CHAPTER 1: The Cosmological Argument
CHAPTER ONE
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
Versions of the Cosmological Argument are defended today by philosophers such as Alexander Pruss, Timothy O’Connor, Stephen Davis, Robert Koons, and Richard Swinburne, among others.
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: A SIMPLE FORMATION
Logically speaking, this is an airtight argument. That is to say, if the three premises are true, then the conclusion is unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the conclusion; nor does it matter if you have other independent objections to God’s existence. So long as you grant the premises, you have to accept the conclusion. So if you want to reject the conclusion, you have to say that one of the three premises is false.
But which one will the atheist reject? Premise 3 is undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth—obviously, the universe exists! So the atheist is going to have to deny either premise 1 or 2 if he wants to remain an atheist and be rational. So the whole question comes down to this: Are premises 1 and 2 true, or are they false? Let’s take a closer look.
Premise 1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
At first blush, premise 1 might seem vulnerable in an obvious way. If everything that exists has an explanation of its existence and God exists, then God must have an explanation of His existence! But that seems absurd, for then the explanation of God’s existence would be some other being greater than God. Since that’s impossible, premise 1 must be false—some things must be able to exist without any explanation. The believer will say that God exists inexplicably, while the atheist will say, “Why not stop with the universe? The universe just exists inexplicably.” So we seem to reach a stalemate.
This obvious objection to premise 1 is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by an “explanation.” According to premise 1, there are two kinds of things: (a) things which exist necessarily, and (b) things which are produced by some external cause.
Those things which exist necessarily exist by a necessity of their own nature; it’s impossible for them not to exist. Many mathematicians think that numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities exist in this way. They’re not caused to exist by something else, they just exist by the necessity of their own nature.
By contrast, things that are caused to exist by something else don’t exist necessarily; they exist because something else has produced them. Familiar physical objects like people, planets, and galaxies belong in this category.
When premise 1 states that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, the explanation may be found either in the necessity of a thing’s nature or else in some external cause.
So when premise 1 states that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, the explanation may be found either in the necessity of a thing’s nature or else in some external cause. But now the objection falls to the ground. For the explanation of God’s existence lies in the necessity of His own nature. As even the atheist recognizes, it’s impossible for God to have a cause. So the cosmological argument is really an argument for God as a necessary, uncaused being.
Far from undermining the argument, then, the atheist’s objection to premise 1 actually helps to clarify and magnify who God is! If God exists, He is a necessarily existing, uncaused being.
So what reason might be offered for thinking that premise 1 is true? Well, when you reflect on it, premise 1 has a sort of self-evidence about it. Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods and you come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “Don’t worry about it! It just exists inexplicably,” you’d either think that he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation.
Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story so that it’s the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. How about the size of a continent, a planet, or the entire universe? Same problem—merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation.
So premise 1 seems at least more plausibly true than false, which is all we need for a good argument.
Premise 2: If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
What about premise 2 then? Is it more plausibly true than false?
What’s awkward for the atheist is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to the typical atheist response to the cosmological argument.
What’s awkward for the atheist at this point is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to the typical atheist response to the cosmological argument. Two statements are logically equivalent if it is impossible for one to be true and the other one false. They stand or fall together. So what does the atheist almost always say in response to the cosmological argument? The atheist typically asserts the following:
A. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence.
This is precisely what the atheist says in response to premise 1: that the universe just exists inexplicably. Logically speaking, however, this is equivalent to saying:
B. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then atheism is not true.
So you can’t affirm (A) and deny (B).
But (B) is virtually synonymous with premise 2! (Just compare them, since they’re literally here on the same page.) So when the atheist says in response to premise 1 that the universe has no explanation, he is implicitly admitting premise 2—that if the universe does have an explanation, then God exists.
If the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time.
Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. Think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. So it follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time… something or someone “out there,” beyond the universe’s limitations. Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description: either an abstract object, like a number, or an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything; that’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 7, for example, can’t cause any effects. So the cause of the existence of the universe must be a transcendent Mind, which is what believers understand God to be.
Conclusion
Given the truth of the three premises, the conclusion is logically inescapable: God is the explanation of the existence of the universe. Moreover, the argument implies that God is a necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal Creator of the universe. This conclusion is staggering!