In chapter 7, we discussed what theists mean when they attribute certain qualities to God such as eternity and infinity. In chapter 8, we considered what theists mean when they say that God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient, or loving, powerful, and wise. Hopefully we now have some small sense of what or who theists say God is. That is, we have achieved some clarification of what theists mean when they use the word “God”. In this chapter we ask, “Why do theists think that a being designated by the word ‘God’ exists?”
For most theists who belong to one of the revealed religions, the answer is simply that God has revealed his existence—as well as something of his nature—to man. A Jewish believer might claim that God revealed himself especially to Moses at the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. Or that God revealed himself especially through the prophet Isaiah. A Christian believer says that God revealed himself not only at the burning bush and on Mount Sinai, but also and especially through the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ; a Catholic Christian claims in addition that God reveals himself in the sacraments of the Church, and especially in the Eucharist. A Muslim will say that God most especially revealed himself in the giving of the Qur’an through Muhammad.
Revelation or revelations are, according to their advocates, initiated by God and hence not completely transparent to human reason alone. Because they come from God, in order for us to accept them, God has to make it possible for us to accept them. Revelations may be contemplated and discussed by human reason, but their ultimate acceptance is a matter of faith, and faith—as was made clear in part 1 of our book—is different from reason, even if it is not opposed to it. What we are really asking in this chapter, then, is whether there are reasons accessible by natural human rationality or by philosophy for asserting that the notion the theists designate by means of the word “God” is an existent reality. What can reason alone say about the existence of the theistic God? Why does the philosophical theist think that God exists?
A. Two Notions of Creation
Before launching directly into the arguments, though, we need to begin by making a fundamental distinction between two theistic notions related to the one term “creation”. The most common idea about creation is that “creation” names what God did to bring the world about at the beginning. Whatever it was that God did when creating, he did it back then, or at that time. In other words, creation happened a long time ago.
It is easy enough to recognize why we tend to think of creation in this way, for the opening of the Book of Genesis begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Indeed, the Hebrew word translated as “in the beginning” is bereshith, and thus the very title of the book in Hebrew is “Bereshith”, and the Greek word used to translate bereshith is genesis. In other words, the very title of the book we call “Genesis” is really “In the Beginning”. Anyone who is introduced to the ideas of Jews or Christians almost automatically thinks of “in the beginning” when thinking of creation, and although the Hebrew Bible is not authoritative within Islam, Muslims also tend to initiate their understanding of creation by thinking about “what happened at the beginning”.
Theists who become familiar with philosophical argumentation, however, do not think of creation simply in terms of “what happened at the beginning”, and for good reason. Such thinkers recognize that what the notion of creation really claims is that the world—the cosmos—is dependent upon a creator for its existence. In other words, the theistic doctrine of creation claims that the cosmos is causally dependent upon some ultimate reality that is not causally dependent upon anything else.
In order to explain this distinction, we borrow an example from Richard Taylor, who published an accessible and helpful analysis of the argument in 1974. Imagine, he says, that you are out walking in the forest one day, and suddenly you come upon a large, smooth, translucent round ball about as tall as a man. The question that would immediately come to mind would be “Why is it here?” or “How did it come to be here?” In other words, our first question is about the cause of its being here. If we asked someone, “Why is this here?” we would be surprised if the answer were “Since last week”.
There is a difference, then, in asking about the temporal beginning of the universe and in asking about the cause of the universe. To be sure, we often encounter situations in our world in which causes precede effects temporally. Let us say, for example, that your knee hurts because you tripped and fell down. Here a cause (your tripping) temporally precedes an effect (your hitting the ground and damaging your knee). But we can also easily think up examples of simultaneous causality. Let us say that your foot hurts because someone is standing on it. If you say, “Ouch”, and someone asks why you are in pain, it would be odd for you to answer, “Ten seconds ago”. Rather, you would say, “Because you are standing on my foot”. Certainly, in this last example, there was a time when the pain in the foot first appeared, but the answer to the question “When?” is not the same as the answer to the question “Why?”.
Now, if we read the Genesis or “In the Beginning” story thoughtfully, it is easy to see that the narrative in chapter 1 has a lot more to say about “why” than it does about “when”. Indeed, all the narrative says about “when” is “in the beginning”, which does imply that there was a “time when”. But the narrative is much more concerned with “why”, and it answers this question about cause in terms of divine causality. The narrative is interested in asserting God’s causal activity and understands creation principally in terms of causality.
In the next chapter, we will consider an argument for God’s existence that appeals to the notion of a temporal beginning of the world. But in the present chapter, we will be concerned with an argument for God’s existence that appeals to the world’s causal dependency at each and every moment of its existence. This argument based upon causal dependency is the principal argument for God’s existence in the mind of most philosophically trained theists. Certainly it is the key argument for those who pursue philosophical theology within the tradition of Catholic philosophical thinking.
B. The Cosmological Argument for God’s Existence
The argument we will be considering is often called the “cosmological” argument for God’s existence because it begins by appealing to the “cosmos”, which is a Greek word meaning something like “the whole” or “the world” or even “the universe”. In other words, the argument begins by asking us to notice something about the world—namely, that the world is comprised of things that do not cause themselves.
If we consider any of the existing realities in our world, we notice that we can ask the question “Why?” about all of them and anticipate that there is an answer. Why is there a rhododendron bush outside our window just now? Well, we might say that this is because somebody planted it there. This answer is not false, of course, but it is not the whole answer, either. Yes, the rhododendron bush was planted by someone, but that is only one cause among many for the bush’s existence. The bush is also there because the planet on which we live is one in which there is rain. Also, without some sunlight, the rhododendron would not exist. It could not exist if not for elements like nitrogen and carbon.
The more we study such a reality, the more we notice that there are a whole host of reasons why the bush exists. Perhaps we are not used to calling all these reasons “causes”. In English today, we might find it a little odd to say that the existence of carbon is a “cause” of the bush’s existence. In other languages, particularly in the sort of Greek developed by the Greek philosophers, “cause” has a broader meaning, so some philosophers writing in English today prefer to speak of conditions rather than “causes”. And so, if our somewhat odd use of the word “cause” is a stumbling block, we can ask instead, “What are the conditions that make possible the existence of the rhododendron bush outside our window?” And then to answer “carbon” (as one member of a long list of answers) does not seem odd at all.
But if we then consider the long list of “causes” or “conditions” that result in the existence of the rhododendron, what we notice is that they in turn are the result of other causes or conditions. Why is there carbon? Well, one of the conditions of the existence of carbon is the chemical bonding properties of atoms. One of the conditions of the existence of the gardener who planted the rhododendron bush outside our window was the antecedent existence of his parents.
What we notice, according to the cosmological argument, is that all the beings in our world are like the rhododendron bush: they all have conditions for their existence, and those conditions in turn have conditions, and so forth. But this means that all the beings in our world are conditioned or causally dependent upon other realities. But of course not everything can be conditioned; ultimately, there must be something that is unconditioned, or nothing would exist. There must be something that is causally first, some originating cause, or otherwise the conditions of all the conditioned beings that are present in the universe would not be met. And if the conditions of conditioned beings were not met, then such conditioned beings would not exist. In other words, there must be something that exists of and through itself, as it were; there must be an unconditioned being that is its own “cause”.
Another word that philosophers use for “conditioned realities or beings” is contingent being; another word for “unconditioned reality” is necessary being. Using these words, then, we could say that the basic claim of the cosmological argument is that the very existence of contingent being implies the existence of necessary being, for without necessary being, contingent being could not exist.
According to the cosmological argument, then, by considering the state of the beings in our world, such as rhododendron bushes, we come to the conclusion that there must be an unconditioned or necessary being that is the ultimate condition or cause of the existence of all the conditioned or contingent beings. Theists usually conclude that this unconditioned or necessary being is “God”.
Perhaps it is already obvious by now, but it still seems appropriate to point out that the cosmological argument is making a claim, not about a “time when” something happened, but rather about what is the case always. Contingent being always needs necessary being—without necessary being, contingent being would never exist. In other words, creation in this sense was not something that happened once a long time ago; rather, it is something that is continuous at every moment, for the unconditioned being continuously causes the conditions of conditioned beings to be met.
To be sure, we can take preexisting materials and arrange them in a particular way and then leave those materials to themselves. We can build a house, for example, and then go on vacation, and (assuming we have arranged the materials well) the house will continue standing on its own. Our building of a house, however, is not the same as God’s creative act. We are only one of the conditions of the house’s existence, and we are ourselves conditioned by a great many conditions. God, however, would be the ultimate cause of all the conditions of the house, including ourselves, but God would have no conditions.
The view that God created the world a long time ago and then left it to its own internal devices is known as deism. According to theism, however, God continuously creates the world—continually causes conditional being—at every moment of its existence. Indeed, since God transcends time, if there were a temporal beginning of the universe, the creative activity of God then is identical to the creative activity of God now. . . which is identical to the creative activity of God now. And now. And also. . . now.
Therefore, since, according to theists, God transcends time, from the point of view of God, there is no difference in the creative activity of God at the beginning and now. And indeed, the cosmological argument does not claim to show us that there ever was a beginning of time; rather, if one limits one’s reflections to this argument alone, the argument suggests that one should accept the logical possibility that the world is both created by a theistic God and eternal with respect to time. The world, the argument implies, might be both created and without beginning.
C. Objections to the Cosmological Argument
Over the centuries, a number of objections to the cosmological argument have been formulated. The discussion between the advocates and the critics of the argument is ongoing; we will attempt to explain some of the criticisms and responses here.
Some critics of the argument have attempted to appeal to contemporary physics, which they say suggests that, at a subatomic level, realities like electrons and other things just seem to “pop” into being. In other words, whereas the cosmological argument claims that “from nothing, nothing comes” (ex nihilo nihil fit, as the Latin Scholastic philosophers once put it), in fact we have evidence that violates this claim. And of course, the critics contend, if some things within the cosmos can come into being in an uncaused manner, without dependency upon conditions, how can we know that the whole cosmos does not come into being in an uncaused manner? But if this is so, then there would be no reason to claim that the universe is caused at all, and the cosmological argument fails.
The response of the advocates of the cosmological argument to this criticism is usually that, in fact, contemporary physics does not show what the critics claim. Modern physics seems to suggest that, while it is not possible to know with certainty just where some things such as electrons will suddenly appear, they do still seem to come forth from antecedent vacuum states. But vacuum states are not “nothing” according to contemporary physics. They themselves exist and constitute a condition of the existence of the electrons. And thus the principle of “from nothing, nothing comes” is not violated, and hence the argument still stands.
In this dispute about subatomic physics, the discussion between the advocates and detractors of the cosmological argument comes down to whether it has been established that anything exists in the cosmos that is not causally dependent upon causally antecedent conditions. The authors of this book do not see that the claim of the critics has been established, but we should probably add that, with respect to this aspect of contemporary physics, the physicists themselves are not completely confident that they understand exactly what is going on in nature. From what has been learned so far, it seems unlikely that it will be established that realities just “pop” into and out of existence without being conditioned, but of course if such a claim could be established, then it could surely work to undermine the cosmological argument; certainly it would cast doubt on the argument. Perhaps it would mean that the most the argument would be able to claim is that it is likely that a necessary being is needed to explain the existence of contingent being instead of that it is proven that such a necessary being is needed. On the other hand, if it should be demonstrated that certain realities do indeed “pop” into existence without being caused at all, perhaps this would actually imply that there are a great, great many unconditioned beings in the universe. In other words, it seems that if this line of criticism of the cosmological argument should work out, it might show that there are a great, great number of “gods” in the cosmos.
A second line of criticism often pursued by the critics of the cosmological argument is that perhaps conditioned beings (or contingent beings) condition (or cause) each other, so that an unconditioned being (or necessary being) is not needed in order to explain the existence of the cosmos. We might say that a certain contingent being (let us call it “A”) causes another contingent being (B), which causes another contingent being (C), and then C somehow causes A, which causes B, and so forth, rather like a circle.
This criticism of the cosmological argument has frequently been refuted by pointing out that a sort of infinite regress of causes has never been identified in our cosmos and that, indeed, it seems impossible that it could be identified, for there always needs to be a first or ultimate cause in any series of causes. For example, in this little example of a “circle” of causes called A, B, and C, it can simply be asked how any of them would ever exist since their conditions for existence will never be met. Why will C turn around and cause A if C does not already exist? And how can it exist if its conditions for existing have not been met? In short, if the circle is “unrolled”, what we find is that there will need to be some ultimate cause, just as the advocates of the cosmological argument claim.
In our view, the mistake this criticism of the cosmological argument makes is that it is thinking of causes or conditions temporally. This is understandable, in that often in our world causes do precede effects temporally, but, as explained already in this chapter, causal precedence is not the same as temporal precedence. The cosmological argument makes no claims about time; it does make claims about dependency, and there cannot be an infinite regress of dependencies, so that, ultimately, something must exist of itself in order for anything else to exist.
Another way to state this response of the advocates of the cosmological argument to the objection would be to grant, for the sake of argumentation, that, just as the criticism suggests, the universe is a sort of perpetual motion machine, with A, B, and C always being causes of each other. Such a claim, the theist would say, simply misses the point. The question the cosmological argument wants to ask is “Why is there any such interlocking ‘system’ of mutually dependent causes at all?” What made the “perpetual motion machine”?
The first line of attack on the cosmological argument thus attempts to posit the actual existence of multiple beings that are not contingent or conditioned; the second line attempts to establish the possibility that contingent beings somehow cause each other. We have suggested in response to the first that, at least so far, the actual existence of these great many uncaused beings has not been established. In response to the second attack, we have suggested that the critics have yet to demonstrate even the possibility of a universal system in which only contingent beings can cause each other to exist, for there is always the question of what causes the contingent universal system of contingent causes itself to exist. Notice, however, that these first two lines of attack ask us to consider more carefully what is the case about the universe. We have, to be sure, suggested that what the critics try to point out to us about the universe has not been shown to be the case, but the two criticisms are similar in that they both claim that the advocates of the cosmological argument have not contemplated the cosmos with sufficient care.
A third line of criticism of the cosmological argument does not ask the advocates of the argument to look more closely at the cosmos but, rather, attacks the form of the argument itself. This line of attack grants that the cosmos is composed of contingent beings that do not cause each other but questions the logic of the argument when it concludes that therefore the cosmos taken as a whole must be contingent and thus caused by a necessary being. In other words, this third sort of attack says that the cosmological argument begins plausibly enough by saying that “Everything within the cosmos is caused”, but then illogically concludes that “The cosmos as a whole is therefore caused.”
This line of attack may strike us initially as having a certain plausibility. Even beginning logicians know about a flawed kind of argument that commits the fallacy of composition. An example of an argument that rather clearly commits this fallacy might be the following claim made during a trip to a shopping mall: “That bright orange scarf is beautiful, and so is that hot pink shirt on the mannequin. If you also bought that lime green skirt and wore it with those bright lemon-colored shoes and red hat, you would have a great-looking outfit.” The argument is obviously fallacious, for from the claims that each of these individual members of a group or ensemble is “great” or “beautiful”, it fallaciously concludes that therefore the group or ensemble composed of these things is “great” or “beautiful”.
In order to respond to this attack, though, it seems as if the defender of the cosmological argument merely has to point out that there is also a kind of group or ensemble wherein the ensemble can reasonably and properly be said to carry the characteristics of each of its members. A “brick wall” would be an example of this sort of group. Each member of the group is a “brick” or “has brickness”; therefore, the wall as a whole can reasonably be said to be a brick wall. In the phrase “brick wall”, the word “brick” simply names the constitutive elements of the whole wall; it is not making a claim about some property that the wall has above and beyond its parts. In the example of the bright-colored clothing, however, in asserting that the “outfit” is great or beautiful, we are making some claim about the property of the whole that is above and beyond the property of each member of the group, for we are claiming that the parts harmonize with each other when in fact they do not. In claiming that the wall is brick, we are simply stating what the wall’s elements are; we are just saying what the whole is made of, not making any additional claims about the properties of the whole.
If we go back to the cosmological argument, then, we should ask ourselves whether the cosmological argument is like the example of the bright-colored clothes or like the brick wall, and it seems rather clear to us that the argument is simply saying that the universe is contingent because it is made up of contingent parts. In other words, it is like the brick wall example rather than the multicolored “outfit” example.
All three of these lines of attack on the argument have been expressed by professional philosophers with subtleties and nuances that go beyond what it is possible to discuss in this book, and there have been other lines of attack as well. These three are some of the more common ones. We have suggested that, in our view, these would-be criticisms do not tell against the argument in the end. We do also note, though, that not all philosophers agree with our suggestions, so it seems that both advocates and detractors of the cosmological argument should keep thinking about it.
D. Conclusion: Implications for the Question of Faith and Reason
Before going on to consider in the next two chapters other arguments that have been offered for God’s existence, it seems that we should take stock of the implications of this one argument for our broader question of the relationship of faith and reason.
Let us say that, after careful consideration, we decided to accept the cosmological argument. What would follow? Well, it would seem that one central claim of theism would have been proven: God exists—or at least a necessary being exists. Not only does the argument show that God, as a necessary being, exists, however; it also shows that the existent God is the creator of all else that is.
Of course, a great many of the other claims that theists make still remain unproven even should we conclude that this one argument is proven. For example, it is hardly obvious that the cosmological argument proves that God is omnibenevolent or wise. Indeed, it is not immediately obvious that the cosmological argument even proves that God is a person with reason and will. Even less does the argument show that God was incarnate in the person of Christ Jesus or that God is the author of the Qur’an.
Let us return to our little diagram representing faith and reason that was initially offered in chapter 3:
Remember that in this diagram, region ι refers to those truths that can only be accepted through faith; region 2 refers to those truths that can both be accepted through faith and known through reason; and region 3 refers to those truths that can be known through reason alone.
If the cosmological argument is accepted, then we would be saying that the claim “God exists” belongs to region 2, for not only would God’s existence have been revealed and accepted by faith, but God’s existence would also have been demonstrated through reason. Indeed, this is just what Thomas Aquinas thought was the case about God’s existence—it was a claim both accepted by faith and accessible to reason. Of course, Thomas did not think that all theistic believers understood the cosmological argument! He was well-aware that those people who accept theism usually do so on the basis of faith alone, for not everyone is good at philosophy, and not everyone likes philosophy, and not everyone has time for philosophy. But, in Thomas’ view, if given enough talent, inclination, and time, everyone ought in principle to accept the cosmological argument and conclude through rational argumentation that God exists, and in doing so they would be in agreement with what theistic faith teaches.
The same could be said for the claim “God is the creator of all that is”, for this is also a central conclusion of the cosmological argument, and the Book of Genesis, accepted through faith, teaches the same. So, we can say that, if we accept the cosmological argument, we have two doctrines that can be placed in region 2. And we could also say that the claims “God does not exist” and “God is not the creator” are irrational or unreasonable to maintain.
What if, however, we were to conclude that the cosmological argument does not pass muster? What if we decided to accept one of the lines of attack mentioned above or some other line of attack not so mentioned? What follows is that (at least until other arguments are considered) we would need to hold that God’s existence remains unproven. It would not follow that God does not exist. From the mere fact that one or all of the rational arguments for God’s existence in the end fail, it does not follow that God does not exist. If all of the arguments fail, it would only show that reason has not established God’s existence; it would not follow that reason had proven God’s nonexistence. The failure of all rational arguments for God’s existence, though, would mean that we would have to “move” the claim “God exists” from region 2 of our diagram into region 1.