Question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Answer: God.
Such are the beginning and end of the cosmological argument, and there isn’t a great deal in between: one of the classic arguments for the existence of God, and at once one of the most influential and (some would say) most dubious arguments in the history of philosophy.
In fact the “cosmological argument” is a type or family of arguments, rather than a single one, but all the variants are comparable in form and similarly motivated. They are all empirically grounded, based (in the most familiar version) on the seemingly unobjectionable observation that everything that exists is caused by something else. This something else is in turn caused by something else again, and so on and on and on. To avoid going back forever in an infinite regress, we must reach a cause which is not itself caused by something else: the first and uncaused (or self-caused) cause of everything, and this is God.
Why isn’t there nothing? Leaving aside for a moment consideration of its merits, it must be admitted that the cosmological argument is a response to perhaps the most natural, basic and profound question we could possibly ask: why does anything at all exist? There might have been nothing, but there is something. Why? Like the other classic arguments for God’s existence, the cosmological argument has its roots in antiquity, and it is the basis for the first three of Aquinas’s Quinque Viae (or Five Ways), a set of five arguments for the existence of God. A modern cosmologist answering the question “Why does anything exist?” would doubtless refer you to the big bang, the cataclysmic explosion 13 or so billion years ago that gave birth to the universe—to energy and matter and even to time itself. But this does not help much—it merely obliges us to rephrase the question: what (or who) caused the big bang?
The main difference between the different versions of the cosmological argument lies in the particular kind of relation between things they focus on. The most familiar version, sometimes known as the first-cause argument, takes a causal relation (“everything is caused by something else”), but the relation can be one of dependence, contingence, explanation, or intelligibility. The sequence of such relations cannot be extended indefinitely, it is argued, and in order that the sequence can be terminated, the starting point (i.e. God) must lack the various properties in question. So according to the argument, God must be uncaused (or self-caused); independent of all things; noncontingent (i.e. necessarily existent—it could not have been that it did not exist); self-explanatory; and intelligible without reference to anything else. (For simplicity, in this article the argument is stated in terms of the causal relation only.)
Making something out of a pig’s ear The attraction of the cosmological argument is that it addresses a very good question. At least, what looks like a very good question, and certainly a very natural one: why do we (and the rest of the universe) exist? Does the cosmological argument provide a good answer? There are a number of reasons to doubt it.
“Our experience, instead of furnishing an argument for a first cause, is repugnant to it.”
J.S. Mill, 1870
Historically, a god or gods have often been invoked to explain phenomena of nature that lie beyond the grasp of human understanding and knowledge. So, for instance, at a time when the physical causes of meteorological events such as thunder and lightning were not understood, it was common to explain them in terms of divine action or displeasure.
As science has advanced and human understanding progressed, the tendency has been for such explanations to be discounted and displaced. Before Darwin proposed the evolution of species by natural selection, the “god of the gaps” was brought in to explain the seemingly inexplicable order and design apparent in the natural world (see The argument from design). In the case of the cosmological argument, God has retreated to the furthest extremity of human understanding—to the birth of the universe and to the very beginning of time. In such a deep redoubt, God may be beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. But at what cost? The kingdom of heaven has shrunk indeed.
“The universe is just there, and that’s all.”
Bertrand Russell, 1964
So what did cause the universe? The nub of the problem with the cosmological argument is that, if the answer to the question “What caused the universe?” is X (God, for instance, or the big bang), it is always possible to say “Yes, but what caused X?” And if the answer to that is Y, one can still ask “What caused Y?” The only way to stop the question being pushed forever backward is to insist that X (or Y or Z) is radically different in kind such that the question cannot be posed. And this requires that some pretty weird properties are ascribed to X. Those who are reluctant to accept this consequence may be happier to accept the implication of extending the causal chain indefinitely, namely that the universe has no beginning. Or they may take the view adopted by Bertrand Russell that the universe is ultimately unintelligible, a brute fact that we cannot coherently talk or argue about. An unsatisfactory answer, but no worse than the others that are available to this most intractable of questions.
the condensed idea
The first and uncaused cause
| Timeline | |
|---|---|
| c.375BC | The argument from design |
| c.350BC | Forms of argument |
| AD1078 | The ontological argument |
| c.1260 | The cosmological argument |
| 1670 | Faith and reason |
| 1739 | Science and pseudoscience |