Taylor’s Cosmological Argument For The Existence Of God
For this paper, choose your own topic. Choose among the papers we've discussed in class, and write about the main argument of that paper. Some possible paper topics include:
Taylor's cosmological argument for the existence of God
Taylor's design argument for the existence of God
Williams's thought experiment motivating a bodily continuity theory of personal identity
Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment against AI
Petersen's argument in favor of robot servitude
Clifford's argument that it's morally wrong to believe on insufficient evidence
Walton's argument that we do not respond to fictional entities with genuine emotion
Walton's argument that we cannot have emotions towards what we believe not to exist
Suits's argument that death is “nothing to us”
If you wrote about one of these topics for your first paper, choose another topic.
Your paper must conform to the following format:
Present the main argument for the topic you've chosen. This involves identifying the conclusion offered by the author of the paper you've chosen, and then presenting his/her reasons for thinking the conclusion is true.
Provide an argument against the argument given in (1). The argument here must be your own, not someone else's. Here you are giving some reason for thinking that the conclusion presented in part one is false.
Present an argument against the argument given in (2) from the perspective of the position defended in (1). In this part of your paper, you will be writing from the perspective of the author who defended the argument you present in part one. Offer some reason, from this perspective, why the argument presented in part two is not successful.
Basically, the structure should look like this: A; B rebuts A; A rebuts B. Make sure that your paper includes both an introductory paragraph in which you state explicitly what you are going to argue in your paper, and a conclusion in which you sum up what you've claimed in your paper.
Taylor’s cosmological argument for the existence of God
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Taylor brought forward and contributed to various arguments as to the existence of God. One of these arguments is the cosmological argument. According to this argument, the origin of something is understood to depend on something else. Such things like the universe can therefore be traced back to where they came from to the point of a being whose existence is independent of anything. This paper will look at Taylor’s use of cosmology in arguing the existence of God. Then I will bring my own argument against Taylor’s argument before providing the reason why my argument is not convincing in rejecting Taylor’s views.
Taylor’s cosmological argument
According to Taylor, the fact that the universe exists points to a creator who is God. This is so because everything has an explanation as to how it came to be, whether that explanation is currently known or not. This principle is called the principle of sufficient reason developed by Wilhelm Leibniz. The existence of something can be explained either within it or outside it. In within, the existence of something was out of necessity. This makes its existence independent. For outside, the existence of something depends on something else. This means its existence was not a necessity; it did not have to be. For the case of the universe, it did not have to exist. This makes its existence a contingent one; its existence depended on an outside reason. This is also true of everything in the universe like our world and even us, human beings. They did not have to exist. The items in the universe depend on the universe for their existence. Going back in finding outside explanations to the existence of the universe will result in an infinite number of steps. It will also disobey the principle of sufficient reason because everything has an explanation for how it came to be. Therefore, an independent being is necessary from which the universe and everything that flows from it will depend on for their existence. This being does not depend on anything outside for its existence. To try to explain it otherwise is not possible. This being is therefore God.
Argument against Taylor’s
I do not believe that the existence of the universe proves the existence of a being outside our realm called God. Taylor’s argument sounds like a religious notion that was then given some proof. This cosmological argument has been neatly argued and anything that does not conform to that neatness has been ignored. It is not scientific. This is where science and religion have a distinction. In religion, a preconceived notion is formulated. Then everything else is seen through the eyes of that notion, reinforcing it. This does not make it objective, instead it makes it biased. In science, everything is approached from an objective viewpoint. Evidence for and against are collected and weighed to measure their signif...