Cosmological arguments are arguments that attempt to prove the existence of God by way of showing that there is an uncaused first cause or a being that exists necessarily (meaning that its non-existence is impossible). One version, called the Kalam cosmological argument, is an argument for an uncaused first cause based on the beginning of the universe. I've been discussing it in my recent posts, and at the risk of being repetitive, here is a typical way to formulate the argument:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
This is one of my favorite arguments in philosophy because it is very simple—two premises and a conclusion—and yet this simplicity is deceptive, because discussion of the argument tends to raise a host of interesting philosophical and scientific issues that are anything but simple, including:
- Is time tensed or tenseless?
- Is time four-dimensional?
- Is time composed of instants?
- Is space composed of points?
- Do numbers or other abstract objects exist?
- Can an infinite number of things exist?
- Can time exist without space and/or physical objects?
- What is the nature of causation?
- Can something come from nothing?
- Can some events occur without a cause?
- Is quantum physics deterministic or indeterministic?
- Can some events be explained by appealing to agents who have free will?
In fact, there are even atheistic versions of the Kalam cosmological argument. Thus, regardless of whether some form of the argument works or not, reflection on it can open the door to a whole philosophical education. This makes it a very fruitful topic of study.
The deceptive simplicity of the argument is what made it seem so intriguing to me when I first encountered it as a teenager, and it was one of the main drivers behind my early interest in philosophy and science. It's safe to say that I've been thinking about this argument for over two decades, and I will probably be thinking about it for the rest of my life.
As for whether the argument works, I think it depends on what we do with the first premise. There are some issues that come up, due to the way the first premise is typically worded, which seem to distract from what the argument is getting at. For instance, if people have free will in a libertarian* sense (as I think they do), then we can appeal to something called agent causation, but there are different ways of understanding how agent causation works, and I am not personally committed to any specific one, at least for now. But since the libertarian view denies that human choices are determined, it seems to mean that, in some sense, my will is not "caused" by anything. If my doing something is caused by my willing to do something, does this mean that my willing to do something is an uncaused event? Or am I, in some sense, the cause of my own willing? I am not sure what the best explanation for all of this would be. I am inclined to doubt that there are uncaused events, so I would think that my willing to do something is caused, in some sense, by myself, but I am not sure how it works, and I am open to different theories.
Here's the problem, though. As interesting as the topic of free will and agent causation is, in this context it also seems like a distraction from the original question of whether the beginning of the universe requires a cause. After all, on a tensed view of time, if the universe had a beginning with no cause, then it must have popped into being without a cause. This is something quite different from a personal agent making a free choice to do something. Since I accept a tensed view of time, and since I think it would be both philosophically and scientifically irresponsible to say that things can just pop into being from nothing, for no reason, I am led to conclude that there must be a cause for the beginning of the universe. (This is, in fact, one of my main reasons for why I never embraced atheism after abandoning my old Christian beliefs.)
Perhaps, then, it would be preferable to reword the argument. One possible way of doing this that I've seen is:
- If the universe began to exist, then it has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
This seems fine to me, but I also wonder if maybe it would be better to forgo a simple formulation in favor of a more complicated one that clarifies the most relevant issues. Of course, the end result would be less aesthetically pleasing, and I doubt that I would have been as intrigued by the argument in my younger days had it been written out in a dozen steps rather than three. Nevertheless, it's worth at least taking a shot at what a more robust version of the argument could look like:
- If time is tensed, then if the universe had a beginning, the beginning of the universe was either caused or uncaused.
- Time is tensed.
- Therefore, if the universe had a beginning, then the beginning of the universe was either caused or uncaused.
- If the beginning of the universe was caused, that cause was either personal or impersonal.
- The universe had a beginning.
- Therefore, the beginning of the universe was either caused or uncaused.
- The beginning of the universe cannot be uncaused.
- Therefore, the beginning of the universe was caused.
- The cause of the beginning of the universe is uncaused, spaceless, immaterial, timeless, and changeless.
- If the cause of the beginning of the universe is uncaused, spaceless, immaterial, timeless, and changeless, then it cannot be impersonal.
- Therefore, the cause of the beginning of the universe cannot be impersonal.
- Therefore, it must be a personal cause.
What can we say about this formulation of the argument? Premise (1) seems undeniable since it is a true logical dilemma that arises from the beginning of the universe if a tensed view of time is correct. (2) is controversial but since the nature of time inevitably comes up in discussions about the argument anyway, it seems good to me to make it clear right away that this argument only works if time is tensed, as I believe it is. And I believe there are good arguments in favor of a tensed view of time. (4) is another inescapable logical dilemma. (5) is obviously a disputed premise but I am not aware of any good reason to think that it's false, and there are compelling reasons (in my opinion) to think that it's true. (7) follows from the metaphysical impossibility of anything popping into existence for no reason, without a cause.
Premise (9) deserves some explanation, but it is pretty straightforward. If something causes space and matter to exist, then it cannot be spatial or material itself. Similarly, if something causes time to exist, and if change cannot exist without time, it follows that the cause must be timeless and changeless (at least without the creation, since by creating time, it is possible that the cause ceases to be timeless or changeless). But what about "uncaused"? Well, if the cause of the universe is timeless, then it had no beginning, so there is no reason to insist that it needs to have a cause. Furthermore, if a beginningless series of causes is impossible (and this comes up in defense of the fifth premise), then there must be a first cause that is uncaused. While it is possible to conceive of a finite series of causes between the first cause and the cause of the universe, there is no reason to assume that this is the case, so it is simpler to identify the cause of the universe with the uncaused first cause.
I discussed some of the reasoning behind premise (10) in my last post. There just isn't any known candidate for an uncaused, spaceless, immaterial, timeless, changeless being with causal powers that isn't an unembodied mind. In fact, the alternative seems almost incoherent, since if it's not a mind (or a person with a will), then it has to be some kind of mechanistic cause, but if it's a mechanistic cause, its operations would (I think) need to be determined by other causes, which can't be the case if we are talking about something that is uncaused.
If the argument is sound, then there are good grounds for believing in a transcendent, personal creator of the universe. And while this cosmological argument doesn't tell us if the creator is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, it would be hard to reconcile the existence of a transcendent, personal creator with an atheistic view of reality.
However, this version of the argument still leaves something to be desired. I think one could add additional premises to clarify the fact that a cause of the universe must be spaceless, immaterial, etc. There is also room for improvement in how the tensed view of time is worked into the argument. I say this because premise (7) takes the tensed nature of time for granted, yet this is not spelled out anywhere, and if we're just meant to assume a tensed view of time throughout the argument, then the first two premises become unnecessary. But I still think it's better to explicitly affirm the tensed view of time in the argument, so I will probably take another shot at this in a later post.
* This has nothing to do with political libertarianism.