Family Man

There has been a number of threads lately where the premises of the cosmological argument has been shown to be quite faulty. Kudos to those very smart posters for that demonstration. I always suspected those premises. Now I know why they should be.

For the purpose of this thread, however, let's assume the premises are fine. The question is whether the conclusion that only God could be the first cause is justified. I submit it is not. The only real conclusion is that there must be a uncaused first cause. The nature of that cause, however, would be unknown. It could be a god, though why the Christian God is left unclear. But it needn't be a god at all. For example, why couldn't that uncaused first cause be an impersonal force? It seems to me that conclusion of the cosmological argument has been force-fed into the Christian-Judeo mythos, rather than springing naturally from the force of the argument.

Coming or going, the cosmological argument appears to be a poor argument for God.

Aravnah Ornan

I've been thinking something similar to the OP. I've heard Christians say that they believe that G-d created the universe because otherwise, they would be making unwarranted assumptions about what came before the big bang. But in advancing that argument, Christians themselves make a string of assumptions:

1. There is an uncaused first cause.

2. That first cause is sentient.

3. The sentient first cause is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.

4. It conforms to the description of the Biblical G-d rather than to that of Allah, Brahma, etc.

They think they're following Occam's razor, but I'm not convinced.

Pyrrho

I agree. However, the true function of the arguments for the existence of god is not to give any good reason for non-believers to believe, but to help believers to continue to believe. Many are convinced that, with all of the various arguments for the existence of god, that at least one of them must be good enough, and that helps them push doubts from their minds. Of course, a whole lot of bad arguments does nothing to establish a conclusion, but most people don't examine them all sufficiently to know that they are all bad, and most people who examine them are already biased in favor of the conclusion, and therefore are unable to examine the matter fairly and dispassionately. (Having read William Kingdon Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief", you should already know about bias interfering with fairly weighing evidence, as it is a rather significant observation that he makes in that essay.)

I have never met anyone who came to believe in a god based solely on any of the arguments that people commonly give. I doubt that anyone has ever become a Christian based on those arguments.

Family Man

I think that quick insertion of God where it really isn't warranted b the argument is evidence of just that. I'm currently reading Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God. If I understand her correctly, the pre-modern view of religion was that of mythology -- religion was interpreted non-literally. Fundamentalism -- interpreting religious documents literally -- is a reaction to the rationalism of the modern world, a rationalism that wasn't there when mythos held sway. I would argue that, among the religious, mythos is still the dominant force. What arguments like the First Cause do is to put a rational veneer over what is a mythological position.

Lobstrosity

I recently made a post about this in a thread over in E/C, basically saying exactly what you did. Since it was not really appropriate material for such a forum, I will bring the relevant portion here for discussion:

Me:

The response I got from Ed (a theist) was:
My rebuttal (skipping my arguments that uncaused events are in fact logically possible):

Volker

I would even say that you can turn the cosmological argument into an argument against god.

(P1) Everything we observe has a cause.
(P2) We have no reason to assume that an infinite regression is not possible.
(C1) Therefore, there was no first cause.
(C2) Without a first cause the universe must have existed eternally.
(C3) An eternally existing universe cannot have a creator.
(C4) Therefore, a God as a creator does not exist.

This version isn't self-contradictory as the original argument. It will work even if you replace "has a cause" with "has an origin" at the appropriate places.

The weak part of the argument is (P2).

Pyrrho

When you say that (P2) is the "weak" part of the argument, what do you mean? Do you mean that it is not as good as something like:

(P2') An infinite regression is possible.

would be?

Given your (P1) and (P2), I think instead of (C1), you should have something like:

(C1') Therefore, there is no reason to believe that there was a first cause.

We would also want to change (C4) to something like:

(C4') Therefore, we have no reason to believe that a God as a creator exists.

Furthermore, ABOSOLUTELY ALL of your experience is of things being transformed from one thing into another; you NEVER witness anything being created from nothing, or becoming nothing. So, the most natural thing to suppose is that the universe has always existed, in one form or other, not that it ever had a beginning.

Hawkingfan

But I think we are stuck with the problem that you cannot have an uncaused first cause when everything must have a cause. That uncaused first cause must have a cause, too. The only argument I've heard against this is that the universe is not eternal, but God is; so God can be the uncaused first cause. But the problem with that is there is no evidence to support that God is indeed eternal (or even exists), and there is no evidence to support that the universe has not always existed in some form or another (such as a singularity).

Aravnah Ornan

Then it's true that cows are sacred. The cosmological argument proves it. Praise!

Family Man

Keep in mind that this isn't my argument. I'm simply pointing out that, even if you grant the premises of the cosmological argument, the conclusion that God must be the first cause is an unwarranted leap of logic.