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1-3 Arguments for the existence of God The cosmological argument
Philosophy
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1.
Arguments for the
existence of God
The Cosmological Argument
This chapter will cover: ● Aquinas’ Way 3: The argument from contingency and necessity ● Criticisms from Hume and Russell
Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time starts with the following anecdote:
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a fl at plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever’, said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’ (Note 1)
####### You will need to consider six things for this section
1 The basis of Aquinas’ argument in observation. 2 Aquinas’ Way 3: The argument from contingency and necessity. 3 Criticisms from Hume and Russell. 4 The strengths and weaknesses of Aquinas’ argument. 5 The status of Aquinas’ argument as a ‘proof’. 6 The value of Aquinas’ argument for religious faith.
Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument appears in the first three of his five ‘Ways’ for proving the existence of God, in his Summa Theologica , which is available online, for example, at: newadvent/summa/
Way 1 is his argument from motion and change, and Way 2 is his argument from causation. You need to study only Way 3, the argument from contingency and necessity. The three arguments are interrelated, but Way 3 will give you a good understanding of the trend of Aquinas’ argument.
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Arguments for the existence of God
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●●
The basis of Aquinas’ argument in
observation
Part of our undoubted fascination with the Andromeda Galaxy lies in the fact that it is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way (about 2 million light years away). It is the largest in the local group of galaxies, and contains over 1 trillion stars. Moreover Andromeda is on a collision course with the Milky Way, at an approach speed of around 68 miles per second, so the two galaxies are expected to collide in about 4 billion years. The result is likely to be a giant elliptical galaxy. Whether or not the Earth could survive such an event is unknown, but at least we have plenty of time to think about it.
It is useful to bear in mind here that when we observe the Andromeda Galaxy, what we observe is 2 million years in the past, since the photon stream reaching our eyes takes that long to get here. What we see when we observe the universe, then, is an information stream stemming directly from the Big Bang. This is the way the biophysicist Werner Loewenstein puts it:
So heaven’s vault is crisscrossed with information arrows. The arrows hailing from out there are long – some have been on the fl y for nearly 14 billion years. Those are the lines of information issuing from the primordial kernel, the initial state of information in the universe. Eventually that initial state led, in the course of the universe’s expansion, to the condensation of matter locally and the formation of galaxies ... [and] as those vast structures evolved, more and more structures – stars, planets, moons, etc. – formed inside them. From our perch in the universe, we ordinarily get to glimpse only segments of the arrows – local arrowlets, we might say. We therefore easily lose sight of the continuity. But as we wing ourselves high enough, we see that those arrowlets get handed down from system to system: from galaxy to stars to planets ... to us. (Note 2)
It is this same information stream from the Big Bang that fascinated Aquinas as fascinates us now. Aquinas of course knew nothing of the Big Bang, but his observation of the cosmos convinced him that its basic processes did not explain themselves. Galaxies, stars, planets, moons: all things in the universe move and are changed, and those changes are the result of cause and effect. From here we can make the following points about the basis of Way 3 in observation:
1 As with Paley’s Design Argument, Aquinas’ Third Way is a posteriori and inductive, so it is based in observation, in Aquinas’ case the observation that the universe exists. I am currently looking at a cup of tea currently resting on the table in front of me, and I can touch the mug, taste the tea, see its colour, hear the gurgle of the liquid and smell its aroma; so my senses come together to verify what I observe. The same is true of the universe: sense experience can verify its existence and its properties. 2 Way 3 is the observation that all things that we see in the universe are contingent : they are moved, changed and caused; they need not exist, but they do. This applies to galaxies, stars, planets, people and trees;
Key terms cosmos ‘The cosmos’ usually refers to this space–time universe. The study of the universe is called cosmology. contingent contingent beings or things are dependent for their existence on other beings or things. In the Cosmological Argument, contingency implies the existence of something necessary – God.
▲ The Andromeda Galaxy
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Arguments for the existence of God
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The argument in the form it is expressed today
P1 Everything can exist or not-exist: that is, everything in the natural world is contingent.
P2 I f everything is contingent, then at some time there was nothing, because there must have been a time when nothing had begun to exist.
P3 If there was once nothing, then nothing could have come from nothing.
C1 Therefore something must exist necessarily, otherwise nothing would now exist, which is absurd.
P4 Everything necessary must either be caused or uncaused.
P5 But the series of necessary beings cannot be infinite, or there would be no explanation of that series.
C2 Therefore, there must be some uncaused being which exists of its own necessity.
C3 And by this, we all understand God.
####### Explanation of the argument
The argument has two parts:
In P1–P3 , the core of the argument stems from P2 , that: ‘If everything is contingent, then at some time there was nothing.’ Aquinas is claiming that all contingent beings / things have a finite lifespan: there is no contingent being that is everlasting, (Note 4) so there must have been a time when nothing existed. If there was a time when nothing existed, then nothing would now exist, because ex nihilo nihil fit – ‘out of nothing nothing can come’. That is absurd, because vast numbers of contingent beings / things now exist.
C1 : So something must exist necessarily.
In P4–P5 , Aquinas deals with the possibility that there might be an infinite series of caused necessary beings. That would also be absurd, because then there would be no ultimate cause of the series.
C2 : So there must be an ‘uncaused’ necessary being who sustains all caused necessary beings and all contingent beings.
C3 : This is God.
The difference between a caused necessary being and an uncaused necessary being is that a caused necessary being receives both its necessity and its existence from something else, that is, from an uncaused necessary being (God). An uncaused necessary being contains the reason for its own existence, in that its essence is existence. By ‘caused necessary beings’, Aquinas is thinking, for example, of angels and of human souls. He would also be prepared to admit that the universe itself is a ‘caused’ necessary being, that is, at its most basic level matter may exist necessarily.
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●●
Criticisms from Hume and Russell
F. Copleston 1907–1994 and Bertrand Russell 1872– Bertrand Russell dismissed Aquinas as a man possessing little of the true philosophic spirit, who before he even begins to philosophise already knows he truth, because: ‘ ... it is declared in his catholic faith.’ (Note 5) Russell’s best known critique of Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument comes in his 1948 radio debate with the Jesuit priest F. (‘Freddy’) Copleston, during which Russell is very cordial towards Copleston, although Russell’s conviction that religion is a generally harmful superstition is never far from the surface. Hume and Russell have very similar criticisms of the Cosmological Argument, which in Russell’s case is probably to be expected, since on occasion his ideas depend heavily on Hume.
Criticism 1: Russell argues that Way 3 commits the
fallacy of composition
Key terms fallacy A fallacy is a failure in reasoning which makes an argument invalid. fallacy of composition This is the fallacy of inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of part of the whole, or of every part of the whole. Russell argues that Aquinas’ third way commits the fallacy of composition.
A fallacy is a failure in reasoning which makes an argument invalid. The ‘ fallacy of composition ’ is the fallacy of inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of part of the whole, or of every part of the whole. A simple example of the fallacy of composition is: 1 Hydrogen is not wet; oxygen is not wet. 2 Therefore water (H 2 O) is not wet. This is clearly a fallacious argument! It assumes that what is true of the parts of water (hydrogen and oxygen) is true of water as a whole. Russell’s best known example of the fallacy of composition comes in his 1948 radio debate referred to above, where he says to Copleston: ‘I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy. Every man who exists has a mother, and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother, but obviously the human race hasn’t a mother – that’s a different logical sphere.’ ( Note 6 ) Russell is aiming his criticism mainly at Aquinas and aims it particularly against Way 2, the argument from causation, in which Aquinas argues: from 1 Every single event in the universe has a cause. to 2 The universe as a whole has a cause. Copleston claims that Aquinas is right to argue this way, but Russell rejects it completely: there is no reason why we should not argue: from 1 Every single event in the universe has a cause. to 2 The universe itself is uncaused.
▲ F. Copleston (left) and Bertrand Russell
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● This is true of God also, because there is no contradiction in saying, ‘God does not exist’. ● So when Aquinas’ Way 3 requires God to be a necessary being, this is false logic.
To be clear about this, Hume is assuming that where Aquinas in Way 3 argues that God is a necessary being, Aquinas means that God’s existence is ‘logically’ necessary. You will remember that Hume has already rejected that claim in the Ontological Argument, so he thinks that Aquinas is making the same claim in his Cosmological Argument; so Hume now insists again that all statements about existence are ‘synthetic’ – they are based on sense experience, so they cannot be ‘analytic’ (they cannot be logically true). Whereas we have to think of 2 + 2 being 4, because that is logically true, the mind never has to suppose that some object has to remain in existence, so the words ‘necessary existence’ have no meaning. So Hume holds that Way 3 is making the same mistake as the Ontological Argument. (Note 10) To make Hume’s point clear, consider the following statements:
● Unicorns exist ● P eter Pan exists ● Hume exists ● You exist ● God exists None of these statements can ever be analytic (logically true). I can only know that they are true or false synthetically (by experience), if I happen to meet a unicorn, Peter Pan, Hume, you or God. All of these five statements are true or false depending on sense experience, including ‘God exists’.
####### Reply to Hume (and Russell)
Aquinas’ third way does not claim that ‘God exists’ is logically necessary – Aquinas in effect claims that God’s existence is ‘metaphysically’ necessary, so Hume’s objection fails. When Aquinas talks about God as a necessary being in the Cosmological Argument, he is not talking about the logical necessity that we have just been looking at in the Ontological Argument. In fact, Aquinas specifically rejects the Ontological Argument as a logical proof of God, so he can hardly be thought to be introducing it (tongue in cheek) through the back door by way of the Cosmological Argument.
To unpack the idea of metaphysical necessity: ● Metaphysical necessity is a form of necessity that derives from the nature or essence of things. ● So claims about metaphysical necessity are claims about the way things ‘really are’. For example, ‘Whatever is water is H 2 O’ seems to be a metaphysically necessary proposition, because whenever you find water it will be made up of molecules that each have 1 atom of oxygen and 2 atoms of hydrogen. That is the essence of water. It is what water really is. ● Next, compare these two propositions: 1 All bachelors are unmarried males. 2 Whatever is water, is H 2 O. - Since we define as ‘bachelor’ as an ‘unmarried male’, then proposition 1 is logically true – it is true by definition.
Key term metaphysical necessity A form of necessity that derives from the nature or essence of things. Aquinas’ third way in effect holds that God has metaphysical necessity.
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Arguments for the existence of God
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- With proposition 2 , however, ‘Whatever is water is H 2 O’, is not logically true: rather it is just part of the way things ‘really are’. Water could have been some other compound, but in our experience it is not: it is always H 2 O. So we can say that ‘Water is H 2 O’ has metaphysical necessity. ● So, you should now be able to see that whereas the Ontological Argument is talking about God’s logical necessity, Aquinas in the Cosmological Argument is talking about God’s metaphysical necessity. Aquinas is claiming that: 1 In our experience, everything is contingent. 2 The existence of contingent things requires the existence of a being whose necessity is from itself and who causes the necessity in other (caused) necessary beings. This is God.
Note: Although this provides a clear answer to Hume, there is no guarantee that Aquinas is right. In particular, his casual claim at the end of Way 3, that the necessary being is God, is far from obvious. If you remember, we said much the same about the ‘designer’ in the Design Argument.
Criticism 3: Hume suggests that the universe itself
may be a necessarily-existent being
Why may not the material universe be the necessarily-existent Being ...? (N ote 11)
You can see the force of Hume’s argument: if something has to be necessary, why can’t that be the matter which makes up the universe? Why does it have to be an unobservable God?
####### Reply to Hume
Aquinas had no problem with the idea that matter might exist necessarily, but for Aquinas, matter would be a caused necessary being (check P4 in Way 3), and would still need God as an uncaused necessary being to explain its existence (line C2).
####### Who is right: Aquinas or Hume?
The Cosmological Argument is inductive, so like all inductive arguments it is based on probability. It depends which you think is the most probable explanation for the universe:
1 A necessarily existent mind.
2 Necessarily existent matter.
Those who prefer 1 are likely to believe that an all-powerful mind can explain the existence of matter better than matter can explain itself, so they will say that (God’s) mind creates matter.
Those who prefer 2 will point out that matter has produced minds such as ours, so matter creates minds.
####### In summary
Aquinas and Copleston can defend Way 3 against the attacks from Hume and Russell. We do not know enough about the universe to be sure one way or another.
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Arguments for the existence of God
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The status of Aquinas’ argument as a ‘proof’
1 The third way is one part of an inductive argument for the existence of God, and as we have seen in connection with the Design Argument, inductive arguments deal in probabilities rather than proofs.
For most philosophers today, proof would need to be a priori , like the Ontological Argument, except that in the opinion of most people, the Ontological Argument is a failed proof. 2 However, there are reasons why we should accept a different idea of proof, namely proof based on overwhelming probability.
In an article written in 2005, which focuses largely on the Cosmological Argument, Gerry J. Hughes argues that as well as the proofs we use in logic and maths, for example, we do accept other kinds of proof based on what we can reasonably conclude about the real world.
Think for instance of proving that sub-atomic particles exist, on the basis of evidence and experiments. The theories in atomic physics might all be wrong, in the sense that there is nothing illogical, nothing contradictory in supposing that there are no such particles. But given the evidence we now have it [is] surely quite unreasonable to believe that they do not exist. (Note 12)
To put that in slightly different terms, we have no direct observational evidence that quarks exist, since no one has seen an isolated quark, yet the indirect evidence for their existence is so overwhelming that it can be considered to be a proof. The ‘Standard Model’ of particle physics does not make sense without quarks, so they must exist in some manner.
In short, then, we have what amounts to a sufficient proof of the existence of unobservable entities – quarks – that it would be unreasonable to deny. The implications for the Cosmological Argument are obvious: God is an unobservable entity concerning whose existence it would be unreasonable to deny. Hughes reduces the structure of the Cosmological Argument to four components:
● Nothing happens without some causal explanation. ● A satisfactory explanation cannot appeal to something which ‘ just happened’ and was not caused. For example, a satisfactory explanation cannot appeal to ‘brute facts’. ● The existence of the universe requires an explanation outside itself. ● It is reasonable to think of this ‘transcendent’ explanation as God. The crucial line here is the second: Hughes asks what would be a ‘satisfactory’ explanation of the existence of the universe? It is logically possible, of course, that the universe exists as a brute fact, or that is uncaused, but Hughes suggests that this is about as unlikely as the sudden materialisation of pink sheep or tartan elephants. At this point, Hughes invokes Aquinas’ third way:
The chain of explanations will be complete and satisfying only if in the end one reaches something which has not ‘just happened’, simply come into existence; in short, the chain will end when it reaches something which cannot not exist, that is to say, exists necessarily. In short, the explanation will stop when one gets to a Necessary Being. (Note 13)
Key term
quark An elementary particle assumed to be one of the building blocks of matter.
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What Hughes claims is simply that the argument is a proof as far as he is concerned, because the chain of reasoning for him means that no explanation will satisfy him apart from the existence of a necessary being. He does admit that he could not claim that somebody who disagreed with him was being unreasonable; moreover there would still be a lot of work to do to identify the necessary being with the God of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition.
Hughes’ article is short, eminently readable and easily accessible online ( richmond-philosophy/rjp/back_issues/rjp9_hughes. pdf ), it is recommended that you read it and reach your own conclusions concerning whether or not the third way can amount to a proof in the modified sense in which he uses the term. 3 Whatever conclusions you reached concerning Hughes’ argument, it has to be said that the third way does not convince atheists, so it can hardly be a proof of God’s existence that satisfies even the majority.
Perhaps now is the time to talk about R. Hare’s concept of ‘bliks’, (Note 14) which is often brought up to settle some argument or another, although the usual result is to show that the argument cannot be resolved at all. According to Hare, who follows Hume here, a blik is a view of the world, and our blik governs what is, and what is not, an explanation. Moreover: ‘ ... differences between bliks about the world cannot be settled by observation of what happens in the world’
and: ‘ ... no proof could be given to make us adopt one blik rather than another ...’ ( Note 15 )
Bliks can be sane or insane, rational or irrational; and sometimes we have no blik at all. An atheistic blik about the universe might be said, therefore, to be a rational blik that the universe has no external explanation, whereas a religious blik will generally include an equally rational belief in the necessary existence of God. As Hume might say, where you go from there is up to you (and your blik). 4 For believers today, the third way could give the support of reason and philosophy to what they already believe through faith. For someone who is convinced by faith that God exists, the third way supports this by offering a reasoned proof that God must exist as a necessary being.
●●
The value of Aquinas’ argument for
religious faith
1 Some will argue that Aquinas’ third way has value for religious faith because, as part of his Cosmological Argument, it shows faith to be reasonable. The Cosmological Argument is a reasonable hypothesis that the universe owes its existence and its nature to the existence of an uncaused necessary being. There are alternative explanations concerning the origin of the universe, but they have no more probability than the cosmological argument.
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Summary of Aquinas’ Way 3
1 The basis of the argument in observation As with Paley’s Design Argument, Way 3 is a posteriori and inductive, so is based on observation. It is based on the particular observation that all things we see in the universe are contingent: they are moved, changed and caused. From the observation of contingency, Aquinas concluded that something must exist necessarily. 2 Aquinas’ Way 3: The argument from contingency and necessity The argument has two parts. In the first part, the core of the argument is that if everything is contingent, then at some time there was nothing. No contingent being is everlasting, so there must have been a time when nothing existed. If there was a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now, because ‘out of nothing, nothing can come’, but of course vast numbers of contingent things now exist. In the second part, Aquinas rejects the idea that there might be an infinite series of caused necessary beings. That would also be absurd, because then there would be no ultimate cause of the series. So there must be an ‘uncaused’ necessary being who sustains all caused necessary beings and all contingent beings. This is God. 3 Criticisms from Hume and Russell Criticism 1: (Russell) – Way 3 commits the fallacy of composition. This is the fallacy of inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of part of the whole, or of every part of the whole. Russell aims this criticism at Way 2, but it also applies to Way 3, which goes from: 1 every thing in the universe is contingent; to 2 the universe as a whole is contingent. This is fallacious because we can claim that: 1 every thing in the universe is contingent; but 2 the universe as a whole is necessary. In defence of Way 3, Bruce Reichenbach rejects this claim on the grounds that Way 3 resembles the form of the argument: ‘The wall is built from bricks, so the wall is brick’, which is not fallacious. Way 3 says, ‘The universe is built from contingent things, so the universe is contingent.’ This may be wrong, but the form of the argument is not a fallacy. Criticism 2: (Hume and Russell) – the words, ‘necessary being’ are meaningless (Hume’s version) Having already rejected the claim of the Ontological Argument that ‘God exists’ is logically true, Hume now rejects Aquinas’ claim
in Way 3 that God is a necessary being, because he thinks that this is the same claim. However, this is not a valid criticism of Aquinas. For a start, Aquinas rejects the Ontological Argument, so where he refers in Way 3 to God as a necessary being, he means that God has ‘metaphysical’ necessity, and not logical necessity. Aquinas means that the existence of contingent things requires the existence of a being (God) whose necessity is from itself, and who causes all contingent beings and all caused necessary beings to exist. Criticism 3: (Hume) – the universe itself may exist necessarily Aquinas accepts this, but argues that the universe could only exist necessarily if it was brought into existence by an ‘uncaused’ necessary being. Who is right here depends on what you think is the most probable explanation for the universe: a necessarily existent mind, or necessarily existent m a t te r. 4 Strengths and weaknesses of Aquinas’ argument These are fairly evenly balanced. Aside from the three criticisms and responses above: Criticism 4: Russell thinks that the universe exists as an unexplainable brute fact, but if the universe is unexplainable, it seems very odd that science works on the opposite principle. Criticism 5: Some object that there could be a group of necessary beings rather than just one; however Aquinas argues that unless there is one being who contains within itself the reason for its own existence, then the existence of ‘anything’ is inexplicable. Criticism 6: Some object that there could be an infinite regress of contingent beings, with no need for a first necessary being; but a this still would not explain why there is something rather than nothing, and b although we can have mathematical infinities, we have no evidence that an infinite past sequence can exist in the ‘real’ world. Criticism 7: Some object that the universe itself may exist eternally and uncaused; but if so, one wonders why. No scientific cosmological theories can explain why there is something rather than nothing, whereas the idea of God explains exactly that. 5 The status of Aquinas’ argument as a ‘proof’ a It cannot be a proof in the logical sense, because inductive arguments deal in probabilities rather than proofs.
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Arguments for the existence of God
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b Gerry Hughes suggests that we should redefine ‘proof’ to include the idea of ‘overwhelming probability’. Nobody has observed quarks, for example, yet their existence is overwhelmingly probable. Equally, nobody has observed God, yet a transcendent God is overwhelmingly probable as the cause of the universe (according to Hughes). c However probable it might be, the argument does not convince atheists. d For modern believers, the third way could give the support of reason and philosophy to what they already believe through faith – that God exists as a metaphysically necessary being.
6 The value of Aquinas’ argument for religious faith a It does show faith to be reasonable. b Anybody with faith can understand the evidence used by the third way. c Moreover, the third way is supported by the Design Argument. d However, some believers will not accept Aquinas’ argument, for example, Kant and Barth. e For Aquinas, faith in God is supported by reason, but faith does not come from reasoned arguments, but through God’s grace.
####### Three suggestions for practice and development
Use one or more of these three questions / claims as a homework assignment, a class essay, or as a focus for practice. 1 Explain the part played by the concept of an infinite regress, both in objecting to Aquinas’ third way and in supporting it. 2 ‘The third way commits the fallacy of composition.’ How far do you agree? 3 Evaluate the claim that Aquinas’ third way proves the existence of God.
1-3 Arguments for the existence of God The cosmological argument
Subject: Philosophy
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