ABSTRACT
The Cosmological Argument began with Plato and Aristotle, flourished in the writings of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, and Samuel Clarke, and was laid to rest by Hume and Kant. The Cosmological Argument is an argument for the existence of God. As such, the argument has two distinct parts. The first part is an argument to establish the existence of a necessary being. The second part is an argument to establish that this necessary being is God. Although the proponents of the Cosmological Argument are right in their contention that the supposition that every being is dependent leaves us with no explanation of the existence of the collection of dependent beings, there is a difficulty in their reasoning to this conclusion. Samuel Clarke reasons that the collection of dependent beings must have an explanation of its existence by appealing to the principle expressed in the first premise of the Cosmological Argument—namely, the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
