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Contingency, in the Cosmological Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Louis Leahy
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Pontifical College St Pius X, Dalat University, Vietnam

Extract

I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy. Every man who exists has a mother, and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother, but obviously the human race has not a mother. B. Russell

Type
Research Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 93 note 1 ‘The Existence of God, a Debate between Bertrand Russell and Father F. C. Copleston’, in Hick, John (ed.), The Existence of God (New York, 1964), p. 175.Google Scholar

page 93 note 2 ‘Two Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument’, in Donnelly, John (ed.), Logical Analysis and Contemporary Theism (New York, 1972), p. 25.Google Scholar

page 94 note 1 We suppose here that all the beings or things into which the Universe is reducible are contingent and existentially unstable; and that all the relations between these beings are contingent relations. If I intended in this paper to unfold the Cosmological Argument in its full extent, I would have of course to prove the reality of that contingency. But such is not my intention.

page 94 note 2 ‘Creation “ex nihilo”’, in Donnelly, John (ed.), Logical Analysis and Contemporary Theism (New York, 1972), pp. 208–9.Google Scholar

page 96 note 1 Le Problème de Dieu (fifth edition Paris, 1929).

page 97 note 1 ‘Eût-on admis la contingence de chaque objet, qu'on ne serait pas fondé à en conclure celle de l'univers lui-mê;me. Est-ce qu'une dénomination qui convient à toutes les pièces d'un ensemble convient aussi forcément a l'unité organique de l'ensemble?’ (p. 27).

page 97 note 2 ‘Rien n'empêche, semble-t-il, que le nécessaire ne soit pas un des objets de l'expérience, mais l'ensemble de ces objets ou leur ordre, leur enchaînement ou leur succession; que ce ne soit pas non plus un élément abstrait de l'expérience ni un je ne sais quoi lui servant de support ou de règle, mais son devenir même envisagé en soi. J'accorde le necessarium in rebus. Mais pourquoi veut-on que ce soit un aliquid?’ (p. 30).

page 98 note 1 And in fact, in the present debate, what is of special interest to the religious consciousness is to know if the distinction between God and us is a distinction of persons; if we are, before God, responsible subjects, capable of refusing or accepting Him (and not It).

page 99 note 1 How important and continually contested is this point (the Necessary Being identified with the All-perfect Being), is beyond doubt. But the limits of my paper do not oblige or allow me to discuss it.

page 99 note 2 Sciacca, Michele-Federico, L'existence de Dieu (Aubier Paris, 1951).Google Scholar

page 99 note 3 ‘;On ne pourrait éliminer L'hypothèse “Dieu” que si l'on démontrait rationnellement que notre monde se suffit à lui-même, i.e. qu'il est, en tant qu'auto-suffisant, métaphysiquement autonome et indépendant, qu'il est à lui-même absolument son propre fondement. Mais dans ce cas (le fait que des philosophes l'aient “imaginé” n'en fait pas une solution rationnellement valable), l'hypothèse “Dieu” ne serait jamais née’ (p. 57).

page 100 note 1 Ibid. p. 83.