Pruss and Swinburne reject absolute explanation for complete explanations, where the effect is explained fully by the cause but no explanation of the cause at the time of occurrence is required.
cause(Philosophical definition of causation requiring both sufficiency and necessity of the cause relative to its effect)
An event or state of things such that (a) if it happens or exists, the effect must happen or exist even if no further conditions are fulfilled, and (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exists.
effect(Correlate of 'cause' in the defined causal relation)
An event or state of things that is caused — it must occur if the cause occurs, and cannot occur unless the cause occurs.
However, if we understand “necessary being” in this sense, we can dispose of the cosmological argument as irrelevant; what is needed rather is an argument to establish that God’s existence understood as logically necessary is possible, for if it is possible that it is necessary that God exists, then necessarily God exists (by Axiom S5). However, this need not be the sense in which “necessary being” is understood in the cosmological argument. A more adequate notion of necessary being is that the necessity is metaphysical or factual (Hick 1960). A necessary being is one that if it exists, it ne...