Bruce Reichenbach, Professor of Philosophy at Augsburg College, has a new entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Cosmological Argument. I'll simply post the introduction to Reichenbach's entry.
"The cosmological argument is less a particular argument than an argument type. It uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from certain alleged facts about the world (cosmos) to the existence of God. Among these initial claims are that the world came into being, that the world is such that at any future time it could either be or not be (the world is contingent), or that certain beings in the world are causally dependent or contingent. From these facts philosophers infer either deductively or inductively that a first cause, a necessary being, an unmoved mover, or a personal being (God) exists. The cosmological argument is part of classical natural theology, whose goal has been to provide some evidence for the claim that God exists."
"The argument arises from human curiosity that invokes a barrage of intriguing questions about the universe in which we live. Where did the universe come from? When and how did it all begin? How did the universe develop into its present form? Why is there a universe at all? What is it that makes existence here and now possible? All grow out of the fundamental question which the cosmological argument addresses: Why is there something rather than nothing? At the heart of the argument is a concern for some complete or ultimate explanation of what exists contingently. In what follows we will first sketch out a very brief history of the argument, note the two fundamental types of deductive cosmological argument, and then provide a careful analysis of each, first the argument from contingency, then the argument from the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress of causes. In the end we will turn to an inductive version of the cosmological argument."
