Fallacy of Thomas Aquinas's argument from Contigency

I will be arguing against Saint Thomas Aquinas and his cosmological argument. Aquinas is mistaken on varying levels of his argument from contingency. Aquinas misconstrues the matter in his steps to prove the existence of a God. An integral presumption of the argument from contingency is that the chain of self sufficient things requires an explanation, which will be shown to be a false premise. Aquinas is also committing the fallacy of composition articulating the assumption that the universe is contingent. However, is it necessary to assume that since the objects in the universe are indeed not self sufficient that the universe itself must be contingent. There is also no reason to presume that nature cannot be infinitely old and perhaps as Bertrand Russell suggested perhaps it is possible that the universe is but a brute fact and there is no ultimate explanation whatsoever.

The construction of the cosmological argument goes forth in a concise and methodical way. The first premise of Thomas Aquinas’s argument from contingency is that the universe is a contingent thing, meaning that it cannot sustain itself self sufficiently. The universe must depend on something else for its existence. Furthermore, going off that initial premise it should seem reasonable to seek an explanation of which for the existence of the universe, the very thing that intellectual’s have debated for centuries.

Aquinas goes onto say that the explanation for the universe’s existence is going to be something aside from the universe itself. This is due to the assumption that existing universe cannot be postulated in reference to itself. Therefore, what best explains the existence of the universe is either a separate contingent thing or rather much more plausibly, a separate contingent and necessary object. A necessary thing in this case is something that must exist no matter what conditions are put in place. There is a time where a contingent thing does not exist and on the other side of the spectrum a necessary object is eternal. The existence of a necessary non contingent thing is entirely self sufficient and has no need to rely on anything else for its existence. Aquinas then rules out the possibility of another separate contingent thing explaining the existence the universe by concluding that a contingent object cannot assume to explain the existence of the universe. In conclusion, St. Aquinas then goes onto declare that the best clarification for the universe that has come into being is a non contingent necessary thing. In this case Aquinas is referring to an omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent being called God.

There are various problems that one encounters when critically evaluating the argument that Aquinas puts forward. The first problem one comes across is the assertion that Aquinas makes that the infinite chain of contingent things itself requires an explanation. However, since one can provide an explanation as to why each contingent member of the infinite chain is there, then there is no need to provide the explanation for the chain itself. For example, if one can explain why each individual who is in a grocery store is there, then there is no need to explain why the grocery store itself exists. The argument from contingency mistakenly assumes that the infinite chain is something that is over and above the members of the chain, just as the omnipotent god that Aquinas claims exists would be over and above the species he created. The second criticism is that perhaps the first premise is false, perhaps the universe is not a contingent thing as Aquinas suggests. Here Aquinas is committing the fallacy of composition because he is assuming just because and individual has certain characteristics that the whole class must have the same characteristics as well. Just because everything in the universe happens to be contingent does not necessarily mean that the universe itself is contingent.

The jump Thomas Aquinas makes from providing the explanation that a necessary non contingent thing must have caused the existence of the universe into postulating that God is the necessary being that created the universe is a large claim. Suppose that somehow Aquinas does show that a necessary contingent thing exists, how then would he know that God exists and is the one that caused the universe into existence? Could there not be other necessary objects aside from God? Perhaps contrary to the Principle of Sufficient Reason that states that for any contingent thing X, there has got to be an explanation as to why X exists, there is no ultimate explanation for the universe and that it simply is there. If this is the case then there is no reason to employ a non contingent supernatural entity for explaining the universe as Aquinas has. It is entirely plausible that the universe is just a brute unintelligible fact.

Therefore, in conclusion after observing the objections to the argument from contingency it is evident that Aquinas misconstrues integral facts of the universe and its existence. Aquinas in asserting the existence of a necessary being does not provide the best explanation for the universe.