The One Minute Case Against the Cosmological Argument
The cosmological, or “first cause” argument, is a metaphysical argument for the existence of God.
St. Thomas Aquinas stated it as:
- Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
- Nothing finite and dependent (contingent) can cause itself.
- A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
- Therefore, there must be a first cause.
The stylized “proof from the big bang” is:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Both proofs contain several problematic claims:
A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
Imagine two indestructible balls in space. The balls begin in a stationary position some distance apart. From a standstill, gravity will bring them together until they bounce apart. They will gradually slow down, appear to pause, and then bounce again. If the system is closed, the balls will bounce off each other indefinitely. Each ball is the cause of the other’s motion — yet the system does not have a cause. If we passively observe the balls bouncing, we will only be able to view them for an arbitrary length of time, yet the series stretches back to infinity.
The universe is an entity.
This is an equivocation known as the fallacy of composition. The universe can be defined as “the set containing all entities in existence.” The universe is not itself an entity, but a collection of entities. All entities in the universe may be finite, but the set of entities need not be.
There is a cause “outside the universe.”
For there to be a cause, there must be an entity doing the causation. If the universe is the set of all existing entities, that entity must be part of the universe. An entity cannot be its own cause, so it cannot have created the universe.
The universe began to exist.
The cosmological argument defines “universe” as the set of events since creation, and places the first cause “beyond” our timeline. But time is a relative measure of the rate of change between entities, not an absolute linear constant. It is a contradiction of the concept of time to speak of a “time before time.” There cannot be such thing as a “timeless” entity because time includes all causal interactions, including the initial one. It is meaningless to speak of a time before the existence of entities, because time is a property of entities itself.
The universe has always existed — but this means only that as long as the universe has existed, so has time.
The first cause is God.
Even if we accept that the universe has a cause, it does not follow that that cause is God. Why should the first cause be a complex and conscious entity conforming to a particular religion? It is more logical to conclude that the origin of the universe is the simplest one possible, since all higher-level causes derive from it. The difference between science and religious dogma is that science is falsifiable, whereas dogma is not. How could one prove that the universe created by a personal, Christian God, and not a Hindu deity, a computer hacker in another dimension, or the flying spaghetti monster?
Further reading:
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Cosmological Argument
- The One Minute Case For Atheism
- Wikipedia: Cosmological Argument
- Wikipedia: Time in physics
- Meetup.com post which expands on the last point.
I see a problem here.
“Imagine two indestructible balls in space…” Here, you might as well have said, “Imagine a Universe.” The first cause is you– you not only created the concept of “indestructible ball”, for which there is no rational support, you then quite arbitrarily created a scenario that suited your purposes. You can imagine them having simply appeared by themselves, conforming to some but not all laws of physics all you want, but the fact remains that they didn’t.
It seems as if your diffusion of the cosmological argument stems from your having arbitrarily introduced the permissability of infinite causal chains, which I don’t think is any more reasonable than the idea of a timeless being who isn’t bound by any of the laws it has created. You either have a first cause, which is capable of having caused all other entities in the Universe and thus stakes a pretty good claim on the “god” thing, or you have an infinite Universe with an infinite number of self-spawning entities. Neither sounds very good to me.
“Who’s holding up the world?”
“Atlas.”
“What’s holding him up?”
“A turtle.”
“What’s holding up that turtle?”
“Another turtle…”
June 21st, 2007 | #
Isn’t the impossibility of an infinite causal chain also an arbitrary claim? I don’t claim that our causal chain is infinite, just eternal. The distinction is clarified here: http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?showtopic=9680
June 22nd, 2007 | #
I understand that you do not intend this to be a forum for debate, so I’ll try to be brief. Is it a correct reading of your argument against a “first cause” for the universe that there can be no “first cause” or “prime entity” that exists outside of the universe because “universe” is inclusive of all entities and thus all causes? If so, I see now what you are saying. We can’t tallk about “an X before time” or “an X outside the universe” because they are fallacies. We’re still left with the fact that “something” is here, and it is begging for an explanation.
BTW, the impossibility of an infinite causal chain is reasonable, not arbitrary, because the alternative contradicts all of my previous knowledge of the universe. So, too, does the concept of a universe uncompelled. One of the writers in the thread to which you linked suggests that it’s simply a “headache-inducing” problem. I, for one, strive for better than that.
June 25th, 2007 | #