[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
That’s fine: Substitute his preference–Everything that comes into existence has a cause–and everything is stands perfectly well. It’s just that then, the theist must also prove that the universe came into existence.[/quote]
- “Why assume that the universe had a beginning” is not a serious objection to the argument.
The reason this is not a serious objection is that no version of the cosmological argument assumes this at all. Of course, the kal�??m cosmological argument does claim that the universe had a beginning, but it doesn�¢??t merely assume it. Rather, the whole point of that version of the cosmological argument is to establish through detailed argument that the universe must have had a beginning. You can try to rebut those arguments, but to pretend that one can dismiss the argument merely by raising the possibility of an infinite series of universes (say) is to miss the whole point.
The main reason this is a bad objection, though, is that most versions of the cosmological argument do not even claim that the universe had a beginning. Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Thomistic, and Leibnizian cosmological arguments are all concerned to show that there must be an uncaused cause even if the universe has always existed. Of course, Aquinas did believe that the world had a beginning, but (as all Aquinas scholars know) that is not a claim that plays any role in his versions of the cosmological argument. When he argues there that there must be a First Cause, he doesn�¢??t mean �¢??first�¢?? in the order of events extending backwards into the past. What he means is that there must be a most fundamental cause of things which keeps them in existence at every moment, whether or not the series of moments extends backwards into the past without a beginning.
[/quote]
Of course it depends on which proof is being bandied about. Feser is pretending that only one exists–this is nonsense. But assume a proof for which the universe does not need to have come into existence. Then the secondary portion of my objection is dealt with, but not by any means the primary.