Tercel

Hi, all. That following is some of my thoughts (written today) about the Cosmological Argument. Comments would be appreciated.

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The Cosmological Argument

Introduction

The Cosmological argument is one of the oldest and most enduring arguments for the existence of God. In fact this argument has evolved into so many versions over the millennia, since its inception by Plato in the 4th century BC, that it is impossible to call any single version the cosmological argument.

There are two main versions of the argument: The classical version expounded by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz et al; and the Kalam version which has been popularised recently by William Lane-Craig. I believe the Kalam version has little merit and I will not deal with it further here.

The classical version proceeds something like as follows:

1) Some entity or property, X, exists.
(For example, X might be "motion" or "the current set of events" etc)

2) Something else, Y, can be identified as the cause or explanation or reason for X.
(eg "An object which collided passed motion on", or "the previous set of events")

3) We can continually repeat step 2 above until we trace events back to their beginning and find an entity which is the ultimate cause or explanation or reason for X.
(eg "An Unmoved Mover" or "The entity which caused all events")

4) This is what we call "God". Therefore, God exists.

Different versions will substitute different things for X and Y, give different reasons why steps 2 and 3 are valid, and perhaps add more premises to the argument. The argument outlined above is just an outline, not an example of an actual cosmological argument.

Rebuttals Of It

In short, classical version of the Cosmological argument attempt to trace the chain of causes / explanations back to the very "First Thing" and then conclude that this First Thing is God.

A popular counter to this argument has been to claim that a causal trace is invalid: Either because the idea of causality is invalid, or because the possibility of an "infinite regress" is ignored. However the Cosmological argument has enough leeway in it that when it speaks of a "cause" this can be defined very vaguely as some sort of "cause", or "explanation" or "reason". The rebutter who wishes to reject the argument on the grounds that they consider a certain idea of causality invalid quickly finds themselves in the untenable position of having to reject every sort of possible cause, explanation or reason for everything.

An "infinite regress" is the idea that the chain of causes or reasons could go back indefinitely. It is the idea that there is no "beginning" just as there is no "highest number". Endless debates have raged whether it is mathematically and physically possible to have an infinite regress.

There is a far simpler problem with the Cosmological argument which is expressed surprisingly rarely: Why should the First Thing be called "God"? Why cannot the First Thing be considered naturalistic? Plato, for example, almost certainly believed the "God" he have proven with his cosmological argument to be a purely mechanical "Force", not a personal God.

General Comments

Trying to use an infinite regress to shoot down the Cosmological Argument seems rather misguided. The idea of an infinite series of events prior to the present existing is extremely difficult to comprehend and seems at least as unlikely as God. More importantly it fails to actually destroy the argument.

Given any system, be it a simple board game, a physical system, or even reality itself, it is possible to say "the system works like this:…" and proceed to define the system: what it is and what it does. ie what the rules governing the system are / the rules constituting an ultimate definition of the system. After all, any system completely incapable of any sort of coherent logical definition is surely equally incapable of any sort of actual existence.

What the Cosmological argument is really getting at, is that there exists an "ultimate reality", or an "ultimate organising principle", or a "transcendental signifier". Call it what you will, this ultimate ordering principle is something that acts as an ultimate definition of truth: It is the very definition of reality. As we saw above, such an ultimate reality must exist.

Postulating an infinite regress does not remove the existence of this ultimate reality. Rather, either the ultimate reality governs the entire infinite regress, or the entire infinite regress constitutes the ultimate reality.

What is being aimed at by the Cosmological Argument is not that there is a causal chain, or a "beginning" but simply that there is some ultimate controlling principle, or "ultimate reality". This is -as we have seen- obviously true, which renders the classical cosmological arguments rather pointless.

The question is not "is there an ultimate reality?" but rather "is the ultimate reality "God" or is it naturalistic?": Something which most versions of the Cosmological Argument fail entirely to address.

The Real Cosmological and Ontological Arguments

To put it another way: We know that this ultimate reality thingy-whatsit must exist, but can we say anything about its properties or attributes which might help to tell if it’s "God" or not?

There are going to be two ways we can do this. Either we can think about what it means for something to be an "ultimate reality" and say "Any ultimate reality must be like this…." (An Ontological argument). Or we can look at the world, observe something, and argue "We observe X to be true, therefore the ultimate reality must be like this…." (A Cosmological argument).

There have been various things going by the names "Cosmological" and "Ontological" arguments in history. However when it boils down to it, they are aiming at the same thing: To tell us about the properties of the ultimate reality, either in an a priori (Ontological) or an a posteriori (Cosmological) fashion.

Alix Nenuphar

A couple of points....

This section,
does not appear to be convincing. You have supplied no reason other than assertion that a system incapable of being logically defined cannot exist. There might be a significant difference between an ability to describe a system, and it's existence.

Your second paragraph seems to be ignoring what the various flavours of the argument actually say. They are most explicitly NOT talking about organizing principles, or realities, they are talking about chains of causation. You could resolve this by showing a logical demonstration of your 'ultimate reality' as a primary causation, I suppose.

Finally, I would suggest that you are, in fact, describing the Kalam cosmological argument, not ignoring it, since the Kalam argument is the one which argues that the regression must be finite; other versions of the argument don't require this.

Theli

Overall, a good explaination of The Cosmological Argument, but still there are alot of loose wires.
First off, it assumes one single "uncaused cause" in the chain of events yet doesn't deal with the possibility with several (perhaps an infinite number of) UCs.
And ofcourse it's the almost embarrassing "4) This is what we call "God". Therefore, God exists.".
As of now, we have yet to identify any first cause and I'm possitive it's an impossible task, so the argument cannot be used to prove the existence of any thing, being or event.

Angrillori

This seems no more than assertion to me. But anyways, Isn't this ultimate explanation something we call 'science?'

Aren't we constantly explaining the 'system' of our universe?

Does this mean the 'scientific method' is 'god?'

I don't get it. We're pretty much defnining what the universe is and the way it works on a daily basis, and these explanations (ultimate realities?) actually offer less and less reasons to postulate a god into the picture.

So how does 'defining the rules of the universe' in any way lead to god?

(As a tremendously large footnote)
I just posted this on: "Christopher 13, Aquinas, and the first cause," another thread running, but I hope it will get a response here, since it is appropriate here too:

Here's my take on this whole first cause bit. It's bothered me since high school when I first encountered it.

It always starts as:
Everything we see has a cause.

Therefore:
Either
1) There is an infinite regression
or
2) Something broke the rule at one time.

And ends as:
As a theist, I choose 2, and label whatever it was that broke the rule 'God.'

Here are my concerns:
A) Isn't there at least a third possibility? As we learn more and more of quantum theory doesn't it seem reasonable that time and space started together? In that case, there was no 'before' the universe to speak of so we negate the need for a first cause yet also avoid infinite recursion.

B) While we can choose to label our 'rule-breaking event,' 'god', I don't see this argument as allowing any atribution to 'god' other than the ability to not need a cause. In other words, even if we accept #2, all we have is something that doesn't need a cause. The leap from this something to any of the gods we know and love seems unjustified, merely an assertion or assumption.

C) Who says we should avoid an infinite regression? Is there any good reason that the universe hasn't been expanding and contracting forever and ever?

And finally,

D) Who says the rule is valid in the first place? Isn't quantum theory chock full of spontaneous random events? (On a related note, are these 'rule-breaking events' god? Are they the christian god? This is a great demonstration of concern B, above.)

Angrillori

Sorry.

I just re-read the original post more carefully. And it seems I just repeated its questions.

Oh well. I guess that means that there are at least two of us that would like theists to square up one of their cornerstone arguments.

On a different note:

How many different 'Proofs of god' have been tendered that have even any entertainment value, or value as intellectual exercises?
(Ontological, Teleological, Cosmological, Moral, I'm familiar with and all seem clearly flawed. What others are out there?)

Wiploc

In response to an argument of this form ...

A.
Not A.
Therefore, B.

... it is perfectly acceptable to point out that the argument fails if either of the premises is actually true. Therefore, it cannot be misguided to refute the cosmological argument by pointing out that things may really need causes.
crc

luvluv

wiploc:

huh?

I thought the argument was in the form:

Either A or B.
Not A.

Therefore B.



Either there was an infinite regression of causes or a first cause.

There was not an infinite regression of causes.

Therefore, there was a first cause.


Maybe I am misunderstanding you?

Angrillori:

Well, in addition to not needing a cause, the first cause would need to be able to actually CAUSE every other entity and event in the history of the universe (at least indirectly). It would necessarily and ultimately be the Sufficient Reason for everything else that ever was, is, and will be; and that would be something very God-like.

I've always thought this was a cop-out. The fact that there was no time in this universe does not imply that there was no time at all unless we subscribe to the notion that the universe is all that exists, and that is sort of begging the question.

Our own cosmologists are researching means to create new universes (theoretically) if we could ever have the power to do such a thing then in those universes "time" would begin when one of our scientists decided to initiate the universe. That wouldn't mean that the new universe did not have a cause, only that the inhabitants of this new universe (if it should ever have any) would be permanently shut off from ever knowing what the cause actually was

The fact that there was nothing temporally prior to the Big Bang (in our universe) does not mean that the big bang happened without a cause.

Well, supposedly thermodynamically it's impossible. There is only enough energy for it to expand and contract a few times before it couldn't do so anymore. Many scientists doubt it would ever "rebound" at all, they liken the universe more to a wet clump of clay, thermodynamically, than a rubber ball. And there's also the fact that there isn't enough matter and/or dark matter in the universe to force a recontraction.

I think that's still debatable. At any rate, there is a difference between random events and uncaused events. The universe belongs to the latter category.

Godot

I've always favoured the blind faith proof I believe in god becasue he tells me he exists).

Wyz_sub10

luvluv:

The problem with this, as I noted in another thread, is that the problem of "inifinity" is not resolved through the introduction of a first cause because:

1) the first caused must be infinite
2) the first cause is not infinite, and is therefore not the first cause

Your original question is not really a clear "either/or" question because infinite regression occurs either way.

What makes you think the universed is an uncaused event?

Many cosmologists think the universe may be a random occurrence - a fluke in itself.

It is just an unsupported assertion to say that the universe is an uncaused event.

Clutch

The two claims here are simply unrelated. The former is irrelevant by any standard, while the latter simply asserts a probabilistic version of precisely what the CA is supposed to show.

First, that you find the idea of an infinite series of past events hard to understand is neither here nor there. I do not find it very difficult to understand, nor do many others whom I know, or whose work I know. In short, this is a classic Tercel-argument, of the form: I can't quite grasp X; therefore, X is just not an option.

Second, there is simply no reason to believe that the idea of an infinite series of past events is "at least as unlikely as God". Or was the argument just supposed to be that because you don't really understand the IP model, it's no more likely than that a supernatural being exists? It's the choice between Argument by Baffling Non-Sequitur, or Argument from I'm Making This Up. Either way, it falls flat.
What, exactly, supports the universal generalization over "all systems" here? (Including the unrestricted predication over reality as a whole?) This is mere assertion.Rules /= definitions. Why do you run these together? Depends on what you mean by any sort, by logically coherent, by definition. Ironically, in the absence of careful definition of your own terms, this amounts to nothing more than a spray of words.
Whoa, speaking of a spray of words! Slow down, define your terms, and give actual arguments. What you say here is barely decipherable, but seems entirely to confuse things with their definitions. That is, first you say that reality is necessarily definable; then you resort to saying that reality itself is a definition -- this time, of truth. This is only coherent in the other direction; viz, that truths define reality. Even here it is trivial -- that is, it follows by semantic ascent along -- but at least it's a coherent triviality. Your strange slide from "reality is definable" to "reality is a definition", on the other hand, is just a head-shaker.
I must have missed the argument bit. "We" didn't see anything but pronouncements and argument from ignorance.