Cosmological argument

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The cosmological argument is an argument for the existence of God, also traditionally known as an "argument from universal causation", an "argument from first cause", and also as the "uncaused cause" argument. Whichever term is used, there are three basic variants of this argument, each with subtle but important distinctions: the argument from causation in esse, the argument from causation in fieri, and the argument from contingency. The cosmological argument does not attempt to prove anything about the first cause or about God, except to argue that such a cause must exist.

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Origins of the argument

Plato and Aristotle both posited first cause arguments, though each with certain notable caveats. Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BCE) posited a "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus. For Plato, the demiurge lacked the supernatural ability to create ex nihilo or out of nothing. The demiurge was only able to organize the "anake." The anake was the only other co-existent element or presence in Plato's cosmogony.

Aristotle (c. 384–322 BCE) also put forth the idea of a creator of the cosmos, often referred to as the "Prime Mover" in his work Metaphysics. For Aristotle too, as for Plato, the underlying "stuff" of the universe always was in existence and always would be (which in turn follows Parmenides' famous statement that "nothing can come from nothing"). Aristotle posited an underlying ousia (an essence or substance) of which the universe is composed, and it is the ousia which the Prime Mover organized and set into motion.

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 1274 CE), probably the best known theologian of the Middle Ages, adapted the argument he found in his reading of Aristotle to form one of the earliest and the most influential versions of the cosmological argument. His conception of first cause is the idea that the universe must have been caused by something which was itself uncaused, which he asserted was God.

Countless other philosophers and theologians have posited first-cause arguments both before and since Aquinas. The versions sampled in the following sections are representative of the most common derivations of the argument.

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The argument

Framed as a formal proof, the first cause argument can be stated as follows:

  1. Everything has a cause(s).
  2. Nothing can cause itself.
  3. Therefore, everything is caused by another thing(s).
  4. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
  5. Therefore, there must be a first cause.

The cosmological argument can only speculate about the existence of God from claims about the entire universe, unless the "first cause" is taken to mean the same thing as "God." Thus, the argument is based on the claim that God must exist due to the fact that the universe needs a cause. In other words, the existence of the universe requires an explanation, and an active creation of the universe by a being outside of the universe—generally assumed to be God—is that explanation.

In light of the Big Bang theory, a stylized version of cosmological argument for the existence of God has emerged (sometimes called the Kalam cosmological argument, the following form of which was put forth by William Lane Craig):

  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.
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A more detailed discussion of the argument

A basic explanation might go something like this: Consider some event in the universe. Whatever event you choose, it will be the result of some cause, or more likely a very complex set of causes. Each of those causes would be the result of some other set of causes. Thus there is an enormous chain of events in the universe, with the earlier events causing the later events. And either this chain of events has a beginning, or it does not.

Currently, the theory of the cosmological history of the universe most widely accepted by astronomers and astrophysicists includes an apparent first event—the Big Bang—the expansion of all known matter and energy from a superdense, singular point at some finite time in the past. Though contemporary versions of the cosmological argument most typically assume that there was a beginning to the cosmic chain of physical, or natural causes, the early formulations of the argument did not have the benefit of this degree of theoretical insight into the apparent origins of the cosmos.

Plato's demiurge and Aristotle's Prime Mover each referred to a being who, they speculated, set in motion an already existing "stuff" of the cosmos. A milennium and a half later, Aquinas went on to argue that there is an Uncaused Cause which is just another name for God. And to Aquinas, it remained logically possible that the universe has already existed for an infinite amount of time, and will continue to exist for an infinite amount of time. In his classic Summa Theologiae, he posited that even if the universe has always existed, (a notion which he rejected on other grounds), there is still the question of cause, or even of "first cause."

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The argument from contingency

Aquinas follows Aristotle in claiming that there must be something which explains why the universe exists. Since the universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist--that is to say, since it is contingent--its existence must have a cause. And that cause cannot simply be another contingent thing, it must be something which exists by necessity, that is, it must be something which must exist. In other words, even if the universe has always existed, it still owes that existence to Aristotle's Uncaused Cause.

So Aquinas arrives at his conclusion, that God exists, whether there was a first event in the universe or not. Since either the universe has always existed, or it had a first event, Aquinas says that this argument definitively proves the existence of God. Aquinas actually was using at least two arguments, an argument from contingency and an argument from first cause that was a combination of the two types introduced in the next section. It should be carefully noted that Aquinas' overlapping 13th Century argument(s) would not have held up to the scrutiny of a strict logical analysis in the 20th or 21st Century.

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz made a somewhat similar argument with his Principle of sufficient reason in 1714. He wrote: "There can be found no fact that is true or existent, or any true proposition, without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although we cannot know these reasons in most cases." He formulated the cosmological argument succinctly: "Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason...is found in a substance which...is a necessary Being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."

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"In esse" and "in fieri"

The difference between the arguments from causation in fieri and in esse is a fairly important one. In fieri is generally translated as "becoming," while in esse is generally translated as "in existence." In fieri, the process of becoming, is similar to building a house. Once it is built, the builder walks away and it stands of its own accord. (It may require occasional maintenance, but that is beyond the scope of the "first cause" argument.)

In esse (in existence) is more akin to the light from a candle or the liquid in a vessel. George Hayward Joyce, SJ, explains that "...where the light of the candle is dependent on the candle's continued existence, not only does a candle produce light in a room in the first instance, but its continued presence is necessary if the illumination is to continue. If it is removed, the light ceases. Again, a liquid receives its shape from the vessel in which it is contained; but were the pressure of the containing sides withdrawn, it would not retain its form for an instant." This form of the argument is far more difficult to separate from a purely "first-cause" argument than is the example of the house's mainenance above, because here the "first cause" is insufficient without the candle's or vessel's continued existence.

Thus, Aristotle's argument is in fieri, while Aquinas' argument is both in fieri and in esse (plus an additional argument from contingency). The distinction is an excellent example of the difference between a deistic view (Aristotle) and a theistic view (Aquinas). Leibnitz, who wrote more than two centuries before the "big bang" was taken as granted, is arguing in esse. As a general trend, the modern slants on the cosmological argument including the Kalam argument, tend to lean very strongly towards an in fieri argument.

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Criticisms and objections

The cosmological argument depends on several assumptions. Most objections center on two of them:

  • Everything has a cause (1).
  • A causal chain cannot be of infinite length (4) and therefore also on "There must be a first cause" (5).

The cosmological argument attempts to prove that a First Cause exists. One objection is that this does not even attempt to ascribe this First Cause with attributes necessary to call it "God," not even with extremely basic prerequisites such as self-awareness and will (though there are some theists who actually do make such attempts when using this argument [1]). It simply names the First Cause as "God" without proving that it has the characteristics that that name implies. Furthermore, the argument only requires God as a first cause, but fails to prove that God continued to exist after serving that purpose. Some deists agree that the argument proves that God created the universe, but nevertheless maintain that God then ceased to exist, or ceased to interact with the material universe.

Opponents point out that the cosmological argument applies temporal concepts to situations where time does not exist. For example, "cause" is a temporal concept - by definition, it requires time; things which exist outside of time do not have to be caused. (Indeed, this is the excuse given for God's assumed lack of a requirement to be caused.) However, time is merely a property of the universe, and so the laws of time (ie. cause) cannot be logically applied to the universe itself as a whole. Similarly, time can begin, but not require a cause, since all human concepts of a caused beginning have something before that beginning (including the cause); this is not true of time itself.

An assumption in some cosmological arguments (e.g., the Kalam argument, but not Aquinas' arguments) is that there has to be a "First Cause", ie. that our universe has not "always" existed. This is still an open question, although the standard Big Bang cosmology is consistent with it. Defenders of cosmological arguments that do not assume the finite age of the universe insist that eternal existence, the "always there" assumption, does not eliminate the problem of origin. On a similar note, one could also claim that the universe has always existed and its "creation" is thus not causal in nature, so no "first cause" is necessary. If one believes that time is infinite, then indeed there is no need for a "first cause" and therefore no need for God. However, this view is not compatible with the current scientific understanding of the origins of the universe.

Gottfried Leibniz stated the problem in his conclusion, although his terminology included some assumptions. If his principle of sufficient reason is indeed universally applicable, then the First Thing must either (1) be its own cause or (2) have a non-causal explanation. The non-causal explanation would either (a) make the First Thing's existence be in some way self-explanatory or (b) make it follow in an explanatory way from self-explanatory truths, such as the truths of logic.

All three options have had defenders. Thus, option (1), the causa sui option, is defended by Descartes. Option (2a) is held by some of those like Aquinas who think that God's essence is identical with God's existence, or by those who hold, more weakly, that God's existence follows from his essence. Option (2b) essentially holds that there is a sound ontological argument for the existence of God, albeit we may not have discovered it yet. It follows from the principle of sufficient reason that one of the three options holds, but a defender of the Principle does not need to give an independent proof of any one of these options. It is, after all, the conclusion of the argument that one of these holds. In fact, this conclusion might be the starting point for responding to the problem of identifying the First Thing with God--that is how it is in Aquinas, for instance. Thus, if one could show the premises of the cosmological argument to be true and show that options (1) and (2a) were not tenable, then the cosmological argument would turn into an argument for the existence of an ontological argument. We would then know that there is a sound ontological argument, even if we did not know what it is.

Alternately, the defender of the cosmological argument can restrict the principle of sufficient reason in such a way that it does not require us to give an explanation of the existence of the First Thing. One such restriction would be to restrict the Principle only to require the explanation of contingent facts. Another is to restrict the Principle only to require the explanation of explainable facts. These restrictions would require arguments, respectively, that the universe is contingent or that the universe's existence is explicable.

If the principle of sufficient reason does not hold, then the "selection" among potential alternatives must be random or a "brute fact". Defenders of the Principle will insist that neither option really makes sense.

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Scientific positions

Modern quantum physics is sometimes interpreted to deny the validity of the first premise of this argument (that everything has a cause), showing that subatomic particles such as electrons, positrons, and photons, can come into existence, and perish, by virtue of spontaneous energy fluctuations in a vacuum. Though such occurrences do not violate the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, Bell's theorem shows that these are impossible to predict. Because the "nothingness" from which the subatomic particles arise from a sea of fluctuating vacuum energy, it may be that such processes contradict the assertion that all effects have causes.

Modern cosmology is sometimes taken to be neutral on the second premise, asserting that while spacetime as observed tends toward a singularity giving the universe an observed finite age, this does not discount the possibility that the stochastic processes that govern the early evolution of the universe actually cause the universe to be eternal. In particular, the lack of a consistent theory of quantum gravity has meant that there is no physical theory and no meaningful prediction can be made about what character the universe had before the Planck time. Indeed the supposed singularity from which the universe is said to have originated in the classic Big Bang picture is actually a physical paradox - an indication that current theory is not an adequate description. This era of the universe and its associated energy regime remains one of the unsolved problems in physics and as such does not lend itself either to the existence of a "first cause" or lack thereof.

Recently, newer, speculative theories have been offered by a number of theorists, but there is no scientific consensus as of yet on whether the universe necessarily began to exist or whether it is eternal (for example, "big bang," expansion of cosmos, then contraction, then "big crunch," then a "big bang" again, once every 30 or 40 billion years ad infinitum).

A commonly stated workaround for the cosmological argument is the nature of time. The Big Bang is said to be the start of both space and time, so the question "What was there before the universe?" makes no sense; the concept of "before" becomes meaningless when considering a situation without time. This has been put forward by Stephen Hawking, who said that asking what occurred before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole (it should be noted, however, that this comment was made in reference to cosmology and not theology).

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See also

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External links

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