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Showing posts from July 19, 2020

On the Contingency Argument for God

The contingency argument is generally considered to be the most sophisticated of the cosmological proofs for the existence of a god. Its structure is similar to the causal argument, but it attempts to establish the existence of a "necessary being" [which is said to be required by the fact that everything else is contingent on something else] rather than a first cause....   While we do observe causal dependency of specific entities within the universe, we do not observe a similar dependency with regard to matter itself. We do not observe the creation or annihilation of matter, so the claim that the universe as a whole is contingent cannot be supported by factual evidence. On the contrary, empirical evidence points to matter as a metaphysical primary, which cuts the ground from under any attempt to establish the contingency of the universe by empirical means.... Finally we should mention the underlying dogma of the contingency argument: the so-called "principle of sufficie