A Note on Cosmological Arguments

Abstract

I am very grateful indeed to Fr Brian Davies for treating my work with such sympathy and thoroughness. He has put forward objections to some of my arguments and conclusions which richly deserve some attempt on my part at an answer.Fr Davies approves of a recent suggestion by Anthony Flew, derived from Kant, that one should distinguish sharply between those types of argument for God’s existence which try to establish it from the mere fact of the world, and those which do so on the basis of some particular characteristic of the world. They propose that the term ‘cosmological argument’ should be kept for arguments of the former class. With great respect and suitable trepidation, I would wish to dissent from this formidable team of authorities, preferring as I do a threefold division. For I believe it is very important in this context to distinguish between two sorts of properties which things or the world may have; one sort, by virtue of the fact that they can be objects of our knowledge at all; the other which they just happen to have as a matter of fact, independently of their knowability by us. Let us distinguish these as respectively A properties and B properties. Now the effect of the proposal of Kant, Flew and Davies is to reduce theistic arguments which are not versions of the ontological arguments to two types — those from the mere existence of things or the world, and those from the B properties of things and the world.