Credo Ut Intelligam

The Cosmological Argument and the Vindication of EGMS

The cosmological argument goes something like this:

A cabbage doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that could just pop into existence. Nor could it have existed forever, all on its own, without any cause. A cabbage is a contingent being. It could have failed to exist, and it makes sense to ask why it's there. And the same goes for any other organic or inorganic aggregation of molecules. Physical things are contingent. Contingent beings do not exist without cause.

The universe as a whole is nothing over and above all the contingent beings in the universe. And when you put a bunch of contingent being together you don't get a necessary being. Even if the universe has existed from eternity past, (assuming that's even possible for a contingent being) it still makes sense to ask why it exists. After all, it's a cabbage, along with some other stuff. It didn't have to exist.

A self-existent being would be the sort of thing that could exist all on its own, necessarily, and without cause. Now, we may not be able to form much of a positive concept of what a self-existent being would be like. But we know enough about cabbages to say that a cabbage is not self-existent. And the same goes for the whole physical universe. A collection of atoms zooming around, interacting with each other in accordance with certain lawlike regularities, is not the sort of thing that could exist all on its own, necessarily, and without cause. And that doesn't change if you talk about Quantum Mechanical wave-functions, or Hilbert space vectors instead of billiard-ball-like atoms. Whatever high-powered math we use to describe it, the physical universe doesn't look like the sort of thing that could exist without cause.

But could there be a self-existent being at all? If such a being is not to be found in nature, could there be a supernatural self-existent being? What we have already said suggests that the answer is Yes. The contingent physical world seems to need a cause. If that cause were itself another contingent being, then that contingent being would also seem to need a cause. To posit an infinite series of these supernatural contingent causes runs afoul of Occam's razor, and would still leave unanswered the question of why the whole series exists. All of which suggests that there must be some non-contingent, uncaused being behind it all. If you deny that there is a self-existent ultimate cause of the physical universe, then you must make the very counterintuitive and implausible claim that either the physical universe is a self-existent being, or else that a contingent being, like a cabbage, could exist without cause.

To summarize:
1) Contingent beings [things that exist contingently] do not exist without cause.
2) The universe is a contingent being.
3) Therefore something caused the universe, ...
and unless one wants to get into some really weird hypotheses about infinite numbers of contingent, supernatural beings, ...
4) The ultimate cause of the universe is a self-existent, necessary being.

Atheists sometimes respond to the cosmological argument by asking who made God. "How did the universe get here?" is a puzzling question, they say, but it is no less puzzling than "How did God get here?"

The problem with this response may be evident already from the way I expressed the cosmological argument above. There is a big difference between asking why a self-existent being exists and asking why a contingent being exists. God is, ex hypothesi, a self-existent being. He is the sort of being that can exist necessarily and without cause. The cosmological argument suggests that some such being does exist and that the physical universe isn't it. If it is granted that there is a self-existent being, then the question "why does it exist" doesn't come up, except as a comment upon the difficulty of our conceiving of such a being. To grant that there is such a being is to grant that the question needs no answer. Not so with a contingent being like a cabbage, or like the physical universe. Granting that a cabbage exists leaves open the question of why it exists.

There is a similar problem with the atheistic response to EGMS that I explained in Helping Atheists Argue. Physical stuff, given what we know about it, doesn't seem to be the sort of thing that could have objective moral value all by itself. Moral normativity doesn't seem to fit with a materialistic worldview. If humans are fancy animals and animals are fancy chemical reactions, and there is nothing outside of these chemical reactions that could infuse them with moral value, then how did they get moral value? That question somehow seems more pressing than "how come God has moral worth?" The genuine authority of a moral standard seems out of place in a purely physical world, in a way that it does not seem out of place in world created by God. Now, if morality exists at all, then something must be inherently (non-derivatively) moral, and chemical reactions don't seem like the sorts of things that could be inherently moral. Since those party to this discussion, Christians and atheists alike, all believe in morality, it seems reasonable to conclude that either human beings are not merely physical things, and/or that their moral value and moral obligations derive from an inherently moral transcendent source.

I haven't proven that the self-existent cause of the universe and the inherently moral source of human morality are one and the same. But they might be. There isn't the same kind of "lack of fit" between self-existence and inherent morality as there is between each of those properties and purely physical stuff. And the same goes for the other things Christians ascribe to God: omnipotence, omniscience, etc.. If there is an all-powerful, non-physical being who made the universe, he may or may not have moral value inherently and without cause. But the suggestion that he does is not accompanied with the same kind of weirdness and implausibility that you get when you say that human beings, which are merely fancy chemical reactions, have moral value inherently and without cause.

There is thus a real problem for atheism that Christianity does not face. While the idea of non-derivative morality may be mysterious, everyone who believes in morality must allow for it. But materialistic atheism faces a different problem: objective value seems particularly out of place in a purely material world.

Posted by mccartney at May 27, 2007 04:28 PM | TrackBack