument from Contingency says that God must exist because something must have caused everything we see now. This is why it is often referred to as the "First Cause" argument. The most famous formulations of this argument come from St. Thomas Aquinas (I will also be relying on Richard Taylor's and a collection of Medieval Arab scholarly writings as well to explore this argument).

The second formulation of the Cosmological Argument is a result of the perceived order we find in all natural systems. It is often referred to as the Teleological (telos, purpose or end) Argument. If we look around, we, apparently, see only order. We see systems in some state of functionality. Where we see chaos, we are really seeing other systems acting upon other systems. Why does there seem to be design in everything we see? According to the proponents of this argument, the answer is God.

Finally, there is the argument that human beings are morally aware, then there must be an originator of that awareness. Most notably championed by Immanuel Kant, I will also be looking at some of the writings of C. S. Lewis to help me understand this argument.

I'll need to do a little re-reading and will attempt to tackle each of these sub-arguments in turn.