In this episode Trent defends a contingency argument for the existence of God and includes sound bites from scientists like Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, and Max Tegmark to make his case.
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- Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent: And welcome back to the council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. If you’ve been following me on YouTube, which I hope that you will, at least by the time of this recording, we’re almost at a thousand subscribers for the Council of Trent YouTube channel. And I’m planning to upload more content to that YouTube channel doing a lot of things like short form videos, little four to five minute videos to answer common questions people have about defending the faith. Longer videos where I rebut anti-Catholic apologetics. Right now I’m doing a series on Pastor Mike Winger, where basically I take his videos… and he’s got a lot, he’s got hours worth of content that are a critique of the Catholic faith… and I watch them and then offer my commentary, to reply to mistaken assertions or faulty arguments that he’s using. Working on that, and just uploading a lot of great content there as well as rapid response videos.
So if something happens in the news, like I just responded to the comments Francis Chan made about the Eucharist, and James White’s replies to that, and what James White, some of the things he was saying to try to undermine Catholic belief in the Eucharist. I’m super excited to be on YouTube. I feel like I’m getting here late. I’m like, “Did you guys hear about this thing called YouTube? You got to get videos up!” And people are like, “Trent, that is so 2009 what are you doing?” But I mean, for all this time I’ve been sharing my work on books for a long time, and the radio show, and then just two years ago got into the podcast game. And now because of your support at TrentHornPodcast.com, I’m able to get into YouTube to share this information with a lot of people to be able to equip them.
A lot of people, when they have questions about religion, about the faith, they go to YouTube. I did a survey on an episode a few months ago, talked about where a lot of people become atheists when they have questions about Christianity, they go to YouTube. And I feel like the number of atheistic apologetic videos easily outweighs the number of Christian or Catholic apologetic videos on YouTube, easily. So we’ve got to counterbalance that. We’ve got to bridge the divide, if you will. And so that’s why I hope that you will support what we’re doing here at TrentHornPodcast.com to make that happen. And when you do that for as low as $5 a month, you get access to bonus content and you make things around here really great. So here’s what I want to share with you all today. This is a script that I originally wrote for a long form YouTube video, something like 20 minutes.
And I may still do these in the future and if you like this and really would love to see cool visuals along with it to be produced through the podcast, because I’d have to hire an editor to be able to do that, consider supporting us. So right now this is essentially the audio version of a script that I wrote, defending the contingency argument for the existence of God. So if you saw my interview with Matt Fradd, if you haven’t, you should definitely go and check it out. Go to Matt Fradd’s YouTube page, or it’s on Pints With Aquinas now. And we had a mega interview. I think it’s the longest interview he’s ever had with a guest. It was nearly four hours long. But what was so fascinating about it was that Matt and I were just going… And Matt and I are friends, we go back a long time.
So we just get right into it, talking about how to defend the faith, how to defend the existence of God, the reliability of the new Testament, the papacy, and we’re just rolling. And we had to take a break because his dog kind of ran in and knocked the light over. And I looked at my clock and I realized that just three hours had gone by. I didn’t even realize it. And I was like, “Oh man, I’m going to miss my flight.” So I had to reschedule my flight, and we finished the interview, but it was a really cool experience. So if you want to see, you know, and I might for the podcast, take clips of the best of that Matt Fradd interview, and maybe share it with you here on the podcast in the next few weeks. But if you want to get the full thing, the full three hour 40 minute, whatever it was, treatment, go to Pints With Aquinas, or go to Matt Fradd on YouTube.
But in that interview, Matt and I talked about answering atheism and not just the book but just how to reply to atheists. And I shared with him an argument that I think is helpful with atheists, called the contingency argument for God. I said that this argument, I think, is helpful for atheists who have been on the internet a bunch, and they’ve heard all the standard arguments for the existence of God. Especially the kalam cosmological argument, which says that whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause. And so atheists have heard that, and then they’ve probably watched even like a ton of rebuttals to that argument and think, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to learn from kalam. Kalam is old hat.”
So I said to Matt, actually a lot of atheists have neglected the contingency argument for the existence of God and so I think sharing that, it might get a fresh and fair hearing. So here’s what I would like to do. I’m going to read through the script that I wrote for this video and also include the video elements from YouTube. Here we go.
There could have been nothing, but instead there’s something. What’s up with that? When we ask why there is something rather than nothing, some people are quick to say, science has shown how something can come from nothing. For example, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss says this.
Lawrence Krauss: Because it turns out the simplest answer may be that nothing is unstable. It will always produce something. Indeed, once you combine quantum mechanics and relativity, empty space, which apparently of course is nothing, is not so simple. It’s actually a boiling, bubbling, brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence in a timescale so short you can’t see them. And in fact, if you wait long enough and allow gravity to operate, empty space will eventually start producing particles.
Trent: But Krauss’s reply still doesn’t explain why there is a quantum vacuum. Why there is this bubbling, broiling stew that is capable of producing particles in the first place. It doesn’t explain why this quantum vacuum exists, instead of absolute nothing. Remember, this argument we’re proposing, we’re not saying that the universe had a beginning and therefore the universe came into being from nothing and God created the universe. Because some atheists will argue, “Well we don’t know if the universe had a beginning and physics is still working on that question.” Fine. Even if, and this was St. Thomas Aquinas’s position, Aquinas believed by faith that the universe did begin. But even if it were the case, per impossibly, even if the universe were eternal, which it’s not.
But for the critic’s sake, if the universe were eternal into the past, we’d still wonder, why is there an eternally existing universe instead of nothing at all? So we don’t have to plunge into the science of the beginning of the universe. We can ask. We see the universe around us. It could have not existed. Why does it exist? John Wheeler, the physicist who coined the term black hole once wrote, “Balancing the glory of quantum achievements, we have the shame of not knowing how come. Why does the quantum exist? How come existence?” Physicist Sean Carroll, who is a very good cosmologist and also a very committed atheist, he says, “The question, why is there something rather than nothing, can be answered in one of two ways.”
Sean Carroll: What you meant by that question was, how could you start in empty space or a quantum vacuum and then evolve according to the laws of physics into a universe like we see? We have plausible answers to that question. There are physical theories that do that. We don’t know whether any of them is right. We don’t have the final answer to those questions, but it doesn’t seem hard. There’s no insuperable obstacle. Many people have in mind the deeper question of, but why is there quantum mechanics? Why are there laws of physics rather than no laws of physics, no thing at all. And that I think is, you know, a different question. It’s a respectable question to ask and the only plausible answer is why not? Why would you ever expect there to be nothing rather than something?
Trent: Well, I appreciate that Carroll isn’t dismissive of the question outright, though I think we can go deeper than the particular answer he gave, which is well why would there be nothing in the first place? In fact, this question has bothered many people since the philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz first posed it in the 17th century. Here’s what he wrote: “We can’t find in any individual thing, or even in the entire collection and series of things, a sufficient reason why they exist. God is the only thing that exists out of the world and nothing in the world could be the ultimate reason for things.”
This line of thinking is sometimes called the Leibnitzian argument for the existence of God, and it really doesn’t get the attention it deserves. But before we do that and give it the attention it deserves, I want to address a common answer atheists give to the question, why is there something rather than nothing? So the first clip is Lawrence Krauss’s answer.
Lawrence Krauss: Say that really, why isn’t a good question. When we say why, we really mean how, because why implies that there’s some purpose, and there may be no purpose to the universe.
Trent: Okay, so he says we shouldn’t even bother asking why, it’s how. And you get a similar answer from comedian Ricky Gervais, who’s also an atheist. When he was on the Stephen Colbert Report two years ago, or I think… Oh, now it’s about three years ago.
Stephen Colbert: You want to concede the debate? Why is there something instead of nothing?
Ricky Gervais: This, this… Hold on, what do you mean out of nothing? What do we…
Stephen Colbert: Why is there something instead of, why is there nothing? So why does the university exist at all? Why is there something?
Trent: So, don’t ask why there is something rather than nothing.
Ricky Gervais: But surely the big question is not why, but how.
Trent: You should be asking how is there something rather than nothing. But here’s the problem. How makes it seem like the answer to the question lies in some undiscovered natural process within the universe or a larger multiverse. But we shouldn’t assume that the answer to the question of the universe’s existence could be found within the universe itself. So let’s pose the question in a more neutral way. What explains the existence of the universe? There are only three options. One, the universe has no explanation. Two, the universe explains its own existence. Three, the universe’s existence is explained by something else.
All right, so if you watch my interview with Matt Fradd, we go through this argument. But here I’ll go through it more methodically and I’ve got a few more clips to drop in for you. But just to recap, there’s only three options you can explain to someone. The universe has no explanation. The universe explains its own existence, or the universe’s existence is explained by something else. All right, so maybe let’s go with option number one. Maybe the universe has no reason for its existence. That was the position of the late atheist Bertrand Russell.
In 1948, Bertrand Russell and the Catholic priest Father Frederick Copleston took part in a debate on BBC radio. Father Copleston said that because we seek explanations for why things in the universe exist, then naturally we should seek an explanation for why the whole universe exists. So I love this debate by the way, just search Copleston Russell debate, and this is from 1948. And it makes it feel very refined and distinguished when you listen to it.
Frederick C.: An infinite series of contingent beings would be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being.
Trent: All right, so this is Frederick Copleston speaking, making an argument for God, saying that contingent things, things that don’t have to exist, necessarily prove that a thing that must exist like God. So this is Father Copleston.
Frederick C.: An infinite series of contingent beings would be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being. However you say, I think, that it is illegitimate to raise the question of what will explain the existence of any particular object.
Trent: Okay, so now this is Bertrand Russell’s reply, when he says, Father Copleston says, well, if you’re asking why one thing in the universe exists, why wouldn’t we ask for why the cause of the whole universe exists? Remember, option one in our argument is maybe the universe has no explanation at all. And this is what Russell’s going to get to. It’s basically his answer to Copleston’s question, Father Copleston’s question. If you look for the cause of one thing in the universe, why shouldn’t we look for the cause of the whole universe? And here’s what Russell says.
Bertrand R.: I see no reason to think there is any. The whole concept, of course, is one we derive from our observation of particular things. I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that the total has any cause whatsoever.
Trent: And so this reply, that the universe just, it has no cause, it just exists, is another common response. Sean Carroll, who I mentioned earlier, is a famous cosmologist, atheist. He debated William Lane Craig once. That’s kind of the reply that he gives as well. The universe just has no explanation for its existence.
Sean Carroll: But why is there quantum mechanics? Why are there laws of physics rather than no laws of physics, no thing at all? And that I think is, you know, a different question. It’s a respectable question to ask. And the only plausible answer is why not? Why would you ever expect there to be nothing rather than something? It’s not the kind of question to which we are ever going to get an answer that says, “Oh, it’s because of this, that there is something rather than nothing.”
Trent: So essentially what Carroll is proposing is that it’s a brute fact. It’s an unexplained brute fact, the universe exists. And that’s all. And that’s what Bertrand Russell once said, it’s just there and that’s all. But I don’t find this to be a helpful response. One that I think actually flies in the face of reason. I do not think we should accept option one, that the universe exists simply for no reason at all. Or that there’s no reason to explain why there is a universe instead of no universe. And so Bertrand Russell and Sean Carroll will say, well, it just does exist. It’s an unexplained brute fact. It doesn’t need an explanation. But this flies in the face of reason.
The fact that the universe is so regular is evidence of something called the principle of sufficient reason or PSR. So, our universe is very regular. We don’t see things just popping into existence. Like as you’re watching this, you know, a pile of gold is not going to pop into existence on the table in front of you. A Corvette won’t just pop into existence in your driveway. Your car won’t just disappear out of existence from the driveway. The universe is a very regular and predictable place and that provides evidence of something called the principle of sufficient reason, which in one form says that things have a reason for why they exist. And this principle that things have a reason for why they exist, that the universe is intelligible, it is what allows us to use process of elimination to find the truth.
So for example, in Star Trek VI, the movie, the Enterprise is accused of firing torpedoes at a Klingon ship, and Spock uses the process of elimination to show there has to be some explanation for this event. He says, “Well the enterprise didn’t do this, but it looks like the Enterprise did it. There has to be an explanation.” Here’s the reasoning that Spock uses.
Spock: An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth.
Trent: So you hear what he says there, an ancestor of mine once said, this, Spock is quoting Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, which is very appropriate. Very appropriate that one of Spock, who is a super logical person, would have Sherlock Holmes as an ancestor, even though he’s a fictional character. But Spock is a fictional character. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mystery novel, The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes says this, “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth.” This means that when you have a choice between an unlikely explanation for something’s existence and no explanation, you should always go with the explanation even if it’s unlikely. Because no matter how unlikely the explanation may be, it’s always going to be more likely than no explanation at all. Just, oh, it just happened. There’s no explanation for it.
If things could happen, if things could exist for no explanation at all, then we would expect these kinds of unexplained things to be happening. We could never rule that off the table. We could never say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, you don’t accept it. Even if it’s improbable, you could say, well, there could just be no explanation. Move along here, folks. No sight to see. Let me give you another example. When Malaysian airlines flight 370 disappeared in 2014, people proposed lots of explanations for why it disappeared, and some of them were better than others.
The Daily Show: Noah says, what else can you think about, black hole, Bermuda Triangle and then she says, “Huh, just like the movie Lost.” I know it’s preposterous, but is it preposterous, do you think, Mary?
Trent: That was actually a clip from The Daily Show, making fun of CNN when they’re trying to explain, well, why did flight 370 disappear? Well, maybe there’s a Bermuda Triangle, or maybe a black hole swallowed the plane and it’s like, I know this is preposterous, but is it preposterous? Yes, it is. But here’s the thing. At least saying MH 370 was swallowed by a black hole, at least it tries to be an explanation. Notice that throughout the course of that mystery, nobody said, “Well, maybe the airplane just popped out of existence for no reason at all. It just simply disappeared from existence and there’s no reason why it disappeared from reality. It just did.”
Even a black hole is a better explanation than that and that’s a really bad explanation. If we could explain anything by saying there just is no explanation, it just happened, then we would expect to see unexplained events happening all the time. But we don’t, which provides good evidence that the principle of sufficient reason is true, and things which exist have a reason for why they exist.
Moreover, if the principle of sufficient reason is true, that things which exist have a reason for why they exist. If it’s true of small objects in the universe, then this truth should apply to larger and larger objects like stars and galaxies, and even the whole universe. So we should rightly ask what is the explanation for the existence of the universe? Now in this debate with Father Copleston, Bertrand Russell said it was a fallacy to say that because everything in the universe has an explanation for why it exists, it follows that the whole universe has an explanation. He said that doesn’t necessarily follow, and he used this analogy to make his point.
Bertrand R.: Every man who exists has a mother and [crosstalk 00:19:00] seems to be, therefore the human race must have a mother. But obviously the human race hasn’t a mother. That’s a different logical sphere.
Trent: This is called the fallacy of composition, which says that what is true for a thing’s parts may not necessarily be true for the whole thing. For example, just because every brick that makes up a building can be lifted by hand, it doesn’t follow that the whole building can be lifted by hand. But sometimes what is true of the parts is true of the whole. If every brick in a building is red, then the whole building is going to be red. Some properties like weight, well they change when you add objects together. But other properties like color or contingency, the idea that something could fail to exist, don’t change in that way. So the fallacy isn’t committed. And so let me ask you this. Does the universe exist? Well, sure. But how do we know that? Well, because the universe is a collection of all things that exist in reality.
If the things in the universe exist, then the whole universe exists. Saying the universe has a reason for why it exists is not like saying the whole human race has one single mother. Just as we can say that the universe exists because all of its parts exist, we can say the universe requires a reason for why it exists. Just as every single part in it requires a reason for why it exists. Even prominent atheists like Matt Dillahunty reject the conclusion that the universe simply has no explanation at all. In his video on the contingency argument, this is what Matt Dillahunty says.
Matt Dillahunty: The third is that the universe has a reason for its existence. I’ve already acknowledged from point one that I think that that’s going to be true, whether it is contingent or necessary.
Trent: Even he sees that it’s reasonable to ask for an explanation to the whole universe. So it looks like option one just isn’t a good one. You know, that the universe has no explanation at all, but what about option two? Could the universe explain its own existence? The universe exists because it just has to exist. If something can explain its own existence, philosophers say it is necessary, or it has to exist, because existence is a part of its own nature. A necessary thing can’t fail to exist. In contrast, a contingent thing doesn’t have to exist. A contingent thing could fail to exist because it depends on something else in order to exist. If that thing it depends on didn’t exist, the contingent thing wouldn’t exist as well. You or I are contingent upon our parents in order to exist. If our parents had never existed, you or I wouldn’t exist. We are contingent.
So does the universe exist contingently, and therefore requires something else to explain why it exists, or does it exist necessarily and explain its own existence? Because by its very nature it has to exist. Well, consider a triangle. You might ask why is it blue, or why does it have a right angle? You could ask those questions because the triangle could have been different, but you don’t ask why does the triangle have three sides? You don’t ask that because, well, it wouldn’t be a triangle then. It’s a part of the definition of a triangle to have three sides, or it’s a necessary truth about triangles that can never be different. So the question why does the universe exist is not like why does this triangle have three sides? A triangle’s three sidedness is a necessary truth about triangles. The existence of the universe, however, is not a necessary truth about universes.
Because we can ask the question, and it’s an intelligible question to ask. Just as we can imagine different kinds of triangles, we can imagine the universe, different kinds of universes having less and less objects in it, or having no objects in it, or even no universe at all. This shows the universe does not have to exist and so it isn’t necessary. It doesn’t explain its own existence. Now, let me address two objections to this argument. First, if the universe is contingent because we can imagine it not existing, doesn’t that mean God is contingent because an atheist could imagine God not existing? It doesn’t, because sometimes we can imagine logically impossible things.
For example, Goldbach’s conjecture is an unproven mathematical truth. It claims that every number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers. So for example, eight is the sum of three and five and then you can go on and every single number greater than two, you can derive it from two prime numbers adding up. But it’s not proven. If it were proven, however, it’s a necessary mathematical truth. So it’s either true in any single possible world, Goldbach’s conjecture that any number is the sum of two primes. If it’s greater than two. This truth is mathematical, it’s either true, it’s necessary, true in every possible world, or if it’s false, it’s false in every single possible world. It’s either necessarily true or necessarily false.
So even though I can imagine it being true and being false, only one of those things is logically possible. So even if I can imagine both of them, only one is really possible. Not everything I can imagine is possible. And the same is true for God. I can imagine God existing and not existing, but God’s existence is necessary by the very definition of what God is. If God exists, he has to exist in any possible world. He can’t fail to exist. If God could fail to exist, he wouldn’t be God. But unlike God or numbers which don’t change, or don’t go out of existence, the universe is not defined by any kind of necessary existence. It’s parts experience change that result in non-existence all the time.
So there’s no reason to say the universe must exist in the same way God or mathematical truths must exist. Now, here’s the second objection. Maybe individual things like stars and planets are contingent. They could fail to exist. But the fundamental bits of matter that make up these things are necessary. So they have to exist, like the atoms or the quarks, even if they get rearranged. So the universe is necessary in the sense that its fundamental parts like the atoms and quarks have to exist, even though you could rearrange them. It’d be like how the objects in a Lego bin can stop existing.
The little Lego truck or Lego statue could stop existing, but the little Lego bits would keep existing in the bin, no matter how hard I squeezed them. But there’s no reason to think that even the fundamental elements of matter are necessary or that they have to exist. Scientists believe there are about 10 to the 80th power number of atoms in the universe. That’s a one followed by 80 zeros, but couldn’t there have been more or less atoms? Couldn’t there have been different kinds of fundamental particles that make up the atoms? Maybe they aren’t quarks, maybe they’re strings. So there’s no reason to think that the fundamental elements of matter are necessary, because we can imagine them being different too. In fact, Sean Carroll rejects the idea that the universe exists necessarily, or that it has to exist.
Sean Carroll: I don’t think there are any necessary things other than sort of total logical or mathematical statements.
Speaker: So it is in essence, a pure brute fact that it’s a contingent fact about the world, a brute fact that might not have been the case, but it is the case. So you would say that it could’ve been the case that they were absolutely nothing, but that’s not the case.
Sean Carroll: I think, yeah, there’s many possible worlds. Ours is one of them. There are others that are very different. There’s nothing necessary about any one of them.
Speaker : Different point. Is there a necessary that there be one other than nothing?
Sean Carroll: I see no reason for there to be anything necessary about the existence of a universe at all.
Speaker 9: So therefore, there could have been nothing. There could have been nothing in which there were no quantum mechanical stage, no laws of physics, no universe, no nothing. There could have been that.
Sean Carroll: I’m perfectly willing to contemplate that nothingness. The absence of any universe or laws of physics, there’s absolutely a possibility that that might have been in some space of possibilities.
Trent: So Carroll agrees that there could have been nothing. There’s nothing about our universe, or any universe, that says it has to exist. So if we agree there needs to be an explanation for why things exist, if we find that to be reasonable, and we agree that the universe does not have to exist, then it logically follows there must be an explanation for why there is a universe. Why there is something rather than nothing. If you want to watch more of these interviews, where I’m getting them from is from Robert Kuhn’s PBS series Closer to Truth. They’re really fascinating. I highly recommend them online.
So what could this explanation then be for the universe? Well, it can’t just be another finite universe or even a collection of universes in a multiverse, because then we’re back at the original question. If those other universes are contingent, then the whole explanation starts all over. It’s kind of like answering the question, what explains the chandelier hanging over our heads? A single link in the chain can’t explain it because a chain can’t hold itself up. No matter how many chains you add, you still don’t answer the question. What’s holding up all the chains?
The explanation of a contingent universe’s existence can’t only be other contingent universes, even an infinite number of them. Maybe our universe came from another universe, but then where did that universe come from? Just as there can’t be an infinite number of chains holding up the chandelier, you need an anchor. There can’t be an infinite number of universes explaining why there is a universe, if they’re all contingent. You’ve got to have something to explain it.
John Wheeler, he put it this way. “No tower of turtles, advised William James. Existence is not a globe supported by an elephant, supported by a turtle, supported by yet another turtle, and so on.” In other words, no infinite regress. And so the turtles is, that’s the old joke. You know, what’s the universe sitting on? Well, it’s on an elephant. What’s the elephant on? A turtle. What’s the turtle on? Oh my dear, it’s turtles all the way down. Is that the old story? No, it can’t be. That doesn’t explain anything at all.
So we need a necessary explanation for the universe, not a contingent thing that could fail to exist. The only thing that explains why there is something rather than nothing would have to be something that is necessary or just has to exist. So what could that be? Well, a lot of philosophers and scientists believe numbers are necessary, and no matter what world exists, one and one is always going to be two. Max Tegmark is a very brilliant physicist and he agrees that mathematics are necessary truths.
Max Tegmark: I too can imagine a world without the quarks, a world without quantum mechanics and so on. But I cannot imagine a reality where two plus two is not equal to four. So mathematics has this unique and uncanny property.
Trent: So Tegmark agrees, and he thinks that numbers could be a reason why the universe has to exist. But as Kuhn points out in their interview, numbers are abstract. And other abstract objects, like shapes or just truths, they’re causally a feat. What makes an abstract number like… Sorry, an abstract object different than a concrete object, what makes the number two different than two doughnuts, is that the number two can’t cause anything. Two donuts can cause my blood sugar to spike. The number two cannot do that. Numbers and shapes, abstract objects, can’t cause anything.
Stephen Hawking even admitted this, when he said this about how the universe could not be explained by necessary mathematical truths alone. He said, “Even if there is only one possible unified theory of physics, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science, of constructing a mathematical model, cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
Even if we have all the right mathematical formulas to describe the universe, Hawking asks, “What breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” All right, so why should we believe, if it’s not an abstract object, why believe the necessary cause of the universe is God? Well, once we rule out material and temporal or time-based objects like the universe and everything within it, as well as immaterial abstract objects like numbers, then we’re only left with an immaterial, eternal, necessary explanation that has causal power. This necessary cause must exist in some way that brings about the existence of all things, without relying on anything in order to exist.
We can go further and see this cause cannot be composed of parts. This is what I was starting to explain in the Matt Fradd interview, but we moved on in the discussion. Because if it had parts then it would depend on something else that existed prior to the parts that united them into one whole. Okay, so whatever this cause is, is very simple. It’s not made of parts, it’s not composed together. It’s kind of like just existence itself. This cause also couldn’t have any potential waiting to be actualized by something else. If it did, if it only had potential knowledge or power or things like that, to be actualized by something else, which is what happens for you or I, we learn things by being… It’s actualized by something else we encounter. We can do things. When we combine our work with other things, you know, I can pull a bucket and it actualizes that potential when I pull on the rope connected to a pulley. The cause of the whole universe could not have anything potential about it.
It would just have to be purely actual. It could not lack anything in its own existence. And because of that, if it has no potential, it would have no limit. So we have something that’s necessary. It’s causal, it exists without limit. It would essentially be unlimited existence itself. So it’d be infinite, immaterial, and eternal pure actuality, without division or deficiency of any kind. Because if it lacked something then it would be limited. It would have potential and it couldn’t be the necessary infinite cause of the whole universe. You would still ask why this thing instead of something else. And that means, because it doesn’t lack anything, it doesn’t lack power. So it would be all powerful, and if it lacks nothing at all, it wouldn’t be evil or bad because evil is an absence of good. What makes something evil or bad is that it’s missing the good it ought to have.
But if the necessary cause of the universe is infinite in nature, it has no limits. It’s not missing anything. So it can’t be bad or evil. It must be good in the truest sense of that word. And finally, this cause is the reason not just for why all contingent things in the universe exist. Not just the reason why things in the universe exist. It’s the reason for why the relations between these things exist. It’s the reason for why things exist in relation to one another. And that means this cause provides the foundation not just for the existence of reality, but also for every single truth about reality. And so in some way, this cause must contain or know all of these truths about reality. And so we would say that the ultimate sustaining cause is all knowing.
And so finally, therefore, if we go through the contingency argument in it’s fullest, we see the existence of the universe that can fail to exist, points to a necessary cause that is infinite. Pure existence itself, exists beyond space and time, created and sustains everything, is all powerful, all good, and all knowing. That’s what most people mean when they say the word God.
So I hope that this was helpful for you all. We dive into a bit of philosophy here today. Feel free to listen to the program a few times to let everything digest and sink in, but I think that this is a helpful argument, and there are a lot of great resources on this argument. There is an essay by Alex Pruss in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology that talks about this argument. Josh Rasmussen, I believe, is a Protestant or an evangelical apologist and philosopher. He’s done good work on this argument as well. Highly recommend both of them. Alex Pruss, Josh Rasmussen, on the contingency argument for the existence of God. And there’s a variant of it in Ed Feser’s book, Five Proofs for the Existence of God.
So I hope this is helpful for you all, and stretching our minds a little bit today. Now you can take a break and I hope that you have a very blessed day.
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