Aquinas Contingency Argument

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The conclusion of Aquinas’s argument is that there must exist a necessary being that is the reason for the existence of contingent beings. Aquinas argues for this conclusion by saying that all contingent beings can be traced back to other contingent beings. He says that because the progenitors are also contingent, they do not give a complete explanation. The existence of contingent beings can only be properly explained by tracing them back to a necessary being. The aspect of Aquinas’s argument Edwards criticizes is that the contingency argument rests on what makes a phenomena intelligible. The real factors that explain the existence of a phenomena are adequate whether or not the factors themselves are contingent or not. The true factors of

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