Defending the Cosmological Argument
By W. David Beck
Tim Bayne (Monash University) has recently provided a succinct assessment of the current state of the cosmological argument in his A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy of Religion.[1] Bayne begins with the kalam argument, primarily that of al-Ghazali, but in general the temporal version. He gives the following argument: (1) The universe began to exist. (2) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. (3) The universe has a cause of its existence. (From (1) and (2).) (4) If the universe has a cause, then that cause must be personal—that is, it must be God. (5) Therefore, there is a God.
This, he thinks, suffers from three problems. First, there is the matter of actual infinites. Current mathematicians, Bayne argues, regard all infinite sets as having the same number of members. So, the set of positive integers has the same size as the set of positive even integers. Hence, we have good reasons to believe that the intuitions we have about the oddities of infinite sets when we apply them to actual worlds must be dismissed, and so actual infinites are possible. This, however, simply ignores the difference between mathematical possibility and actual reality. We cannot simply draw inferences from one to the other. The paradoxes that occur with actual infinites still stand, and metaphysical criteria have to take precedence over mathematical.
Second, he notes it is unclear whether “the very existence of the universe is something that has a causal explanation.”[2] The chief problem here is that in the kalam argument it is not the existence of the universe per se that is to be explained, but rather the cause of the beginning or initial state of the universe. Now we are back to the whole point of the argument—namely, whether and under what conditions a causal series can begin ex nihilo.
Third, there is the problem of the argument’s very general conclusion: It simply asserts that there is a cause of the universe’s beginning, not a personal agent. Now this is an issue that everyone since Aristotle was well aware of. The argument has been frequently extended to infer various qualities of the “first uncaused cause” that entitle us to conclude that this is God by, among others, Aristotle himself and Thomas. So, there is nothing new or compelling here in any of these three objections.
Bayne then moves on to what he claims is the atemporal argument of Leibniz and Thomas Aquinas: (1) The universe is contingent. (2) There is an explanation for the existence of all contingent entities. (3) The existence of contingent entities can be explained only by appeal to a necessary being. (4) There is at least one necessary being. (From (1), (2), and (3).) (5) That necessary being is God.
This argument also sustains three telling objections, he argues. The first is that the supposed need for an explanation of the universe exists only if we assume a Principle of Sufficient Reason. Now this objection received much discussion in the 1960’s but most concluded that we need only an inductive PSR and, furthermore it is only relevant to the argument of Clarke and Leibniz. It has no reference to Thomas’s. Thomas is not concerned with the whole universe, nor does he employ or require any version of PSR.
The second objection is that the argument concludes to a necessary being, and “we don’t have a good grasp of how the actions of a necessary being such as God might account for the existence of contingent entities.”[3] Now this is a truly odd objection, since the argument never purports to explain how God causes; it simply concludes that there must be an efficient cause of the contingent entities in question. In fact, Thomas’s argument only refers to a being that exists necessarily in the metaphysical sense. This objection seems to have no claim on the Aristotelian-Thomistic argument at all. In fact, it has no bearing on the PSR argument either. It, too, does not need to explain how a necessary being acts; it only needs to show validly that he does.
The third objection is one we see frequently. Bayne asks why God’s existence itself does not need an explanation. He insists that theists simply claim that his existence requires no explanation. But, of course, they do not merely claim it. It is precisely the conclusion of the argument. To ask what causes the uncaused first cause is just to miss the whole point of the cosmological argument.
A real problem with Bayne’s discussion of the atemporal argument is the confusion of the arguments of Leibniz and Thomas. Some of what he asserts has minimal, but no crucial bearing on the PSR argument. But Thomas’s argument is quite unlike what Bayne gives us. It is not about the whole universe, only specific observations. It does not appeal to a universal PSR; it simply observes that some entities we see are caused or contingent, and that there can be no infinite regress of such entities if they are causally connected in sequence. Nor does it require a concept of necessary being as an explanation; it simply concludes to a non-contingent being. The burden of the argument is borne by the subargument against an infinite regress. That is what leads to the conclusion that there can only ever be a finite regress of contingent causes of existence.
While Bayne’s book is, of course, only a brief treatment, it nevertheless should be expected that he brings forward at least the most formidable recent and current objections. If so, then the argument stands, and theists who defend it are still on sound rational ground.
Notes
[1] Tim Bayne, A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), chap. 3.
[2] Bayne, Very Short Introduction, 27
[3] Bayne, Very Short Introduction, 32.
Adapted from Does God Exist? A History of Answers to the Question by W. David Beck. Copyright (c) 2021 by William D. Beck. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60559. www.ivpress.com. Find Does God Exist? at InterVarsity Press or Amazon.
— W. David Beck (PhD, Boston University) is emeritus professor of philosophy at Liberty University. He is the coeditor of Raised on the Third Day: Defending the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, and his written work has appeared in publications including Philosophia Christi, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, and Christianity Today.
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