The postulation of a necessary being would inspire critics to heavily investigate such religious arguments. Russell rejects the language of contingence by accusing the conclusion of being smuggled with in the premise. Hume scrutinises arguments over illogical 'jumps' of premise, and considers how reasonable his conflicting points are with respect to the original argument. These cosmological debates within western religious philosophy have been influenced by the works of Plato.
Aquinas also builds on Plato's cosmological argument, by postulating the Aramaic God of classical theism; an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolence being. This contrasts with Plato's initial postulation of a Demiurge. The Demiurge was put forward as a bringer of order; comparable to the Abrahamic God of Hebrew scriptures in Genesis 1. However "the Demiurge is not put forward as creator of the universe 'ex nihilo' but a 'craftsman' of pre-existent matter."8 Also Plato cautiously considers the problem of evil in outlining God. The Demiurge is omnibenevolent, but not omnipotent. This qualifies the nature of God to maintain logically that if evil exists, God cannot possess both omnibenevolence and omnipotence. This is correspondent with Griffin, Hartshorne and Whitehead's response to the problem of evil under process philosophy. "The role of God was limited to initiating the evolutionary process."9 This is an example of a contemporary argument that is clearly influenced by Plato yet inline with current scientific findings.
Plato considered that there must be a measure of goodness in order to identify God as benevolent and maintained there to be standard of 'goodness' that is independent of God. This became the basis for Plato's most central idea to correspond with his notion of the soul. The Theory of Forms, which vastly underpins western religious philosophy, attempts to explain our seemingly instinctive moral knowledge.