A Reassessment of the Cogito

• Thinking is occurring. 

• Such thinking must have a subject.

• That subject is what can be called "me."

• Therefore I think.

• Therefore I am.

A Refutation of Gordon Clark on the Cosmological Argument

Gordon H. Clark has criticized the broadly Aristotelian cosmological argument set forth by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. He displays serious misunderstandings of its basic premises, which I assume he allows because of his theological resistance to the idea that God's existence can be demonstrated apart from revelation. His position with regard to the argument in question is demonstrably false, and I shall refute him here.

A Brief Proof of the Causal Principle

• If a thing begins to exist (that is, its essence becomes imparted with existence), then the potential that it has for existence is actualized.

• Nothing can actualize its own potential for existence, because things which do not (yet) exist are purely potential, and that which is purely potential cannot actualize anything. 

• So if a thing begins to exist, its potential for existence must be actualized by something apart from itself.

• So if something begins to exist, it must have an external cause of its existence.