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In This Article Edwards Attacks the Cosmological Argument, Specifically Aquinas's

question 13

Multiple Choice

In this article Edwards attacks the cosmological argument, specifically Aquinas's causal and contingency versions, holding that the argument fails at several points. Against the causal argument, he argues that the premise asserting the impossibility of an infinite series is false. Even if the argument were sound, he says, it would not prove the existence of a single first cause because a plurality of causes cannot be ruled out. Furthermore, the argument is not helped by the theist's distinction between causes that bring something into existence (causes in fieri) and causes that sustain something in existence (causes in esse) . Some defend the causal argument by insisting that even if there were an infinite series of causes, there still must be an ultimate cause of the series as a whole. Edwards counters that such notions rest on the "erroneous assumption that the series is something over and above the members of which it is composed." Against the contingency argument, Edwards maintains that to explain a contingent phenomenon, we do not need to posit a necessary being and that those who make such a demand beg the question at issue.
-According to Edwards, the advocates of the causal argument seem to confuse an infinite series with

Definitions:

Activity Rates

Rates used in activity-based costing to allocate indirect costs to specific products or services based on the activities required to produce them.

Activity Levels

Varying levels of operational or production activity in a company, which can affect budgets and costs.

Cost Pools

Cost pools are groupings of individual costs in an accounting system, categorized according to the process that incurred the cost, used to allocate costs effectively to products or services.

Activity-Based Costing

A costing method that allocates overhead and indirect costs to specific activities related to production, providing more accurate product costing.