Leibniz’ Contingency Argument 

My favourite philosopher of current era WLC ❤

I'm taking a class at Liberty Online and we are reading your book "On Gaurd". These videos really help me to understand the concepts better! Thank you

thanks so much! A level exam in three days, this really helped 👍

This video is a masterpiece

This video explains in 5 mins what my prof would take two or three lectures to

I like Inspiring Philosophy's introduction to this cosmological argument.

I’m not a christian but I think the way he perceives life and his trust towards it is worth learning and applying to my life. It reminds me of a saying, “A blessing in disguise.”

scientists : we are interested only in examining things that don't examine us. who wants to be judged?

God is really amazing

another way of looking at it is that any logical argument requires a first premise. And so there is necessarily a first step (which by it's nature cannot follow from logic but precedes it).

Very well made

Or as God introduced Himself to Moses, "I Am".

So good. Thank you

Nicely done

well done!

This difference between the necessary being and the contingent being is nice summed up in the Name God gives Himself: "I am ". He is because He is. There is no other reason that He exists. He is the Necessary Being. I on the other hand cannot say that. I have a mother and a father from whom I am derived. Both with sequential generational being through my lineage back to Adam and spiritual re-generational being I have in Christ, I am derivative, a "contingent" being who may only say "I am because He is". There must be a Cause without cause for the explanation on being for everything BUT that First Cause. Otherwise you face an infinite regression of meaningless causation which really says nothing more than "it just is". The "buck" either has a stopping place or trying to explain the buck is without any rational meaning...

Great Video Dr. Craig ! , Can I use this video and translate the Audio into a different Language

The list of entities is fairly short? How do you know that? Could the list hold things that you are not aware of that are not intuitive?

This video is simply fascinating. I was here to learn something that confused me. And not only I learned it but started to wonder how did you make this beautiful presentation. Which program did you use etc... Lovely, thanks a lot.

Outstanding!!

This is a cool video 🎉

can you please make more philosophical videos for Gods existence

Tight logic. Logic points to God

Hi. I would like to know why or how the PSR (principle sufficient Reason ) is true. Why do ALL contingent existence need and explanation. This is the only part of the argument I Don't understand.

Im muslim but Lane Craig has really Good arguments

So as an agnostic I would love to have some thing cleared up for me, at 1:20 were given a great explanation on why people have ALWAYS questioned our existence and universe. But that same example is then used for God, only given an option of God did it with out providing really any other ideas or options is just like saying "it is, so don't question it." I've gotten a few comments about this, im not atheist guys. Im agnostic. Please leave atheism out of this, thank you.

Can statements 3 & 4 be reversed? Would the argument change?

thanx to ibn sinna

This was explained earlier by Avicenna. Ah the Western scholars should give credits to him.

Open comments yay!

Existence is the only thing we know, non existence is what should be questioned

How do I go about 'publishing' MY ''Theodicy'. I have resolved the question, can vindicate the Lord for 'creating' it [evil], and actually show via scripture why it is actually 'good' that there 'is' evil.

Question: Which God causes the universe to exists?

Anyone who is honest and truthful will agree. It amazes me the extreme aberration that so called atheists will go to so God can be ignored or dismissed.

2:15 thst point just occurred to me

what makes this different from the kalam cosmological

Why no comments???

If the universe is time, and without the universe there is no time, then there is no time for the universe to not exist

Question: Which God causes the universe to exists? Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, Horus, Thor, Anu, Ahura Mazda, Vishnu, Buddha, Allah, Belzeebub, etc? Please answer my question.

Sexy explanation. Subbed.

sovereign God substantive choice organizing people of world.

I don´t see it

“Checkmate Athiests” -Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714

Isn't the answer "universe just is" an ad hoc fallacy? I mean if you accept it as an epistemic justification then shouldn't you also accept "God just is"?

👍

This is a great argument, but one of the biggest flaws is assuming that the universe was caused. Why does the universe need or not need to be contingent For this argument.

" Hello, William Lane Craig, Most Humbly speaking I am the Messiah, I will support YOU financially."(GOD)

I accept that the universe was created by a necessary being, unfathomably powerful and non-physical but why is it necessary that he is benevolent?

Even if the LCA succeeds, the 'necessary being' could be the universe itself. The proposition that 'nothing exists' is logically incoherent. So something HAS to exist, necessarily.

How did he slip the word BEING in there? All those things makes sense, but suddenly they use the word "BEING" strange. you could say something, that would be more thoughtfull

Logically there must be nothing, unless there's an eternal entity capable of cause.

Can you have a necessary explanation for a contingent fact? A contingent fact is one that could have been otherwise. So take a fact that could be A or it could be not-A. If it is A then the explanation would account for why it is A and not-A. But if the fact is not-A then the explanation would have to account for why it is not-A rather than A. In other words the explanation would have to be different if the fact is. So you can't have a necessary explanation for a contingent fact.

Spinoza's God maybe

Not sure that it follows that God would be a being, that God would have a personhood.

What's the evidence that our universe "contingently" existed rather than "necessarily" existed? What's the problem with considering Cosmic Inflation the most advanced scientific theory about the origin of the Universe as a Prime Cause (God) of everything?

One of Allah's names is As-Shomad, which means the necessary being.

The contingency argument is reallly St. Thomas Aquinas second way to prove the existence of God. Some 5 centuries earlier than leibnitz

Why can't universe itself be explained by itself

There is a designer who designed the perfection that exists today, a designer who everything depends upon him and depends upon nothing, that is being almighty Allah subahanu wata'ala....

OK... and who or what created god?

What if we … don’t exist? What if you believe we exist?

Before all you christians, jews and muslims start clapping your hands, "God" is always a question of definition. Leibniz, contrary to popular belief, does not refer to a creator God, but to an eternal, mathematical God, or a "singularity" outside space and time. See his Monadology.

too bad the word "GOD" is not contingent, but necessary.... so what's the real word? is it bird? i wanna know O_O

The claims of the first two premises are unsupported. The claim that the universe must be contingent is unsupported. Nice try though.

I disagree

everything in the universe exists contingently, so the universe exists contingently faaaaaaalacyofcomposition every part of a car is light and easy to carry, therefore a car is light and easy to carry

For anything to exist you need energy, if you claim world was always there - where do you get energy to sustain this world? If you claim there is nothing beyond material universe - where do you find such amount of energy in this universe to sustain? You have a fundamental issue, you could have got away with this in the past but today you scientifically know you cannot account for such energy existing in the physical observable universe...

Sprongle

"God" is a lot more shiny than some ball. What is its explanation. If "God" is a necessity, then why does that necessity exist?

I'm mel.....ting

A higher dimension requires the existence of a lower dimension. By this logic it’s “turtles all the way down” and there would be an infinite set of gods

we see order in our beautiful universe, therefore, somebody smarter than us ordered it. this doesn't work for people with messy rooms, they might need some Jordan Peterson first.

why did he put "God" into the list of the necessary causes? Isn't it a begging question?

The contigency argument is inarguably a very respectable one, especially the way you illustrated it but this video kick-started it's bizarre parade of dishonesty when it stated that the possible causes of the universe is fairly short, and reducing it to nothing more than 2 options. 1 God 2 Abstract entities This is very petty and a result very much expected pattern of intentional dishonesty expressed by religious apologetics of all sorts and it still baffles me. By definition, abstract is simply something of which it's provable existence is nothing more than imaginative. The main point of this simply is, if it's not percieved with any of our physical senses, measurable and it's existence can't be physically proven by any means, it's simply abstract. You may fancy the word "spiritual" for your fancy ditties, but that in itself is still abstract (like Zeus or most of the Gods you probably believe are man-made). By this definition, it's already clearer than crystal that God and abstract entities are "NOT" different things. God or gods, simply all fall under the category of abstract. It was a really petty move to impose your apologetic views in defense of your own diety in what was already a very honest educational video. Your emotions are abstract, not because they don't exist, but because they can't be proven to be anything physically measurable. This could have even made a case for your diety beyond anything other than just a dishonest imposition if you simply acknowledged it's abstract and maybe used the excuse that "since emotions are abstract and it doesn't mean they don't exist, therefore God is the same". But no! you didn't, you simply separated them and in a bizarrely deductionistic way (if there's a word like that) kicked "abstract objects" away. This might sound very cliché to you already but what you have simply done in this video, is just another pathetic example of God of the gaps theory. Once again, the contingency argument is not an argument that proves "ANY" religion or any God to be real or true (even though thay was what Leibniz was trying to do). What it simply does is explain why saying definitely that there is "NO" source of all matter and existence is simply not correct (at least by our current limits of understanding). This Source, or Necessary cause or being as you may call it, can be in fact any thing at all, or things in fact! The possibilities are simply endless. You can't compare your description of God to the existence of Mathematics as the latter does not possess any animated characteristics and is simply a constant that exists as a results of anything simply existing. Your God on the other hand (Which I presume to be the Christain God based on your video being about leibniz who was a protestant christain. Correct me if I'm wrong) is not only conscious, but speaks, not only speaks, he remained silent for more than 100,000 years of human existence before speaking to some dessert dwelling tribe about everything that exists (which have been proven to be mostly false and fascinatingly ridiculous). Not only that, he created a moral code, wrote an entire bible for you to live by, will reward a few people that belive in him with eternal life and purnish those that don't with eternal damnation. I mean, the universe has being in existence for 13.8+billion years and an average human will leave 70 or 80 years. 13.8 billion years is simply a blip of a blipped blip in eternity and yet your God will decide the eternal fate of a human over not even that, but merely 70-80 years of existence. Looks so all loving to me lol. So your conclusion wasn't simply, well, the entire universe has a cause or an infinite number of causes which for the time being we may label "God" at least till we figure it out, but it is "Your God" that can, has and will do all the things I've mentioned above. That my friend is just another elaborate "God of the Gaps" theory and a dishonest conclusion to what was a very beautiful explanation of a philosophical argument.

It seems like your justification for the first premise is the watchmaker argument: but this is defied by the fact that the universe is mostly empty, with very little in it compared to the amount of boring nothingness. The stars are also arranged in no meaningful way. It seems more like it wasn't guided. Your justification for the second premise is non-sensical - how do you know this to be the case? Even if your terrible arguments are true, they tell us nothing about the nature of god; you've simply defined god to be a synonym for the universe. There's no reason to believe a two thousand year old book somehow got it right, even from this argument.

This is nonsense! The second premise is fallacious reasoning! You're already assuming god exists, which is supposedly the conclusion of the argument. It's begging the question. You still have ZERO evidence for the existence of your magical invisible friend.

Subhanallah. This doesn't entail Christianity or any other religion though. That is another leap in logic

At the end of the day, you're saying the same thing about god that Russell said about the universe. "God is JUST THERE, and that's all." NO explanation needed. END OF DISCUSSION. Because that's what it means to exist non-contingently. Spacetime set the stage for all instances of contingency that we've ever come across and as a concept it is clearly ontologically distinct from the things within it. If you're so adverse to the idea of infinite regression that you desperately need there to be a non-contingent entity to serve as a precondition for contingency, spacetime itself is the perfect candidate. No need to make stuff up outside of it, by definition there is no outside of it. And there was never any requirement for such an entity to have any of the anthropomorphic traits associated with "god" (sentience, intelligence, intentionality, goodness etc) in the first place.

Because of course everything came from a Bronze Age Cannanite war deity...!

I understand the argument, but it doesn't make any sense and boils down to "if god created the universe then god created the universe". If the universe was created by god, who created god then? I get it, god is claimed to be "necessarily" existing, so why not simplify that and think the universe is necessarily existing instead of created at all? This argument just uses specifically chosen premises in order to get the desired answer.

This is such a terrible argument. To claim that this god isn't contingent upon anything else, is odd, because you can't prove that it's not in a school for beings to learn how to create universes, and exists within that meta-universe, being contingent upon whatever created it. It'd still be the creator of "this" universe, but you know nothing of its actual "nature/life cycle". It could be one of billions of beings running their own universal sims-like programs, on fast forward. I've gone over this vid a couple times and still havent found why the universe is supposed to be contingent upon anything else, even if it begins to exist.

Still doesn't explain the existence of any SPECIFIC God.

The Leibniz's Contingency Argument has faced numerous criticisms, including the following: The principle of sufficient reason: The argument is based on the principle of sufficient reason, which states that everything that exists must have a reason or explanation for its existence. Some philosophers argue that this principle is not universally true and that some things may exist without a sufficient explanation or reason. The necessity of God's existence: The argument concludes that the explanation for the existence of the universe is God, who is a necessary being whose existence is explained by the necessity of its own nature. However, some philosophers argue that God's existence is not necessarily necessary and that there could be other explanations for the existence of the universe. The identification of God as the explanation: The argument concludes that the explanation for the existence of the universe is God, but this conclusion has been challenged by some philosophers, who argue that there could be other explanations for the existence of the universe, such as a multiverse or a natural cause. The concept of causality: The argument assumes that everything that exists must have a cause, but some philosophers argue that this assumption is not necessarily true and that there could be uncaused things in the universe. The empirical evidence: The argument is a philosophical one and does not rely on empirical evidence, but some critics argue that philosophical arguments for the existence of God are not enough and that empirical evidence is necessary to support such claims. In conclusion, the Leibniz's Contingency Argument has faced numerous criticisms and objections, and its validity as a proof for the existence of God is still the subject of ongoing philosophical debate and discussion.

even if such being exist, there is no need to personalized such being. It doesn't have to be "the ""extremely powerful"" uncaused, necessarily existing, non-contingent, non-physical, immaterial, eternal being ""who created"" the entire universe... it may also: The uncaused, necessarily existing, non-contingent, non-physical, immaterial, eternal being ""that caused"" the entire universe So it doesn't prove god. It just prove that kind of being. Whatever it is. May be god, yeah, maybe. But not proved.

So many holes in this argument. I hope this isn't an accurate representation of his ideas.

Das argument ist ein Zirkelschluss - Leibnitz führt ein klassichen Ontologische/Kosmologisches Argument an, was die existenz eines Gottes als Gurndannahme (Prämise) ansetzt and dann darauf hin führt das dieser dann auch existieren muss... (sei es Kontigenz oder " Vorstellung", als rein Menschzentrierte Kreislogik) bzw. in seiner kosmologischne for ein klassiesc argumentum ad ignorantiam

Bacon exists necessarily. Taxes are a contingent phenomenon that sadly won't go away.

0:54 is a textbook example of begging the question or assuming the conclusion

If our universe does have an explanation for its formation, why can't that explanation be something that is non-intuitive and not a god?

If the contingency argument were sound, all it would say is that there is at least one thing that is necessarily the way it is. Somehow this video picks up all these other things like "all powerful" and "immaterial" (without defining what materiality is). In other words it is absurd to suppose that this is an argument for the existence of God, whether it is sound or not.

Basically the contingency argument provides a blueprint of God by which one can construct the true “Image” of God and only Allah (Muslims’ God) fits into that image like a glove and the remains fall short. In the end he simply described the definition of Allah as mentioned in the Quran.

Idk yet why the universe exists period. No other logical position in my opinion.

Leibniz must have taken his idea's from Islamic philosophers. The idea of a contingent and necessity being can be found in Islamic literature more than thousand years ago. Like avicenna for example. He explained the necessity of God in great details and why everything else is contingent. Islamic scholars are inspired by the Qur'an wherein God says: "Or were they created by nothing, or are they ˹their own˺ creators?" (52: 35) This vers tells clearly that something cannot come from nothing. Second: contingent beings are not creators.

“All matter and energy” okay please explain Dark matter and if you can’t; you can no possibly say god is “necessary” because you’re ignorant to its properties. Also if you’re ignorant about literally anything how can posit that “god is” when you have gaps in your knowledge! Stop assuming

1. Every bank robbery has a robber 2. If the bank was robbed, the robber is a BLACK MAN 3. The bank was robbed 4. Therefore, the robber is black See how the logic is faulty ? Premise 2 assumes that the conclusion is true.

I’ve read Leibniz’s ACTUAL contingency argument, and I gotta say, this video butchered it.

By premise (1) if God exists then there is an explanation for His existence. Most monotheistic conceptions of God posit that God is uncaused, and therefore simply exists without explanation. Either premise (1) fails or the conception of God as uncaused fails. Either way, this argument does nothing to prove Christianity.

If these things proved God, then they wouldn’t be referred to as “arguments.” When something is a scientific fact, do they refer to the evidence for it as “arguments”? No, they don’t because it’s actually proven.