Cosmological Argument

Broadly, any argument for the existence of God that proceeds from some feature or features of the world to God. More narrowly, the term “cosmological” is reserved for a group of arguments postulating the existence of God as the explanation of an otherwise inexplicable universe, of “why there should be any world rather than none, and why it should be such as it is” (Leibnitz). The first three of Thomas Aquinas's* Five Ways are versions of the cosmological argument. God is thought of as the Unconditioned, the Unmoved Mover, the Sufficient Reason for all that is. Apart from general theological or philosophical objections to proofs for God's existence, the cosmological argument requires a number of doubtful premises—e.g., that for something to change it must be changed, and that there cannot be an infinite regress of such changes.