Must the Cause of the Universe Be Personal?
1
ON THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE
“God” and “the Cause of the Universe”
Dr. Craig,
I was wondering what the relationship between the proper name “God” and the definite description “The cause of the universe” is. A widely held belief amongst philosophers of language is that definite descriptions do not have the same referent in every possible world. For example, “The man who won the election in 2008” is not necessarily Barack Obama. It may have been the case that John McCain won. So what about the definite description “The cause of the universe”? If this doesn’t have God as a referent in all possible worlds, then there is a possible world in which God is not the cause of the universe. Does this entail that there is no God? If God exists, does He have to be the cause of the universe out of necessity?
Haigen
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
This is an interesting question, Haigen. To answer it straightforwardly, I’d say that God is the cause of the universe, where “is” is to be understood here, not as the “is” of identity (as in “Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens”), but as the “is” of predication (as in “Mark Twain is the most famous American humorist”). “God” is, in this case, a proper name that we use to refer to God, and the definite description “the cause of the universe” is a predicate which takes “God” as its subject.
INSIGHT
Note the distinction between “is” of identity vs. of predication. A failure to grasp that in application to Dr. Craig’s point could result in a pantheistic view of the universe, where the universe stands in an identity relation to the cause of the universe.
So is there a possible world in which God is not the cause of the universe? Yes, indeed! Since creation is a freely willed act of God, God could have refrained from creation and so existed alone without a universe. In such possible worlds, God is not the cause of the universe because there is no universe! So God is not the cause of the universe out of necessity. He has this property contingently.
A more interesting question is whether there is a possible world in which the cause of the universe is something other than God. Traditionally, Christian theology has taken creatio ex nihilo to be exclusively the prerogative of God. No finite creature has the power to create a material thing from nothing.1 So there is no possible world in which something other than God is the cause of the universe.
Obviously the possibility of a world in which God is not the cause of the universe doesn’t entail that God does not exist. On the contrary, in such worlds He’s the only thing that exists! On the other hand, if you think there is a world in which something other than God is the cause of the universe, then you should give up the principle that only God can create a material thing ex nihilo. In such worlds, God would be the cause of the cause of the universe (e.g., a super-powerful angel to whom God delegated the task of creation). But there is no reason to think that there are worlds like that.
On Bringing into Being Things Which Do Not Exist
Hey there Dr. Craig!
I’ve been talking with an atheist friend of mine who has issues with creatio ex nihilo. He claims that creatio ex nihilo is logically incoherent since things that exist have no causal power over things that don’t exist. In other words, how does God cause something that doesn’t exist to do anything? How exactly would God bring something that doesn’t exist into existence? He insists that that would imply that something can simultaneously exist and not exist at the same time. Therefore, it’s logically incoherent. Doesn’t it seem that for causality to work, existent things can only act on existing things?
What say you?
Thanks Doc!
John
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
Your question, John, reminds me of an objection another reader recently sent in from an atheist website. It goes like this:
The Kalam Argument AGAINST God:
P1: Nothing which exists can cause something which does not exist to begin existing.
P2: Given (1), anything which begins to exist was not caused to do so by something which exists.
P3: The universe began to exist.
P4: Given (2) and (3), the universe was not caused to exist by anything which exists.
P5: God caused the universe to begin to exist.
C1: Given (4) and (5), God does not exist.
The obvious mistake in both these objections is the assumption that creation or beginning to exist is a sort of change in a thing from being nonexistent to being existent, much as a thing might change color from being green to being red. Thus, (P1) seems to assume that there are things that do not exist, which most philosophers would regard as absurd. As your friend says, “that would imply that something can simultaneously exist and not exist at the same time.” So it is trivially true that no existent thing can cause a non-existent thing to begin to exist or that, in your friend’s words, “things which exist have no causal power over things which don’t exist,” since there are no non-existent things! (If you do think that there really are non-existent things, then (P1) is no longer clearly true. Why couldn’t an existent thing cause one of these non-existent things to begin to exist?)
But neither creatio ex nihilo nor beginning to exist implies that something undergoes a change from non-existence to existence. As C. D. Broad put it, absolute becoming is not a case of becoming this or that but just of becoming, period, just beginning to be. But then your friend’s questions, “How does God cause something which doesn’t exist to do anything? How exactly would God bring something that doesn’t exist, into existence?” are misconceived. God doesn’t do that. Your friend’s objection to creatio ex nihilo thus falls to the ground. No reason has been given why God cannot just create the matter and energy that constitute the universe.
Moreover, (P2) wouldn’t follow from (P1). For things that begin to exist are not non-existent things that became existent. If it’s to follow from (P1), (P2) requires a different interpretation of (P1),
(P1*) Nothing can cause something that exists but did not formerly exist to begin existing.
The problem is that (P1*) is patently false. I, for example, began to exist. Did I do so without a cause? According to (P2), which follows from (P1*), everything that begins to exist just pops into being uncaused. Not only is that patently false, but so believing would make science and life itself impossible. No need to learn about the birds and the bees! Do Internet atheists really expect people to swallow poppycock like this in order to avoid theism?
But it gets worse! For (P5) is taken by our atheist to be true! So the argument concludes that God is a non-existent object that caused the universe to begin to exist! Indeed, if we’re to avoid the above conclusion that everything that begins to exist does so without a cause, it seems we have to say that everything that begins to exist is caused by non-existent objects to come into being. How they pull off that metaphysical trick our intrepid atheist does not tell us.
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow: Philosophical Undertakers
Hi Dr. Craig,
Can you give your response to the following from Stephen Hawking who is quoted from his 2010 book, The Grand Design?
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” and “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
If there is such a revolution in theistic philosophy, such as arguments for the origin of the universe as you maintain, how can physicists make these statements? Doesn’t this show that theistic arguments don’t hold much weight with current paradigm in physics?
Thanks!
Matthew
Australia
Dr. Craig’s Response
Your question is just one of many such questions we’ve received concerning Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s new book The Grand Design. In an earlier question, I addressed the implications of their theories for the kalam cosmological argument and the fine-tuning argument for a Creator and Designer of the universe. Here I want to use your question, Matthew, “If there is such a revolution in theistic philosophy, such as arguments for the origin of the universe as you maintain, how can physicists make these statements?” as a springboard for addressing an underlying issue raised in the book.
Hawking and Mlodinow open The Grand Design with a series of profound philosophical questions: What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Then they say this:
Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. (p. 5)
The professional philosopher can only roll his eyes at the effrontery and condescension of such a statement. Two scientists who have, to all appearances, little acquaintance with philosophy are prepared to pronounce an entire discipline dead and to insult their own faculty colleagues in philosophy at Cal Tech and Cambridge University, many of whom, like Michael Redhead and D. H. Mellor, are eminent philosophers of science, for supposedly failing to keep up. I couldn’t help but wonder what evidence our intrepid authors have of Mr. Redhead’s laggard scholarship? What recent works in philosophy have they read that form the basis for their verdict? Alas, they do not say.
The professional philosopher will regard their verdict as not merely condescending but also as outrageously naïve. The man who claims to have no need of philosophy is the one most apt to be fooled by it. One might, therefore, anticipate that Mlodinow and Hawking’s subsequent exposition of their favored theories will be underpinned by a host of unexamined philosophical presuppositions. That expectation is, in fact, borne out. Like their claims about the origin of the universe from “nothing” or about the Many Worlds Hypothesis to explain fine-tuning, their claims about laws of nature, the possibility of miracles, scientific determinism, and the illusion of free will are asserted with only the thinnest of justification and little understanding of the philosophical issues involved.
INSIGHT
Notice what Dr. Craig is describing and the difference it makes in one’s evaluation of the authors’ ideas. He exposes their naïve disdain for philosophy. This attitude is to their detriment, since philosophy is unavoidable. Such an attitude also precludes any fruitful interdisciplinary discussion between science and philosophy.
Take, for example, their ruminations on laws of nature (pp. 27–34). After admitting the philosophical difficulty of defining just what a law of nature is, they proceed to ask three questions about natural laws: (i) What is the origin of the laws? (ii) Are there any exceptions to the laws, that is, miracles? (iii) Is there only one set of possible laws?
With respect to (i) they note that the traditional answer is that God established nature’s laws. But Hawking and Mlodinow complain than unless one invests God with certain attributes, this answer amounts to no more than defining God as the embodiment of the laws of nature. I find this complaint perplexing. Since the classical theists they have in mind (including Descartes, whose views they misrepresent) thought that nature’s laws were freely willed by God, God could not be just the embodiment of those laws, since God could have established quite different laws. What Mlodinow and Hawking are describing is the view of Spinoza, a pantheist who regarded “God” and “nature” as synonyms. Of course, classical theists regarded God as having certain attributes, which distinguished Him from nature; that is simply entailed in the answer that God established the laws.
Hawking and Mlodinow seem prepared to acknowledge the coherence of this answer, but they think the “real crunch” then comes with (ii), Are there miracles? Hawking and Mlodinow apparently think that answering (ii) negatively casts doubt on a theistic answer to (i). If so, this claim is baffling. Suppose one is a deist who thinks that God, having established the clockwork universe, chooses not to intervene in it? In that case, there is no “crunch” at all in answering (i) by “God” and (ii) by “No.”
In any case, why answer (ii) negatively? Incredibly, Hawking and Mlodinow think that science requires it:
The scientific determinism that Laplace formulated is the modern scientist’s answer to question two. It is, in fact, the basis of all modern science, and a principle that is important throughout this book. A scientific law is not a scientific law if it holds only when some supernatural being decides not to intervene. (p. 30)
This argument is multiply confused. First, it is false that Laplacean determinism2 is the basis of modern science. Never mind the hordes of theistic scientists who affirm the reality of miracles; there are plenty of scientists, including Hawking and Mlodinow themselves (p. 72), who regard the indeterminism characteristic of quantum physics as ontic, not merely epistemic.3 If nature itself is indeterministic, then the determinism of Laplace, a Newtonian, does not hold. Even a complete set of nature’s laws will not fully determine the future. It’s easy to imagine all sorts of ways in which indeterminacy on the quantum level can be amplified so as to issue in macroscopic changes in the world. (I recall the amusing illustration of a grad student who is delayed in leaving the lab while waiting for the decay of a radioactive isotope and who, as a result, meets a girl in the hallway whom he falls in love with and eventually marries!) It’s puzzling that Hawking and Mlodinow are oblivious to the contradiction between their affirmation of both Laplacean determinism and quantum indeterminacy.
Second, Hawking and Mlodinow confuse determinism with naturalism. Quantum indeterminacy is the proof positive that modern science is not based on determinism. Their argument against the intervention of a supernatural being is an argument for naturalism, not determinism. Quantum indeterminacy is acceptable because it is naturalistic, whereas miracles involve supernatural agency. But then their claim that scientific laws would not be laws if they hold only when a supernatural being decides not to intervene is clearly false. The laws of nature describe the behavior of physical systems in the absence of any supernatural intervention. Were a supernatural agent to intervene, the predictions based on the laws would not hold precisely because non-natural factors, not envisioned by the laws, have entered the picture. The laws thus have implicit ceteris paribus (“all things being equal”) conditions: they describe the behavior of physical systems given that no supernatural agent intervenes. If such a being does intervene, the natural law is not abrogated, since it describes the behavior of the system only under the assumption that such a being does not intervene.
Perhaps what Hawking and Mlodinow really mean to say is that science must presuppose naturalism in order to be a viable enterprise. But in that case, they have failed to distinguish methodological naturalism from metaphysical naturalism.4 Their argument at best would show that science is methodologically committed to entertaining only hypotheses positing natural causes; but that would do nothing to justify a negative answer to (ii), that there are no miracles. And even the question of science’s commitment to methodological naturalism is not itself a scientific question but a philosophical question about the nature of science.
INSIGHT
Notice what Dr. Craig is doing. He is trying to offer a clearer read of the authors’ own meaning for the sake of understanding what is being claimed. Note the important distinction between “methodological naturalism” and “metaphysical naturalism” in this discussion.
Hawking and Mlodinow plunge into still deeper philosophical waters when they proceed to argue that because people live in the universe and interact with other objects in it, “scientific determinism must hold for people as well” (p. 30). Therefore, “we are no more than biological machines and … free will is just an illusion” (p. 32). This is very weak. I see no reason to think that a creature endowed with freedom of the will could not exist spatio-temporally and act upon and be acted upon by other objects; so what’s the argument against such a thing? Hawking and Mlodinow ask, “If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop?” If this is supposed to be an argument, there are at least two things wrong with it. First, my having free will does not depend upon my being able to specify where in the evolutionary process organisms first acquired it. Second, free will presumably arose as soon as the human brain evolved sufficient complexity to support self-conscious, rational reflection. So what’s the problem?
Mlodinow and Hawking also argue that free will is illusory because neurosurgeons can stimulate a person’s brain in such a way as to create the desire to move his limbs or lips. The fallacy here is thinking that because one can intervene to deterministically produce an effect, therefore, the effect occurs deterministically in the absence of such intervention. Just because a neurosurgeon can stimulate my brain to make me want to move my arm obviously does not imply that on other occasions I do not or cannot move my arm freely.
Those are the only arguments for determinism that Mlodinow and Hawking present, and they do not consider any of the arguments against determinism. I wonder, for example, why they think that anything they’ve said in their book is true, since, on their view, they were determined to write it. Everything they say is the product of blind physical causes, like water’s gushing from a pipe or a tree’s growing a branch. What confidence can they have that anything they have said is true—including their assertion that determinism is true?
Mlodinow and Hawking reserve discussion of question (iii) about the uniqueness of nature’s laws until their treatment of the design argument from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Since I commented on their discussion of (iii) elsewhere, I’ll refrain from repeating myself here. But I trust that it is clear that, as one might expect, Mlodinow and Hawking are up to their necks in philosophical questions.
What one might not expect is that, after pronouncing the death of philosophy, Hawking and Mlodinow should themselves jump immediately into a philosophical discussion of scientific realism vs. anti-realism! The first third of their book is not about current scientific theories at all but is a disquisition on the history and philosophy of science. I found this section to be the most interesting and mind-boggling of the whole book.
Let me explain. Having set aside a Monday afternoon to read Hawking and Mlodinow’s book, I spent that morning working through a scholarly article from Blackwell’s Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics on a philosophical viewpoint known as ontological pluralism. Ontological pluralism is a view in a sub-discipline of philosophy whose name sounds like stuttering: meta-metaphysics, or, as it’s sometimes called, meta-ontology. This is philosophy at its most ethereal. Ontology is the study of being or of what exists, the nature of reality. Meta-ontology is one notch higher: it inquires whether ontological disputes are meaningful and how best to resolve them.
Ontological pluralism holds that there really is no right answer to many ontological questions (such as, “Do composite objects exist?”). According to the ontological pluralist there are just different ways of describing reality, and none of these is more correct or accurate than another. There literally is no fact of the matter at all in answer to these questions. So if you were to ask, “Is there such a thing as the Moon?” the ontological pluralist would say that the question has no objective answer. It’s not true that the Moon exists, and it’s not true that the Moon does not exist. There just is no fact of the matter about whether there is such a thing as the Moon. Ontological pluralism is thus a radical view that is defended by a handful of philosophers.
Imagine my utter astonishment, therefore, to find Hawking and Mlodinow espousing ontological pluralism (without being aware of the name) as their philosophy of science! They call their view “model-dependent realism.” Their view is actually even more radical than ontological pluralism, for Hawking and Mlodinow take it to hold, not merely for high-level ontological disputes, but for our entire apprehension of the world. They explain,
… our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. But there may be different ways in which one could model the same physical situation, with each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. If two such physical theories or models accurately predict the same events, one cannot be said to be more real than the other; rather, we are free to use whichever model is most convenient. (p. 7)
On this view, a model seems to be an (at least in part) unconscious way of organizing sense perceptions, which can be refined by scientific theorizing. We never come to know the way the world is; all we achieve are more or less convenient ways of organizing our perceptions. Such skepticism would be bad enough; but the situation is even worse. For these various models are not, even unbeknownst to us, more or less accurate approximations of reality. Rather there is no objective reality to which our models more or less accurately correspond. This is full-blown ontological pluralism.
Mlodinow and Hawking are thus extreme anti-realists. Now, they try to distinguish their view from scientific anti-realism by defining the latter as the view that “observation and experiment are meaningful but that theories are no more than useful instruments that do not embody any deeper truths underlying the observed phenomena” (p. 44). What Hawking and Mlodinow are describing here, however, is not scientific anti-realism but positivism, a philosophy of science popular in the 1930s and ’40s. Positivism proved to be untenable in part because of its artificial distinction between observation statements and theoretical statements. But anti-realism does not depend on positivism. Hawking and Mlodinow are more anti-realist than the positivists, for they not only deny that theoretical statements express objective truths about the world, but they deny this of observation statements as well, since even observation is model-dependent. Again, what they’re denying is not just knowledge of the way the world is, but that there even is an objective world to be known.
Just how serious they are about their anti-realism is evident from their examples. If a goldfish viewing the world through a curved bowl could formulate a model that enabled it to make successful predictions, then “we would have to admit the goldfish’s view as a valid picture of reality” (p. 39). Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the world was just as adequate as Copernicus’ heliocentric model. “So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true” (p. 41). This point is not that Copernicus’ evidence was insufficient, but that neither theory is objectively true. Contrasting young earth creationism and the big bang theory, Hawking and Mlodinow claim that while the big bang theory is “more useful,” nevertheless, “neither model can be said to be more real than the other” (p. 51)!
One cannot help but wonder what sort of argument would justify adopting so radical an ontological pluralism. All that Mlodinow and Hawking have to offer is the fact that if we were, say, inhabitants of a virtual reality controlled by alien beings, then there would be no way for us to tell that we were in the simulated world and so would have no reason to doubt its reality (p. 42). The trouble with this sort of argument is that it does not exclude the possibility that we have in such a case two competing theories of the world, one the aliens’ and one ours, and one of the theories is true and one false, even if we cannot tell which is which.
Moreover, the fact that our observations are model-dependent or theory-laden doesn’t imply that we cannot have knowledge of the way the world is (much less that there is no way the world is!). For example, a layman entering a scientific laboratory might see that there is a piece of machinery on the lab table, but he would not see that there is an interferometer on the lab table, since he lacks the theoretical knowledge to recognize it as such. A caveman entering the laboratory would not even see that there is a piece of machinery on the table, since he lacks the concept of a machine. But that does nothing to undermine the objective truth of the lab technician’s observation that there is an interferometer on the table.
Mlodinow and Hawking, not content with ontological pluralism, really go off the deep end when they assert, “There is no model-independent test of reality. It follows that a well-constructed model creates a reality of its own” (p. 172). This is an assertion of ontological relativity, the view that reality itself is different for persons having different models. If you are Fred Hoyle, the universe really has existed eternally in a steady state; but if you are Stephen Hawking, the universe really began with a big bang. If you are the ancient physician Galen, blood really does not circulate through the human body, but if you are William Harvey, it does! Such a view seems crazy and is made only more so by Mlodinow and Hawking’s claim that the model itself is responsible for creating its respective reality. It hardly needs to be said that no such conclusion follows from there being no model-independent test of the way the world is.
Whatever verdict we make on their arguments, the point is that despite their claim to speak as scientific torchbearers of knowledge, what Hawking and Mlodinow are engaged in is philosophy. The most important conclusions drawn in their book are philosophical, not scientific. Why, then, do they pronounce philosophy dead and claim as scientists to be bearing the torch of discovery? Simply because that enables them to cloak their amateurish philosophizing with the mantle of scientific authority and so avoid the hard work of actually arguing for, rather than merely asserting, their philosophical viewpoints.
The answer to your question, Matthew—“how can physicists make these statements?”—was given long ago by Albert Einstein, when he remarked, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.” Hawking and Mlodinow’s book bears witness to Einstein’s sagacity.
INSIGHT
Notice what Dr. Craig observes here and with the Einstein quotation. Philosophy is unavoidable. Hiding one’s philosophical assumptions, viewpoints, and commitments behind the cloak of another discipline only disadvantages both authors and readers.
On Whether the Universe Must Have a Material Cause
Dear Professor Craig,
To start, I would like to thank you for your service to the Christian community, and for guiding me in my quest to understand Christian theology.
Likewise, my question deals with the doctrine of creation, which you (and mainstream Christianity) hold to. That doctrine is that God created the world ex nihilo, and the universe (by which I mean, all of reality) was created literally out of nothing. The problem with this concept, which I just can’t seem to shake off, is that it seems to violate a basic principle of causation. So for a casual event to occur, you would need potentiality and an agent or object to actualize it.
For example, a block of wood has the potentiality to be carved into a wooden train, and a skilled worker would be the agent, which actualizes the possibility of a wooden train carved from said block of wood.
However, according to you, God’s initial act of causation was different than the example provided above, as it did not involve a material cause, but only an efficient cause. But here comes the problem, by taking out the material cause from the initial act of creation, aren’t you taking out the potentiality of God creating anything. The material cause seems to be the carrier of the potential in the act of causation. So when you rule out a material cause, you are simultaneously ruling out the potentiality of an agent causing anything. So to clarify and conclude:
• A casual event requires an agent to actualize an event (or an object), and the potentiality of the event to occur.
• “Nothingness” contains no potentiality, or else it would be “something” (which would completely undermine Judeo-Christian theology, as something cannot exist alongside God eternally).
• Therefore, since creation ex nihilo tries to bring an object/agent out of nothing (with no potentiality), it is logically impossible.
I have tried to find ways out of this conundrum, but all of them have failed. For example, if you believe that you do not need potentiality for a casual event to occur, you end up with a logical contradiction. So for example:
A block of wood does not have the potentiality to become the number 3; however, a skilled worker can still actualize a non-potentiality, and make a block of wood the number 3. Obviously, this leads to metaphysical absurdities, which cannot possibly exist.
The other solution, which I have thought of is for God to also serve as the “potentiality,” however this would no longer be creation ex nihilo (from nothing) but creation ex-deli-ho (out of God) as God would be using himself and his existing potential to create the universe. However, this would be an appeal to pantheism, and would no longer serve as a viable option for a Christian theist. This has forced me into concluding God created the universe from forms already existing in his mind (which still seems to be an appeal to pantheism, and conceptualism). I would like to ask what your solution to the problem is that I have presented and whether I have made any fallacies in my train of thought. Basically, how do you overcome this hurdle in creation ex nihilo. Sorry for the very long question, and thank you for your time.
God Bless,
Richard
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
I’ve addressed this issue before in one of its many guises. But since you present the question in yet another form and it seems to be of interest, let me take it up again.
Let me begin by affirming that Christian theology is committed to creatio ex nihilo, that is to say, the doctrine that God created the universe without any material cause. God is the efficient cause that produced the universe, and there was no material cause. He, Himself, created the matter and energy. When we say that the matter and energy were created out of nothing, we mean merely that, although created, they were not created out of anything.
INSIGHT
Notice what this affirmation of creatio ex nihilo articulates about the difference between a material vs. efficient cause. The difference will help avoid confusions and mistaken views about the God-creation relationship.
Let me also affirm that, as you put it, “for a casual event to occur, you would need potentiality and an agent or object to actualize it.” For that reason, something’s coming into being spontaneously from nothing is metaphysically impossible. For, as you say, non-being has no potentialities, no powers, no properties—it is not anything. That’s why being comes only from being. Ex nihilo nihil fit—out of nothing, nothing comes. So if something has an absolute beginning of existence, there must exist an actual being which produces the thing in existence.
The question, then, is whether there is a conflict between the principle Ex nihilo nihil fit and creatio ex nihilo. Clearly not! For in creatio ex nihilo there is an efficient cause of the effect, whereas the principle Ex nihilo nihil fit concerns something’s beginning to be in the absence of any sort of cause.
But is there a problem with creatio ex nihilo? I agree with your premise: A causal event requires an agent to actualize an event (or an object), and the potentiality of the event to occur. Moreover, I also agree with your second premise: “Nothingness” contains no potentiality, or else it would be “something.”
But your conclusion just doesn’t follow from (1) and (2). Your conclusion assumes that in creatio ex nihilo, the potentiality of the universe’s existence must lie (impossibly) in the nothingness that preceded it. But, as Thomas Aquinas pointed out, in creatio ex nihilo the potentiality of the universe lay in the power of God to create it. Since God has the power to create the universe, then even in the state of affairs of God’s existing alone, there is the potential for a universe to exist. That potential resides, not in some non-existent object or in nothing, but in God Himself and His ability to cause the universe.
This solution is very different from the panentheistic solution you mention and rightly reject, that the universe is made out of God’s own being. Rather, the idea is that God has causal powers and, therefore, there is a potential for the universe to be actualized.
This account underlines the fact that creatio ex nihilo is not a type of change. For in creation there is no enduring subject that goes from non-being into being. It is an absolute beginning of existence. It is not as though there were something with a passive potentiality to be actualized and God acts on that potentiality to actualize it. Rather the potentiality lies wholly in God’s power to create.
Must the Cause of the Universe Be Personal?
Dr. Craig,
There has been considerable discussion on your ReasonableFaith.org forum about your response to the question about whether the “Cause of the Universe must be Personal …” Particularly, I have some concerns with your response that mainly center around your use of the Islamic principle of determination. I am asking on behalf of Cyrus, with some of my own inquiries added.
Our first question is: what exactly do you mean by “eternal” in the argument from the principle of determination and in the general context of the kalam cosmological argument? In the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, you write:
The cause [of the universe] is in some sense eternal, and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but began to exist a finite time ago. How can this be? If the necessary and sufficient conditions for the production of the effect are eternal, then why is not the effect eternal?
As Cyrus pointed out, if one takes “eternal” to mean “existing at all moments of time” and interprets the question as asking “If the cause of the universe is existing at all moments of time, then why did the universe come into existence only a finite time ago?,” then this question cannot be used with the KCA. If the cause existed “at all moments of time,” then it would be temporal, which would imply a Newtonian view of time. The second premise of the argument, though, guarantees that no time exists before the universe and that the cause must be timeless. You replied:
This surprised me, since I thought my position has always been that that question is meaningless, since I hold to a relational view of time. In the passage you cite, the point was to prove precisely that the big bang did not occur in a super dense pellet existing from eternity! Time (and space) came into being with the big bang, and so it’s meaningless to ask why it didn’t happen earlier.
But notice that if this is correct, then the principle of determination no longer works.
According to the principle of determination, the creation of the universe requires a particularizer (a being with free will who decides the course of an action between various choices) to will the universe into existence at a particular moment. But if you are right there is no time before the big bang, then it makes no sense to rhetorically ask why the cause of the universe, if a mechanical one, did not create the universe an infinite time earlier, because there was no time earlier. The principle of determination only, then, works within time. This is most evident with your examples of the freezing water and the seated man; both instances are not timeless like God, but are in fact temporal and have existed beginninglessly for an infinite time, (which the KCA says is impossible)! Only in a temporal framework is the principle of determination meaningful.
To illustrate, suppose that the cause of the universe was in fact mechanically operating, with all of the necessary and sufficient conditions in place to create the universe. You say that this would not work because this mechanical cause would have created the universe an infinite time earlier, making the universe also as eternal and beginningless as the cause. But is it clear now where the error is? To object by saying that a mechanical cause would have created the universe an infinite time earlier assumes that time existed before the universe, which you argue is impossible. If you do not mean this when you state the principle of determination, then I think you will need to clarify then in a way that does not suggest time before the universe. Now, if you define “eternal” as “timeless,” it does not make sense either to ask why the effect is not eternal (timeless), since the universe in the KCA is by definition the totality of all of space-time and is by definition temporal.
Our second question is: why could not the cause of the universe be indeterministic yet impersonal? Such a cause could escape the alleged problems with a mechanical cause just as well as a personal cause could. The indeterministic, impersonal cause of the universe could have generated an indeterministically produced creation event that caused the universe and was simultaneous with it as well. You state that because Cyrus has not given a detailed explanation of what such an indeterministic, impersonal cause could be, such an explanation is not valid or worth considering. But in your outline of the KCA, you explicate in argument 4.1 that:
4.11 The universe was brought into being either by a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions or by a personal, free agent.
4.12 The universe could not have been brought into being by a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions.
4.13 Therefore, the universe was brought into being by a personal, free agent.
Since this is a deductive argument, the mere possibility of an indeterministic, impersonal cause shows this argument to be a false dilemma, meaning that you can neither use the argument to show the personhood of the cause of the universe nor use it as a deductive proof against the inductive evidence against the existence of an unembodied mind. But furthermore, an atemporal initial singularity could be a plausible candidate for this cause, for the singularity is lawless, indeterministic, and impersonal, and, due to its atemporality, is timeless, meaning that it did not begin to exist. Because the singularity did not begin to exist, it would not need to have a cause.
Now, I see that you have responded to similar questions by saying that the singularity, though out of physical time, comes into being with time and, therefore, needs a cause. But this appears to contradict your analysis of what it means to begin to exist. One of the conditions for x to begin to exist is that there is no state of affairs in which x exists timelessly. But, if the singularity is atemporal, then it would exist in a timeless state of affairs and, therefore, would not have begun to exist under your analysis. These, Cyrus and I feel, are the biggest flaws in the KCA that we think you have not adequately addressed, and we would be happy to see them given justice.
Shah
(country not specified)
Dr. Craig’s Response
These are important questions, Shah, so I’ll try to clarify my positions in response.
1. WHAT DO I MEAN BY “ETERNAL” IN THE ARGUMENT FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF DETERMINATION?
In a word, permanent. Something is eternal if it exists permanently, or without beginning or end. But eternal existence can take two forms: timelessness or infinite omnitemporal existence (sometimes called sempiternity). God is essentially eternal, but on my view whether He is timeless or omnitemporal is contingent, depending on His will.
So the reason for my gloss “in some sense eternal” is precisely to indicate that the argument for the cause’s being personal works on either construal of eternity.
Recall that by this point we’ve already proved that the first cause exists beginninglessly and changelessly without creation. That is the key to the argument, not whether this cause is timeless or in a sort of eventless, undifferentiated time before creation. (You know my own view is the former, though I’m prepared to fall back to the latter if my preferred position is shown to be untenable.) The point is that if the causal conditions sufficient for the universe were permanently present (whether timelessly or sempiternally), then the universe should exist as permanently as the cause. Here’s how I put it in Reasonable Faith:
One way to see the difficulty is by reflecting on the different types of causal relations. In event/event causation, one event causes another. For example, the brick’s striking the window pane causes the pane to shatter. This kind of causal relation clearly involves a beginning of the effect in time, since it is a relation between events which occur at specific times. In state/state causation one state of affairs causes another state of affairs to exist. For example, the water’s having a certain density is the cause of the wood’s floating on the water. In this sort of causal relation, the effect need not have a beginning: the wood could theoretically be floating eternally on the water…. Now, the difficulty that arises in the case of the cause of the beginning of the universe is that we seem to have a peculiar case of state/event causation: the cause is a timeless state but the effect is an event that occurred at a specific moment in the finite past. Such state/event causation doesn’t seem to make sense, since a state sufficient for the existence of its effect should have a state as its effect.5
There seems to be only one way out of this dilemma, and that is to say that the cause of the universe’s beginning is a personal agent who freely chooses to create a universe in time. Philosophers call this type of causation “agent causation,” and because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present.
Now, you object that “saying that a mechanical cause would have created the universe an infinite time earlier assumes that time existed before the universe, which you argue is impossible.” Be careful here, Shah. The question is not why the universe wasn’t created earlier (regardless of how much earlier). I agree that it makes no sense to ask why the universe didn’t begin at an earlier point of time. But it doesn’t follow from that that it is meaningless to ask why a universe with a beginning exists rather than an eternal universe with no beginning. Nor is it meaningless to ask how an effect with a beginning can originate from a changeless, permanent cause. That’s the real head-scratcher! I think al-Ghazali and those medieval Muslim theologians were dead-on concerning this argument for a free agent as the cause of the universe.
2. WHY COULD NOT THE CAUSE OF THE UNIVERSE BE INDETERMINISTIC YET IMPERSONAL?
Again, you need to recall what has already been established prior to this point. If the argument so far is correct, then we have proved that there exists an uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, enormously powerful, indeterministic cause of the universe. Now, the question is, what is it? What entity fits this description? The answer, it seems to me, is clear: a person, an unembodied mind.
We can think of this conclusion as an inference to the best explanation. In inference to the best explanation, we ask ourselves, what hypothesis, if true, would provide the best explanation of the data? The hypothesis that there is a personal Creator of the universe explains wonderfully all the data. By contrast, as I said, there’s nothing like this in a naturalistic worldview. Even given quantum indeterminism (itself a moot point), such indeterminacy is a property of changing, spatiotemporal, physical systems. I don’t know of any competing explanation to, much less better explanation than, the hypothesis of a personal Creator.
Notice that it is not legitimate to offer as an explanation a hypothesis which simply repeats the data to be explained—for example, explaining that opium induces sleep because it has “dormitive powers.” Saying that the cause of the universe is an uncaused … indeterministic, impersonal being is like that. It is not to offer an explanation at all. Therefore, it could never be the better explanation. Similarly, it is no good appealing to unknown entities. That just is to admit that one has no explanation, no alternative hypothesis to offer. It would be like saying that fossils are not best explained as the vestiges of organisms that once lived on Earth but were instead the effect of some mysterious, unknown fossil-forming power in the rocks. Again, that could never count as the best explanation.
There are two ways to defeat such an inference to the best explanation: (i) provide an equally good explanation that does not involve the existence of a personal Creator; or (ii) provide overriding reasons to think that a personal Creator does not exist. The arguments against the coherence of an unembodied mind would be examples of strategy (ii), while our present discussion concerning an alternative explanation is an example of strategy (i). It remains to be seen whether either strategy can be successfully carried out. We’ve yet to see any evidence that the notion of an unembodied mind is incoherent or even any evidence against mind-body dualism in human beings. On the contrary I think that we have good reason to think that anthropological dualism is true; but that’s another story, since it’s the atheist who bears the burden of proof here.
Now, as to the formulation of my dilemma, remember that in order for a disjunction to be true all that is required is that one of the disjuncts be true. So long as the true disjunct is included, you don’t need to include all the other logical possibilities as well. So, for example, a political observer might justifiably reason, “Either Cuomo or Paladino will win the New York governor’s race. But Paladino’s negatives are too high. Therefore, Cuomo will win.” The argument is a good one, despite the fact that the major premise ignores all of the other fringe candidates on the ballot in New York! Their winning is so improbable that the premise as the pundit states it is very likely true.
Similarly, think of (4.11) as drawing from the pool of live explanatory options those candidates for the best explanation of the cause of the universe. Since I’m not aware of any candidate at all for an impersonal, indeterministic cause of the universe that fits all the other properties already proved thus far, I just ignored that idea.6 Indeed, the lack of any such candidate is what led to my abbreviated argument that the cause of the universe is either a mind or an abstract object. Now, of course, if someone adds to the pool of live options another explanation (see below on the initial cosmological singularity), then we’ll have to consider it.
In any case, Shah, don’t get hung up over the mere form of the argument. One can always reformulate it inductively. For example, we could say that the probability that the cause of the universe is personal (P) is much higher given the evidence (E) for the deduced cause of the universe than it is on our background information (B) alone, that is, Pr (P|E & B) →→ Pr (P|B), which cannot be said of the probability that the cause is impersonal (¬P). This is, in large part, because the probability that there should be a cause of the universe such as we have described is so much higher given the hypothesis that the cause is personal than it is if the cause is impersonal, that is, Pr (E|P & B)→→ Pr E|(¬P & B).
Finally, as for the suggestion that the singularity is the cause of the universe, this has the merit of at least positing some explanatory entity. But in my original response to Cyrus, I explained why the initial cosmological singularity cannot be the ultimate cause of the universe, since it is either unreal or else part of the universe and, therefore, itself in need of explanation of its coming into being. The sense in which the singularity is “timeless,” Shah, is a highly technical sense in that in the General Theory of Relativity, it is not a point in space-time. Rather it is a point on the boundary of space-time. But it is not eternal in the ordinary sense of the term; namely, it is not permanent. On the contrary, it is fleetingly evanescent. It is, therefore, temporal and began to exist and, therefore, requires a cause.
1. With Dr. Craig, that’s why, by the way, we find no instances, apart from divine acts of creation, of material things beginning to exist without material causes. For a material thing to come into being without a material cause requires an efficient cause of infinite power. It follows that the cause of the universe must be a being of infinite power.
2. Pierre Simon de Laplace was an eighteenth-century Newtonian physicist who boasted that armed with Newton’s laws of motion, along with the knowledge of the present position of every particle in the universe, he could predict the exact description of the universe at any other time in its history. Story has it that when the Emperor Napoleon asked him what place God has in his system, the laconic Laplace replied, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”
3. That is to say, real, not just a matter of our limited knowledge. It is an unresolved debate whether the indeterminacy characterizing quantum physics is just a matter of our ignorance or is a mind-independent reality. For example, do sub-atomic particles really lack a precise location at a specific time, or is it just that we cannot simultaneously measure a particle’s precise location and motion? Many, if not most, scientists take quantum indeterminacy to be ontic, not merely epistemic, in which case Laplace’s boast noted above falls to the ground.
4. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that no supernatural entities exist. Usually, this is taken to imply that nothing other than space-time and its contents exists. Methodological naturalism makes no such claim. It holds that science only seeks for natural explanations of natural phenomena. There may be supernatural entities, but they’re not the concern of science.
5. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008), 153–54.
6. Dr. Craig has, by contrast, discussed at some length the hypothesis that the cause of the universe might have been an indeterministic, quantum mechanical, physical cause. See, for example, his contribution to the volume Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998), 332–59.