Many theists, including myself, believe that some of the strongest arguments for God rely on the logical need for a First Cause of the universe (or First Mover, depending on which argument you use.) This sort of argument goes back at least to Aristotle, who thousands of years ago suggested that, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something" (and by motion he meant any change whatsoever, not just locomotion, or spatial change).

However, physicist Sean Carroll thinks Aristotle had it wrong. In one of the earliest chapters in his new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016), Carroll explains why. His reason? "The whole structure of Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover rests on his idea that motions require causes. Once we know about conservation of momentum, that ideas loses steam" (28).

To put it another way, Carroll believes that the conservation of momentum debunks the idea of causality, the principle that all actions are determined by causes.

Carroll admits that it does seem to us, in our everyday experience, that things don't "just happen"—something works to cause them, to bring them about. But he still believes causal language is "no longer part of our best fundamental ontology" (29). Poetic naturalists can speak of causality as an emergent, second-level description of reality, but it's not a level-one story we should tell about the world (i.e., it's not a description of how the world really works at its core.)

Now, one obvious question that Carroll's position raises is, how exactly does the conservation of momentum disprove causality? Carroll never offers a clear answer. He suggests that objects on frictionless surfaces moving at constant velocity do not need a cause to keep moving (28).

But of course, this doesn't refute the Aristotelian principle of causality. At best, this would only show that in such cases, you don't need a sustaining cause to keep an object moving. It would say nothing about whether you need an initial cause to start the object's motion.

To use another example, you could say that in general, once a baby boy grows to age 21, he generally doesn't need his father to "stay in motion," and continue developing. Whether his father is alive or dead, distant or close, he can survive just as well (again, generally speaking.) But this fact doesn't show that the father was completely unnecessary in the child's life. For if there was no father, there would be no baby boy—and certainly no 21-year-old man! Thus the father was necessary to explain how the baby boy "started going," but not necessary to explain how he "kept going."

Similarly, Aristotle would agree that everything in that begins to move must be initially moved by something, regardless of whether it continues requiring a cause or not. Even in the hypothetical case of a cup sailing along a frictionless table, you still need to explain what caused the cup to move in the first place. It can't have been in motion forever without cause, at least within the real world, for various reasons (none of which Carroll acknowledges or engages.)

So Carroll's attempt to refute the principle of causality, and thus the universe's need for a First Cause, fails because he doesn't distinguish between different types of causality, such as initial or sustaining causes. He in essence suggests that since things in motion may not require sustaining causes, then they don't need any causal explanations.

(For a helpful background on the critical distinction between different forms of causality, read Dr. Edward Feser's book, Aquinas.)

Carroll makes a similar mistake when he concludes, "The universe doesn't need a push; it can just keep going!" (28). The problem is that, once again, this mixes up two different forms of causality. The first part of his claim concerns how or whether the universe began, whether it had an initial cause to "push" it into existence. The second part concerns how the universe continues existing after it comes into existence, whether or not it has a sustaining cause to "keep [it] going." The two questions are not identical.

Regardless, Carroll offers no convincing reasons to accept either idea, that the universe "doesn't need a push" or that it can "just keep going" without any sustaining cause.

Interestingly, Carroll doesn't think we should get rid of causal language. He writes (emphasis mine):

"It's possible to understand why it's so useful to refer to causes and effects in our everyday experience, even if they're not present in the underlying equations. There are many different useful stories we have to tell about reality to get along in the world." (29)

Note here, again, his concern over whether causal language is useful, not whether it's true. On his view, poetic naturalists can tell whatever stories they want about the world as long as they're useful—as long as they help us "to get along in the world."

But this recalls my major critique of poetic naturalism: it's fine with embracing false accounts of the world so long as they're useful. It cares more about pragmatism than truth.

In the end, this chapter doesn't so much refute causality as it exposes Carroll's internal conflict. He wants to reconcile two contradictory positions, first that causality is fundamentally an illusion, and second that we can't "get along in the world" (nor, I would argue, carry on the work of science) without taking causal language for granted.

Carroll says we should embrace causality because it's useful.

I say we should embrace it because it true.

Either way, whether it's only useful or both useful and true, Carroll gives no reason to oppose theists who use causal language. After all, if such language is useful, then certainly theists can use it in arguments for God!

In the next post, we'll look at another central idea in Carroll's book, determinism.

(Editors Note: Dr. Edward Feser has a post here at Strange Notions digging further into Carroll's views on causality. Read it here.)

NOTE: Today we continue an occasional series of exchanges between Catholic theologian Dr. Michael Augros, author of Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence (Ignatius Press, 2015), and various email interlocutors. Today's exchange follows up on last week's, so be sure to read those two posts first. We'll share the second email question today and Friday we'll share Dr. Augros' response. Enjoy!
 

 
Hello Dr. Augros,

Thank you for the time and effort you put in for your lengthy response. I have read it many times and, while I still don't completely understand all your arguments, at least I can take it on faith where I don't understand.

The greatest thing that I can't figure out is why the first cause, which you say is God, still has to be with us today. I get your point that we should not be looking at God as a first cause through time, like creating the Big Bang, but should instead be looking at simultaneous present causes for which only one cause is not dependent on any other.

Still, in your analogy of your will moving your brain, moving your hand, moving your paint brush, wouldn't the first cause there be your will rather than God?

If God is to be recognized as the first cause of all things, haven't you provided an example that disproves that theory?

Could you provide some further insight as to how God is the first cause of all things presently being caused today?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Mark
 
 
(Image credit: Pexels)

NOTE: Today we kick off an occasional series of exchanges between Catholic theologian Dr. Michael Augros, author of Who Designed the Designer?: A Rediscovered Path to God's Existence (Ignatius Press, 2015), and various email interlocutors. We'll start with the first email question today and Friday we'll share Dr. Augros' response. Enjoy!
 

 
Hello Dr. Augros,

I am a devout Catholic who recently purchased your book, Who Designed the Designer? I just finished the first chapter but hesitate to read further without first obtaining clarification regarding the first step in your proof. Granted, I am no philosopher, but I perceive potential issues already in the first chapter that I was hoping you would be able to clear up to allow me to read further.

I see problems with your first premise as it applies to infinite regression of causes. Your first proof states:

"If there were caused causes, with no first cause, they would constitute a middle with nothing before it.
 
But it is impossible for there to be a middle with nothing before it.
Therefore, there cannot be caused causes with no first cause."

It seems to me you could just take that proof and substitute the words "cause before each cause" for the words "first cause" and still have a valid proof for an infinite regression of causes without the need for an absolute first cause.

It would thus read as follows:

"If there were caused causes, with no cause before each cause, they would constitute a middle with nothing before it.
 
But it is impossible to have a middle with nothing before it. Therefore, there cannot be caused causes with no cause before each cause."

I am really hoping I am missing something here.

Likewise, when you discuss Aristotle's view that even an infinity of causes requires a first cause, it seems to me that it all comes down to how you word the proof and how you define the terms, otherwise we run into the same problem Zeno ran into. You say that even an infinite set is definite and must therefore include a maximum "effect maker" and that maximum producer of effects cannot, by necessity, be preceded by a greater effect producer. The problem I see is there will never be a maximum effect maker with an infinite series of causes, insofar as the cause immediately preceding any other cause will necessarily include all the other cause's effects plus at least one, namely the other cause. If we consider that this "definite set" is open-ended with an infinite chain of causes, I don't think you can really define "maximum" in the way you do, since by necessity, the maximum will never end in a "definite set" which is open-ended, which is part of the definition of infinity. Please clarify this issue for me.

I am also having problems understanding how the first cause necessarily needs to still exist with us today. To tweak your train analogy, if the engine, which you designate the first cause, spontaneously exploded and the explosion pushed all the connected boxcars on a frictionless railroad track indefinitely, we would still have the same chain of causes and effects but with an initial mover that no longer exists. I don't really follow your logic that the first cause must, by necessity, still be with us today.

I understand you must be busy and I am not even a student of yours, but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Mark D.

One objection to First Cause arguments is that they make superfluous attributions: surely in any steady hand Occam’s razor would deliver a much more modest looking First Cause than God. In my last post, I argued that this objection is fallacious in as much as it begs the question against Classical Theism, for which the First Cause and its attributions are indivisible (and thus hardly capable of being whittled by Occam).

But, this doesn’t show that there is a First Cause, or that Classical Theism is right about its simplicity. Still less does it show that its attributes include “intellect”, “will”, or “goodness”. I’m going to try and make up for much of this deficit in this post, hoping my point about the fallacious nature of these Occam-style objections has in some measure cleared the runway.

I believe it can be demonstrated that there is a First Cause and that Classical Theism is right about its simplicity in one fell swoop. While this argument will not in and of itself show that the First Cause’s attributes include “intellect”, “will”, or “goodness”, and thus that it is God, it will show that the First Cause is supernatural, or non-natural at least.

Allow me to begin by asking you to consider an average human being. I think we will all agree that it has body parts. But, this is just a realization of its potential to have body parts. If it did not have this potential, if it were literally incapable of having body parts, then it simply would not exist (lacking all the essential organs and such).

Let’s now abstract from this or that human being’s potential to have body parts, and consider the potential by itself. Obviously, the potential to have body parts is general enough that non-human animals have it as well.

This process of abstracting the particulars away could continue on until we arrive at the most general potential included in a human’s potential to have body parts. Thus, we might say the next particular to be abstracted is the having of any specific kinds of parts. In turn, the potential to have parts is just the potential to be composed, from which we may abstract the potential for there to be composition. What saves this from being an exercise in the mundane is that last item. What a peculiar thing, this potential for there to be composition.

Potentials don’t just float around: things have potentials. But, in what sense could something have the potential for there to be composition?

We can divide all potentials into two mutually exclusive categories: active and passive. Active potentials are powers to cause whereas passive potentials are just capacities to undergo change. Thus, my potential to eat lunch is active, while my potential to become older is passive.

If the potential for there to be composition were passive, there would need to be something that could undergo a change that would result in there being composition. But, if there were something capable of undergoing this change, something that genuinely had this potential, then there would already be composition! As such, the potential for there to be composition cannot be passive.

But, if it were active, then something would have the power to cause there to be composition. Since cause logically precedes effect and composition would be one of its effects, this cause could not be composed in anyway whatsoever. Given that this potential has to either be active or passive, and that it cannot be passive, we are forced to deduce that it is active, and therefore that there is a perfectly simple cause of composition.

We may formalize the foregoing reasoning as follows:

1. Every potential is either active or passive.
2. If the potential for there to be composition is active, then there is a perfectly simple cause of composition.
3. The potential for there to be composition is not passive.
4. Therefore, the potential for there to be composition is active. [(1), (3) Disj.]
5. Therefore, there is a perfectly simple cause of composition. [(2), (4) M.P.]

This is a pretty straightforward argument for a First Cause. There could not be more than one perfectly simple being since they would lack any distinguishing features by which to be differentiated.¹ And since everything other than this perfectly simple cause is composed of parts, and it causes there to be composition, it sustains all things in existence by holding them together. It doesn’t matter whether the chain of composed beings regresses infinitely into the past, or loops back in on itself: the causation of this perfectly simple being is not ‘first’ in a temporal sense. Rather, its primacy lies within its fundamentality, its causation serving as the pulse of life underlying the existence of everything.

Still, why think it’s super or non-natural? The answer to this lies in the apophatic method: considering what forms of composition there are so as to deny them of the First Cause.

Fortunately, one sort of composition will suffice: that of matter and form. In every change something becomes otherwise than it was before. That is, something persists through the loss and gain of characteristics. Call these characteristics (such as redness, squareness, hunger, or location, etc. etc.) 'forms'. If forms are what are gained and lost through change, what is it that gains or loses them? Call the substratum in which forms are gained or lost ‘matter’. We can distinguish between different kinds of matter based on the forms that it 'substrates'. For example, we might designate the substratum of sensible form as 'physical' matter.

By virtue of its simplicity, the First Cause could not have matter, physical, quantum or any other partition thereof. It occupies no space, persists through no time, and lacks any and all pictorially identifiable features. No laws of nature govern its behavior; it is quite literally unlike anything in nature.

Granted, this does not spell ‘theism’. But, it’s eerily close and at complete odds with Naturalism in any case. The missing ingredients here have in no short supply been given elsewhere; however, perhaps that is a matter best left for another time.
 
 
(Image credit: Gawker)

When I first began to study the philosophy of religion, I became acquainted with a certain style of reasoning about God. This style seems to model arguments for and against God after arguments in the natural sciences, and is very much in vogue today. Herman Philipse is representative when he says that "the methodological dilemma for natural theologians in contemporary Western culture is that they either have to opt for methods of factual research that are intellectually respectable in the light of the present state of the sciences and scholarship, or for alternative methods, which are practised in religious investigations only, and which cannot be validated."¹

This philosophical Zeitgeist has all but determined the discussions and debates about God for the last 50 years. This is why Richard Swinburne — with his edifice of probabilistic arguments for God — has gained the place of prominence he has. Even Alvin Plantinga, who is perhaps today's most influential philosopher of religion, says "In my opinion, Swinburne's arguments that Christian belief is probable with respect to public evidence are the best on offer."²

But, this ‘scientizing’ trend is a blip on the radar screen of historical theism, whose adherents have traditionally looked to considerations deeper than, and indeed presupposed by, science in order to determine the question of God's existence. Their contemporary successors don't appeal to Big Bang cosmology, to the fine-tuning or specified complexity of anything, in order to infer that God exists. Probability calculations are entirely inappropriate to their way of thinking. It does not much matter whether religious experiences are just effects of temporal lobe seizures, or even whether an all-powerful, all-good demiurge of the sort called 'God' by philosophers nowadays would prevent more evil than is in fact prevented: their cases for God aspire to rest on nothing less than metaphysical demonstrations.

Because of what the classical theist takes God to be, she contends that there is something so fundamentally absurd about God's non-existence that questions of probability calculations and scientific discoveries are superfluous or distracting at best, and circular at worst (as science can hardly explain the material it presupposes in order to explain things).

As Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bentley Hart puts it: "When I say that atheism is a kind of obliviousness to the obvious, I mean that if one understands what the actual philosophical definition of 'God' is in most of the great religious traditions, and if consequently one understands what is logically entailed in denying that there is any God so defined, then one cannot reject the reality of God tout court without embracing an ultimate absurdity."³

But if the classical and modern traditions so starkly diverge, what accounts for this? In a large way, the divergence arises from a disagreement on whether God participates in existence.

All of nature has being, and it is by virtue of having being that it exists (whether that being is substantial, material, or whatever). Folks working in the modern tradition discuss whether God has being, a topic about which there could obviously be rational disagreement given its assumptions. But, classical theists do not think that God has being, or that he could, even in principle. On classical theism, God is the most fundamental reality, and just is subsistent being itself. Thus, he does not instantiate properties, or participate in forms of being, as if there were anything independent of and prior to him: everything apart from God is subsequent to and dependent upon him. Everything else derives from the fount of being. Is there room to rationally think that derivative being ultimately doesn't derive from anything?

Instead of considering that question, I’d like to look at a way an atheist might respond to classical theism. She might agree that regardless of what shape derivative being takes — whether it extends infinitely into the past, or forms a causal loop in which A causes B, B causes C, and C causes A, etc. — derivative being is still derivative being, and thus there must be something from which it derives, namely a First Cause. But, she might caution, this First Cause needn't be God. Sure, it might be immutable, and even the source of all value⁴ and so forth, but we needn't say it has intellect or will.

Graham Oppy's recently published The Best Argument Against God represents something like this strategy: maybe we do need to posit an ultimate First Cause of sorts. But whether we do or not, there's nothing to be gained by saying it's a supernatural entity with intellect and will. No hitherto unexplained facts get explained, and no currently explained facts get explained any better. All we end up doing is making explanatorily superfluous claims. This is what LaPlace had in mind when he said, in reference to God, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

This response would have considerable force against modern conceptions of God, under which God might be viewed as a sort of conjunction of essential properties: God is necessary and omnipotent and the source of all value, etc. Here one is entitled to reject the entire conjunction simply by virtue of rejecting one of its conjuncts. So while a non-theist might not think that anything has all of these properties, she might think that something has a couple or more of them.

But, this way of thinking is incoherent on classical theism, since the First Cause is considered to be utterly simple. In other words, the First Cause isn't thought of as having essential properties, or any sort of parts at all: the First Cause and its power, goodness, and even knowledge all refer to the same thing, just in different senses (much like "Clark Kent" and "Superman" do).

Classical theists advance a number of arguments for this simplicity. For example, “every composite is posterior to its components: since the simpler exists in itself before anything is added to it for the composition of a third. But nothing is prior to the first. Therefore, since God is the first principle, He is not composite.”⁵

Moreover, because composites would not have any power unless their parts coalesced, their power is of a dependent sort. But, the power of the First Cause would not be dependent on anything: that would completely destroy the ultimacy it's supposed to have in the first place. Thus, the First Cause is not, nor could it be, composed of any parts.

But, whether classical theists have good reasons for affirming Divine Simplicity or not, this way of responding to classical theism commits the fallacy of begging the question, since it assumes that the First Cause could be composite, which entails that Divine Simplicity (a central tenant of classical theism) is false.
 
 
(Image credit: Dumb Ox Ministries)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today continues our eight-part debate on the resolution, "Does objective morality depend on the existence of God?" We'll hear from two sharp young thinkers. Joe Heschmeyer, a Catholic seminarian in Kansas City, Kansas, will argue the affirmative view. Steven Dillon, a gifted philosopher and a former Catholic seminarian, will argue the negative. The eight parts will run as follows:

Monday (11/4) - Joe's opening statement (affirmative)
Tuesday (11/5) - Steven's opening statement (negative)
Wednesday (11/6) - Joe's rebuttal (affirmative)
Thursday (11/7) - Steven's rebuttal (negative)
Friday (11/8) - Questions exchanged (three questions each)
Saturday (11/9) - Answers (Joe and Steven answer each other's questions)
Sunday (11/10) - Joe's closing statement (affirmative)
Monday (11/11) - Steven's closing statement (negative)

Today we begin the final two posts with a closing statement from Joe. Both Joe and Steven have agreed to be present in the comment boxes, so if you have a specific question for them, ask away!
 

In affirming the resolution, “Does objective morality depend upon God?” I’ve argued two things: (a) that objective morality can be grounded in God; and (b) that objective morality cannot be grounded in anything other than God. Steven challenged (b), claiming that moral truths like “suffering is inherently bad” are simply and intuitively true, and do not rely upon God.

In my rebuttal, I asked, “what does it mean to call agony ‘intrinsically bad,’ exactly?” If we mean that agony is inherently painful, that’s a tautology, not a moral claim. As Peter Geach explained in Good and Evil:

"[I]f I call a man a good burglar or a good cut-throat I am certainly not commending him myself; one can imagine circumstances in which these descriptions would serve to guide another man's choice (e.g. if a commando leader were choosing burglars and cut-throats for a special job), but such circumstances are rare and cannot give the primary sense of the descriptions. It ought to be clear that calling a thing a good A does not influence choice unless the one who is choosing happens to want an A; and this influence on action is not the logically primary force of the word “good”."

So, to turn “agony is intrinsically bad (painful)” into an objective moral claim, you would have to have an objective moral system (e.g., that we should always pursue pleasure and avoid painful or unpleasant things). But the terms don't carry that system within themselves, and there's no objective, non-theistic way to construct this or any other moral system.

On the other hand, if we mean that agony is an intrinsic evil, that’s false. Steven has yet to define his term, but his answer to Question 1 suggests that this is his meaning. I’ll proceed under that assumption.

To say that an act is intrinsically evil is to say that it may never be done. By “evil,” we mean that sort of thing that ought not be done; by “intrinsically,” we mean that it ought not be done of itself, without consideration of any consequences. We ought not rape, murder, etc., regardless of the good or bad consequences of an individual act of rape or murder.

But that’s not what Steven argues at all. He says that suffering can be inflicted if it is the “lesser of two evils.” I asked about the case of a woman intentionally getting pregnant, given the pains of childbirth. He says that “if a woman has to endure the excruciating pain of child-birth so that the child may be born, we should permit the suffering, otherwise a child dies.” That's telling, but not my question: if a woman chooses to get pregnant, the alternative isn’t that a child dies. It’s that a child is never conceived. So the “lesser of two evils” principle doesn’t apply. By Steven’s initial analysis, it would seem that every instance of intentional conception is evil. But now, it seems that he’ll permit agony not only to avoid greater evils, but also to achieve greater goods (like procreation).

If it is okay to inflict agony in some cases, then agony is not intrinsically evil. This refutes the claim that “agony is intrinsically bad (evil).”

At this point, Steven seems to have shifted to utilitarianism, a moral system which I rejected in my opinion statement, in a passage left unrebutted:

"[U]tilitarianism leads to unconscionable results. No action—slavery, rape, genocide, torture, etc.—could ever be described as objectively evil. We’d have to determine how much pleasure the slavemaster, rapist, genocidaire, and torturer derive (along with the pleasure or displeasure of the general public). Only after we’ve weighed all of those factors, could we determine whether the action is right or wrong."

Steven hasn’t, and can’t, show this moral framework to be true, or binding upon anyone.

Stepping back from the particulars of the claim “agony is intrinsically bad,” is the broader problem of moral intuitionism, which I raised in my rebuttal: namely, that it's not an objective moral code, since intuitions differ from person to person; that it provides no basis for rational decision-making, because there's no mechanism for resolving competing values; and that all true moral intuition relies upon God.

Steven gives an intriguing illustration of the moral system he's defending:

"Think of a tall skyscraper. What grounds it? Well, you might say its foundation. And what grounds its foundation? You could say the land in which it is built in or upon. And what grounds the land? You could continue asking of each proposed grounding structure what grounds it. Assuming this cannot continue on indefinitely, you’ll reach a point where there simply is no deeper grounding structure: you’ve struck rock bottom. I’m saying that moral facts are grounded by other moral facts, and so on until we reach moral facts so foundational there’s just no further to go. This is radically different from saying that there is no rock bottom, and moral facts just sort of...free-float."

I largely agree with this view. In fact, it's virtually identical to the first three of Thomas' Five Ways. But Steven stops too soon in his digging into the foundation: you can't logically conclude that there are several rock bottoms. Even the moral claims he's arguing that are irreducibly fundamental aren't. If they were, he couldn't say that they are permissible in some cases. To say that a certain truth is foundational, if it means anything, means that it's not just true in certain situations.

This is why moral intuitionism provides no capacity for rational moral decision-making: if both equitable distribution of goods and respect for private property are irreducibly foundational moral principles, what do we do when they clash? It's an irresistible force and an unmovable object: a contradiction that exposes the incoherence of the intuitionist worldview. Likewise, in saying that agony is sometimes permissible, Steven shows that it's not a foundational principle that agony is inherently evil.

Still, I agree with his impulse, to dig further and further into the metaphysical foundations. And the solution is to dig deeper, to the First Cause. There must be a single First Cause, or you can't get this moral system off the ground. This First Cause can't be anyone other than God (as we've seen, all other alternatives fail to create an objective moral system). That's what I meant in the rebuttal about all forms of intuitionism relying upon God.

Steven objects that it doesn't make sense to claim that objective morality depends upon God because we don't have anything literal to say about God. Here, I must raise an objection: Steven complains that God isn't reducible to the unaided human intellect. But a being that could be comprehended by the unaided human intellect would be, in some way, smaller than the intellect, and therefore, not God.

What Do We Mean By God?

 
We can affirm that God is Pure Being, Pure Goodness, etc., but we can’t tell you, short of encountering God directly, what that is like. It would be irrational to expect us to be able to. Furthermore, we must ask a question: is it true that the only concepts we can know of are ones that we can make literal, positive statements about? It seems to me there is at least one that breaks the mold, acknowledged by both theists and atheists alike: infinity.

Just as we often mistake God for a really big being (instead of Subsistent Being Itself, the Ground of all Being), we often misunderstand infinity as a really big number. Not so, says mathematician Raymond Nickerson:

"[I]n fact infinity is not a very large number; it is not a number at all, and such phrases as ‘approaching infinity,’ ‘an almost infinite number,’ and ‘nearly infinite in extent’ are contradictions in terms. Think of the largest number you can imagine. How close is this to infinity? Not close. […] Between it—our largest number—and infinity there will remain a gulf of infinite extent, and there is nothing we can do to decrease it."

Look at the sort of claims that we can make about infinity: its very name is a negation (denying that it possesses finitude). Whether we call it infinite, boundless, limitless, etc., we’re making negative claims. But these negative claims still tell us something concrete about what infinity is, by showing us what it isn’t.

St. Anselm properly defines God as “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.” This sounds like unnecessary verbiage, and the philosopher Descartes opts for the simpler formulation that God is a “supremely perfect being.” But the difference between Anselm’s and Descartes’ definitions of God turns out to be infinite. Anselm’s definition, like infinity, is a negative claim: it defines what God isn’t, and gives us a hint (but little more than a hint) of what He is, as a result.

Therefore the proposition "God exists" can be affirmed without directly knowing the nature of God, just as we can say that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa without knowing what he was like. And just as we can know that there is such a thing as infinity, even if we’re unsatisfied with the limitations of our knowledge of the limitless, we can say that there is such a thing as God, even if we’re unsatisfied with the limitations of our knowledge of Him.

Fortunately, unlike with infinity, God reveals Himself to us, enabling us to know Him in a way that we would never be able to by unaided human reason. This relationship with Him, followed to its logical conclusion, terminates in the Beatific Vision, in which we take on divinity in some way: we know God with God’s own knowledge of Himself.

Conclusion

 
Without God, all of reality is literally pointless: it’s a random cosmic accident, and there’s no objective, morally-binding reason to do good and avoid evil. The two logical conclusions from this are either that “God exists” or that objective morality doesn’t exist. Steven gives good reasons, based upon moral intuition, to reject the second option. But that’s a proof for the existence of God.

Yet once that we’ve established that God exists, what can we say? Hopefully, it is now clear that since God is infinite, our unaided knowledge of Him is limited to negative and analogical statements. Yet our minds crave a deeper knowledge of God than these statements provide. This is a preamble, and an invitation to accept His offer of a relationship.

Thanks again to Steven for a civil and worthwhile debate, and for Brandon and the folks at Strange Notions for hosting!

 
 
(Image credit: Cognitive Disinhibition)

NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.
 

For the Thomist, to say that God is the First Cause of things is, first and foremost, to say that He is the cause of their existence at every moment at which they do exist. God creates things out of nothing precisely in the act of conserving them in being, and apart from His continual causal action they would instantly be annihilated. You, the computer you are using right now, the floor under your feet, the coffee cup in your hand—for each and every one of these things, God is, you might say, “keeping it real” at every instant. Nor is this causal activity something anything else could either carry out or even play a role in. Creation—which for Aquinas means creation out of nothing—can be the act of God alone.

Where creation is concerned, then, God is the “first” cause not in the sense of coming before the second, third, and fourth causes, but rather in the sense of being absolutely fundamental, that apart from which nothing could cause (because nothing could exist) at all. As serious students of the Five Ways know, the sorts of causal series Aquinas traces to God as First Cause are causal series ordered per se, not causal series ordered per accidens. In the former sort of series, every cause other than the first is instrumental, its causal power derived from the first. (See this post for more on the subject.)  But where creation is concerned, Aquinas’s talk of intermediate or instrumental causes is only “for the sake of argument”; his point is that even if there were intermediate causes of the being of things, the series would have to terminate in a First Cause. In fact, there is and can be only one Creator and He cannot in principle create through intermediaries. (That is not to say that God does not work through intermediaries in other respects. We’re only talking here about His act of causing the sheer existence of a thing or creating it out of nothing.)

Why not? Aquinas addresses the question at some length in the Summa Theologiae, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and De Potentia Dei. The arguments are difficult for someone not versed in the metaphysical presuppositions of Aquinas’s philosophical theology—indeed, some of them are difficult even for someone who is versed in the relevant metaphysics. But what follows will, I hope, suffice to convey some of the main ideas. (It will help considerably if the reader has at least some knowledge of such fundamental Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical notions as actuality and potentiality, form and matter, and the principle of proportionate causality; of the Thomistic arguments for the existence of God as pure actuality and as being itself rather than merely a being among others; and of the arguments for the uniqueness of anything that is pure actuality and being itself. This is all spelled out at length in chapters 2 and 3 of my book, Aquinas.)

First, then, why does Aquinas hold that only God can possibly create out of nothing?

Here’s one way to understand it. Any of us can easily actualize the potential of the oxygen in the air around us to move, simply by waving our arms. Only someone with the relevant expert knowledge could take oxygen and hydrogen and synthesize water out of them. It would take greater power still to cause the prime matter underlying oxygen, hydrogen, or water to take on the substantial form of a tree. But creation out of nothing requires more power even than that, in fact unlimited power. For it is not a case of drawing out the potentialities that are already there in a thing, but rather causing a thing to exist entirely, together with its potentialities, where nothing at all had existed before. It isn’t a case merely of modifying what already exists, but rather of causing to exist in the first place that which all mere modification presupposes.

Limited causes are limited precisely by potentialities which are not actualized. Hence a sculptor is limited by the degree of skill he has so far acquired, by the limits on his dexterity given the structure of his hands, etc. He is limited also by the potentialities of his materials—their capacity to be molded using some tools but not others, their capacity to maintain whatever shape the sculptor puts into them, and so forth. Now that which creates out of nothing is not limited by any such external factors, precisely because it is not modifying anything that already exists outside of it. But neither can it be limited by any internal potentialities analogous to the limits on a sculptor’s skill. For it is not merely causing a being of this or that sort to exist (though it is doing that too)—modifying preexisting materials would suffice to cause that—but also making it the case that any being at all exists. And only that which is not a being among others but rather unlimited being—that which is pure actualit—can do that.

The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way. To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all—which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing—is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all.

So only God—who is pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others—can cause a thing to exist ex nihilo. But why could He not work through instrumental causes in doing so? For all the preceding argument would seem to show is that Being Itself is the ultimate cause of any thing’s existing at all. That is, it suggests that any cause of a thing’s sheer existence that was less than Being Itself would, either directly or indirectly, owe its own existence to that which is Being Itself. But why couldn’t that which is Being Itself impart to other things their sheer existence through such an intermediary—through an instrumental cause which, like the effect, is merely a being among others rather than Being Itself?

Here’s one way to think about the problem with this idea. An instrumental cause causes by virtue of being used to alter what already exists, as a chisel is used by a sculptor to alter marble. But to cause the sheer existence of a thing ex nihilo is not to alter what already exists. In the case of a material thing, it does not involve causing already existing matter to take on a new form (as a sculptor does), but rather causing the matter and form together to exist. Hence while it makes sense to speak of using a chisel in the act of sculpting a statue out of marble, it makes no sense to speak of using a chisel in the act of causing a statue to exist ex nihilo. For before the statue was caused to exist ex nihilo, there was no marble on which the chisel could be brought to bear; and after the statue is caused to exist ex nihilo, there is nothing for the chisel to do, since the marble already is (by hypothesis) a statue. Now any purported instrumental cause involved in any act of creation ex nihilo would be like the chisel. It would be a fifth wheel—it wouldn’t be doing anything, and thus would not be causing anything, and thus would not really be an instrumental cause (because not a cause at all). Hence the very idea of God creating out of nothing through instrumental causes falls apart on analysis.

So, while popular images of God as First Cause have Him knocking down the first domino billions of years ago, and while even Aquinas might seem to make of Him the distant terminus of a regress of simultaneous currently operating causes, nothing could be further from the truth. God’s relationship to the world is in Aquinas’s view much more intimate than that, indeed, as intimate as possible. At least where the sheer existence of things is concerned, He and He alone is directly causing them at every instant. He is, as the Muslims say, “closer than the vein in your neck.”
 
 
Originally posted at Edward Feser's blog. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: VK.com)

NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.
 

Both critics and defenders of arguments for the existence of God as an Uncaused Cause often assume that such arguments are essentially concerned to explain the universe considered as a whole. That is true of some versions, but not all. For instance, it is not true of Aquinas’s arguments, at least as many Thomists understand them. For the Thomist, you don’t need to start with something grand like the universe in order to show that God exists. Any old thing will do—a stone, a jar of peanut butter, your left shoe, whatever. The existence of any one of these things even for an instant involves the actualization of potencies here and now, which in turn presupposes the activity of a purely actual actualizer here and now. It involves the conjoining of an essence to an act of existence here and now, which presupposes a sustaining cause whose essence and existence are identical. It involves a union of parts in something composite, which presupposes that which is absolutely simple or incomposite. And so forth. (For the details of this, see Aquinas, especially chapter 3.)

Criticisms of First Cause arguments that assume that what is in question is how to explain the universe as a whole are therefore irrelevant to Aquinas’s versions. Still, those versions which are concerned with explaining this are also important. One objection often raised against them is that they commit a fallacy of composition. In particular, it is claimed that they fallaciously infer from the premise that the various objects that make up the universe are contingent to the conclusion that the universe as a whole is contingent. What is true of the parts of a whole is not necessarily true of the whole itself: If each brick in a wall of Legos is an inch long, it doesn’t follow that the wall as a whole is an inch long. Similarly, even if each object in the universe is contingent, why suppose that the universe as a whole is?

There are two problems with this objection. First, not every inference from part to whole commits a fallacy of composition; whether an inference does so depends on the subject matter. If each brick in a wall of Legos is red, it does follow that the wall as a whole is red. So, is inferring from the contingency of the parts of the universe to that of the whole universe more like the inference to the length of the Lego wall, or more like the inference to its color? Surely it is more like the latter. If A and B are of the same length, putting them side by side is going to give us a whole with a length different from those of A and B themselves. That just follows from the nature of length. If A and B are of the same color, putting them side by side is not going to give us a whole with a color different from those of A and B themselves. That just follows from the nature of color. If A and B are both contingent, does putting them together give us something that is necessary? It is hard to see how; indeed, anyone willing to concede that Lego blocks, tables, chairs, rocks, trees, and the like are individually contingent is surely going to concede that any arbitrary group of these things is no less contingent. And why should the inference to the contingency of such collections stop when we get to the universe as a whole? It seems a natural extension of the reasoning, and the burden of proof is surely on the critic of such an argument to show that the universe as a whole is somehow non-contingent, given that the parts, and collections of parts smaller than the universe as a whole, are contingent.

So, that is one problem. Another problem is that it isn’t obvious that the sort of cosmological argument that takes as a premise the contingency of the universe needs to rely on such part-to-whole reasoning in the first place. When we judge that a book, an apple, or a typewriter is contingent, do we do so only after first judging that each page of the book, each seed in the apple, each key of the typewriter, and indeed each particle making up any of these things is contingent? Surely not; we can just consider the book, apple, or typewriter itself, directly and without reference to the contingency of its parts. So why should things be any different for the universe as a whole?

If anything, it is certain critics of the sort of argument in question who seem more plausibly accused of committing a fallacy of composition. Consider this famous passage from David Hume’s Dialogues:
 

"Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts."

 
(Paul Edwards makes a similar objection—see the “five Eskimos” example in this famous article.)

The reasoning couldn’t be more plain: If you explain each part of a collection, you’ve explained the whole. Therefore (so this sort of objection to the kind of cosmological argument in question continues) if we can explain each individual thing or event in the universe as the effect of some previous thing or event in the universe, we’ve explained the whole collection of things or events, and needn’t appeal to anything outside the universe. And yet, to identify the immediate efficient cause of each thing in a collection simply is not necessarily to explain the collection as a whole. If a certain book exists because it was copied from an earlier book, the earlier book existed because it was copied from a yet earlier book, that book existed because it was copied from a still earlier book, and so on, we will hardly have provided a sufficient explanation of the series of books if we suppose that it either has extended backward into the past to infinity or that via time travel it forms a causal loop. So, hasn’t Hume himself committed a fallacy of composition?

A defender of Hume might reply as follows: It is only when each part of a collections has been sufficiently explained that the Humean claims it follows that the whole collection has been explained; and in the counterexamples in question (the book example and others of the sort explored in the previous post) each part clearly hasn’t been sufficiently explained but only partially explained (because, say, the origin of the information contained in the book still needs to be explained). So (the proposed reply continues) the Humean would not be committed to saying, falsely, that the whole collection has been explained in such cases.

This saves the Humean critique from committing the fallacy of composition, but only at the cost of making it question-begging. For a defender of the sort of cosmological argument we’ve been discussing could happily agree that if each part of a collection has been sufficiently explained, then the whole collection has been explained as well. He just thinks that to identify an immediate contingent cause for each contingent thing or event in the universe is not to give a sufficient explanation of it. If the Humean disagrees, then he needs to give some reason why identifying such a cause would be sufficient. Merely to assert that it would be sufficient—which is all Hume does, and which is all that is done by those who quote Hume as if he had made some devastating point—simply assumes what is at issue.
 
 
Originally posted on Edward Feser's blog. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: J. Ronald Lee)