Truth Unites - Why Asking "What Caused God" Misses the Mark

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Gavin Ortlund defends the cosmological argument for God's existence from the common objection, "if everything needs a cause, what caused God?" Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Among the most basic and kind of intuitive ways to conclude that God exists or to argue for the existence of God are cosmological arguments, which can be pretty diverse, but generally work by positing God as the first cause of the world. But if you ever use an argument like this or follow this argument, you're sure to hear this response. Well, if everything needs a cause, what caused God? In this video, I want to respond to that objection and show that it misses the target. Second, we'll do three things. That's first. Second thing, I want to tell a bit of the history of how this objection even came up in the first place. And then third, I want to explain how the resilience of cosmological arguments against objections like that highlights the beauty and elegance of theism as a way of looking at reality.

First, the problem with this objection, if everything needs a cause, what caused God, can be stated pretty simply. namely, cosmological arguments simply don't say that everything needs a cause. There's three main versions of this argument, Kalam-Libnizian-Tomistic. The Kalam argument comes from medieval Muslim philosophers, and it's been popularized by William Lane Craig more recently. These arguments draw off from the fact that the universe appears to have begun to exist. Leibnizian arguments come from Gottfried-Libniz, 17th and 18th century philosopher, or this has to do with the principle of sufficient reason. Tomistic arguments are my favorite.

These are from Thomas Aquinas. For example, Thomas's third way of the famous five ways to prove the existence of God in the Summa Theological is an argument from contingency. So a contingent thing is something that doesn't have to exist, as opposed to a necessary thing that does have to exist. And Thomas is basically reasoning from contingent things to a necessary thing. And to me, this is, this is how I like to think of the broad intuition that gives cosmological arguments their strength, that necessity is the context in which to understand contingency. If you find things that don't have to exist, but in fact do exist, and you think about them long enough and hard enough, eventually you arrive upon something that does have to exist and is existence itself. Its essence and its existence

are the same. So those are, I mean, there's other versions of this argument as well, but those are some of the once, but none of them say everything needs a cause that is simply not present in any of the major historical articulations of these arguments or their contemporary defenses, at least sophisticated contemporary defenses. Some cosmological arguments say that contingent things need a cause. Some say that affects need a cause. Some say that everything that begins to exist needs a cause. Some say that things whose essence and existence are not identical need a cause. Some say that whatever changes from potential into actual need a cause, but none of them just say everything needs a cost. In fact, just the opposite. The whole point of this argument is to show there must be something

uncaused. The chain of causation cannot go back forever, and therefore there must be something outside the chain of causation, and therefore there must be two fundamentally different kinds of things that exist, the caused and the uncaused. You have kind of a primal anchor, and you have everything else emanating out of that primal anchor. This is the whole goal of the argument, not just to point to a first cause, but an ontologically distinct, uncaused first cause. So don't think of like a series, a horizontal series of dominoes, and somehow the first domino just gets a pass and doesn't need to be explained, like the second and the third and the fourth and so on do need to be explained. Rather, think of the first cause as kind of the ground in a vertical hierarchy on which any domino that

ever exists must rest. Sometimes philosophers distinguish between linear versus hierarchical causation to make this point. I'll put up a statement from Frederick Copleston to that effect. You can pause and read if you want. Now, you can see this idea of ontologically distinct first causes in, for example, the first three of Thomas's five ways. The first argument suggests a first mover who is himself unmoved by anything else. The second suggests a first cause, which is itself uncaused. The third suggests a necessary being whose necessity comes from himself.

And what's crucial to see in each case is this kind of ontological duality, two different kinds of things. So in the first argument, you have things in motion, which possess actuality and potentiality variously, and then you have the first mover who is unmoved and is pure actuality. In the second argument, or way, you have things within the causal chain, and then you have the first cause, which is outside the causal chain. In the third argument, you have contingent things that might not have been and are perishable, and then you have the necessary thing, which must be and is eternal. Now look, so in every case, you see very clearly the whole point is to say there's two kinds of things. It's not true that everything needs a cause.

There's two things, some that do need a cause, some, and then there's one thing that doesn't. Now, you can deny that kind of duality. You can say, no, there's only one kind of being. You can make an argument for that. Or you can attack the cosmological argument in other ways. You can say, well, the first cause isn't God, for example, fine, okay, then we get into that. But if the question is simply posed if everything needs a cause, what caused God? What it shows is the proposal has simply not been grasped because God is being proposed and suggested as the candidate for this uncaused ontologically unique entity that explains the whole causal chain. You can deny that such a thing exists, but if you ask what caused it,

It's like saying, you know, what caused the uncaused? It's like asking, who is the bachelor's wife? Or what is the number that's double infinity or something like this? And it just shows that the subject matter has not been understood. And the force of this argument is not landed upon people. So it's really problematic when people act like, oh, well, when you propose God is uncaused, you're kind of trying to patch up holes in how the argument is originally. working, as though we started off saying, well, everything needs a cause, and then we realized,

oh, darn, that applies to God, too. And then we say, well, let's just make God an exception to it. And it's like, no, positing an uncaused first cause is not a post hoc move. That's the very originating concern and interest of the argument. Well before Christianity, by the way, this is how Aristotle is arguing. He's positing an unmoved mover on the basis of change in the world. And that's not a, so, so, the adjective unmoved is not a post hoc change. It's or responding to a weakness. It's just the whole point, you know. And so whether Aristotle's argument works or not,

it's not even touched if somebody says, well, if everything needs to be moved, who moved the unmoved mover? It's like, no, he's not saying everything needs to be moved. Okay. So that's the basic thing. Now, I think that is fairly clear. But now we can just ask a question that comes up

Because how has this objection become so popular? Because this idea, this what caused God, is the stock and trade response to cosmological arguments. You see it in Christopher Hitchens, and God is not great. In response to both cosmological and design arguments, you see it in the opening pages of the preface of a universe from nothing by Lawrence Krause, a very influential book. And then he falls back on that at crucial junctures within the book, like in the very end. end. It's arguably one of the themes of Richard Dawkins, the God Delusion, where it also features prominently at the start of chapter three, as he's considering Thomas Aquinas' first three of the five ways,

and he responds to all of them at once. And you can see it in other passages of that book as well. You also see it in Sam Harris. You also see it in Daniel Dennett. And of course, we won't even try to stack up all the people on YouTube and elsewhere at the popular level who think this is a kind of knockdown of the cosmological argument. So it actually raises a historically interesting question, and that is, if this counter argument is such a missing of the target, how did it get so common? And in his book, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Ed Faser, traces out the history of this a little bit, and he points out, this is pretty much never how the argument has been historically articulated, the idea that everything needs a cause. And he's able to locate one book written in 1996,

which was written by a specialist in philosophy of religion that has language like this, you know, everything that is needs a cause. And then, of course, he can find examples of that language at the popular level, but for the most part, no sophisticated version of a cosmological argument says that everything needs a cause. And so it raises the question, you know, how did this caricature start to begin with? And Phaser points to a 1970 article that addresses this by Atomist Philoist Philoist. philosopher named Norris Clark. And basically the suggestion is that it's the influence of the book

Why I Am Not a Christian by the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell earlier in the 20th century. Russell summarized his own reason for rejecting first cause arguments in this way. He referenced a line from John Stuart Mill that he himself had heard from his father. The question, Who Made Me, cannot be answered since it immediately suggests the further question of who made God. And Russell is saying that he thinks this shows the fallacy of the first cause argument. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. And Norris notes that perhaps an earlier person, even earlier than John Stuart Mill, might have been David Hume, who is articulating something like this response in a kind of misunderstanding of a different argument from Descartes. But it's really Russell's

influence. That's the more immediate explanation for the popularization of this response today. And he says, we can only conclude then that the Hume-Russell tradition of anti-theistic argument, on this point at least, somehow got off to a bad start by completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the very argument it was trying to refute, and that it has continued to repeat itself ever since, talking only to itself, and without ever bothering to inquire whether the supposed other party to the debate was still there at all or had ever been there. The plain way to put it is that we're dealing with a tradition of misunderstanding, a tradition in which misunderstanding has become entrenched. Clark calls this what caused God objection, a tradition of argumentation that is

truly in a self-repetitive rut, a tradition that has long since ceased to look outside of itself to check with reality and see whether the adversary it so triumphantly and effortlessly demolishes really exists at all. So the question is kind of what do we need to do to get back on track here? What do we need to do to get the conversation to move forward at this point? Because there's lots of smart atheists. Lots of smart atheists with great objections. We have great discussions. These arguments are not simple. Anybody who knows me knows, I'm not triumphalist about apologetics. I don't try to spike the football in the end zone after arguments. I like abductive arguments. I like modesty. I think these questions require patience, so forth. But on this point, you know, we just need to get

beyond this. It's like you just, you think we need to get bumper stickers or something that say, the cosmological argument never says everything needs a cause. or everything needs a cause is not a premise of the cosmological argument, or some way to hammer this point home, because it seems like we've gotten stuck in our dialogue here. Instead, we should focus on other objections. Alexander Proust summarizes the four needs that every cosmological argument must satisfy. This one is what he calls the taxicab problem. You can read this essay in the Blackwell companion to natural theology. Some of these other ones are the ones we should focus on. All right, so to conclude, now obviously, a full examination of cosmological

arguments would require me laying the arguments out more, at least one of them more, and then working through other various objections. But let me just observe based upon just what we've gone through here and the resilience of cosmological arguments to this more superficial objection, how it already highlights something of the elegance and beauty of theism as a possibility. cosmological arguments are asking a very basic question. How do we explain reality? Why do we find things that don't have to be here and yet, in fact, are here? Like us. And even more basically than that, why is there anything? Rather than nothing. Here's how Pat Flynn puts it in his new book. It's a great book. We had a discussion about it. You can find on my channel coming out very shortly as well,

or maybe it's already out. We had a great discussion. He says, we want an explanation. for why there is anything of the type contingent, why there is any unfolding story of things that are, but didn't have to be and not nothing instead. That's a difficult and good question for any worldview, but cosmological arguments are one way to demonstrate how theism has a kind of elegance in responding to that question

and in conceptualizing reality. I like to put it like this. Something has to explain reality. God is the least arbitrary candidate. God reduces bruteness the most. God is the least sort of brute explanation. This is a little similar to how I remember Richard Swinburne summarizing the import of the cosmological argument, even though he's kind of talking about the universe as a whole. He says, it is very unlikely that the universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused. The existence of the universe is strange and puzzling. It can be made more comprehensible if we

suppose that it is brought about by God. Now, why is God the least arbitrary candidate as an explanation for reality? Theism reduces brute facts to a minimum because it says everything that exists is caused by one thing that is singular, simple, necessary, and absolute. The hypothesis of God lacks any arbitrary limits or boundaries. In a great article entitled, God explains the most reality. Here's how Josh Rasmussen puts it. Theism helps us identify a relevant difference between explained things and the unexplained foundation of reality. Theism says, fundamental reality is fundamental in virtue of having a supreme nature. This is why I sometimes think cosmological arguments have a kind of interesting relationship to the ontological argument,

which I also have a video out on. Ultimately, I think this argument is a very powerful way to gesture towards something ontologically unique that explains reality as we experience it. But here's, and I actually think you can see the force of this argument in the way people respond. If you look at a lot of the responses, because a lot of times people are willing to even go so far as to say, okay, maybe individual things all have a cause, but how do we know that the entire collection of everything isn't just a brute, uncaused reality? The last objection our raise in this terse tier list relates to the greatest full time. David Hume. While theists tend to be quick to dismiss Hume's accusation of contingency arguments

committing a composition fallacy, likewise to Bertrand Russell, I think that Hume's objection remains. Even if every contingent being has a reason, cause, or ground for its existence, it just doesn't follow that the collection of contingent beings has a reason, cause, or ground for its existence. Russell liking this to concluding that the human race has a mother since every individual human has a mother, it just doesn't follow. It could be the case that the collection has a reason, cause, or ground, as, after all, it's true that if every brick in a wall is red, then the wall itself is red. But to the contrary, it's false to say that if every brick in the wall is small,

then the wall itself is small. The crux is that the proponent has a lot of work to do here, and by my light, at least, Hume's objection remains intact. Now, the first problem is that cosmological arguments don't require that the entire universe is contingent. Here's how Faser puts it when he's summarizing Aristotle's argument. The claim that the universe as a whole has a cause is not a premise of the argument. To argue for the existence of God, you don't need to start from the claim that the universe had a beginning, and you don't need to start with any other claim about the universe as a whole either. You can start with any old

trivial object existing here and now, a stone, a cup of coffee, whatever, because even for that one thing to exist, even for a moment, there must be a purely actual cause. actualizing it at that moment. That's in summarizing Aristotle's argument from change in the world, from potential to actual. Now, any, so in other words, any particular object is enough to start the argument. And that is why, by the way, cosmological arguments are also not a god of the Gaps appeal. You hear people talking like this too, like, oh, well, we just don't know enough, because the subject matter is so remote. We don't know enough about the origins of the universe, so we really should be cautious about this argument because we might discover something

that removes the need for any sort of uncaused first cause. But the need for a ground of being itself is not a gap. Even if we had an exhaustive understanding of every single physical event, there's no gaps, we would still need an explanation of where the world itself came from. The metaphor I use in this book that I wrote is thinking that scientific advance

that removes gaps of knowledge will remove the need for an ontologically distinct first cause. is like getting two-thirds of the way through Hamlet and thinking the final one-third of the play will somehow replace the need for Shakespeare. I like that metaphor of an author and a story for creator and creation. But more basically, just think about how implausible it would be to say, yeah, individual things have a cause, but everything collectively is just a brute fact. If somebody is driven to that line of defense, I like to just kind of say, fine. If you can believe that go with it, but don't say that theism invokes mystery. You know, it reminds me of J.L. Mackey

in his response to cosmological arguments along these lines several decades ago, he's responding to the principle of sufficient reason, and he said the argument expresses a demand that things should be intelligible through and through. The simple reply is that there is nothing that justifies this demand. And his conclusion to the whole argument is we have no good ground for an a priori certainty that there could not have been a sheer unexplained beginning of things. I like a sheer unexplained beginning of things. I talk a lot about that in my book, and I basically just say, okay, cool, man, if you want to go with that, you know, yeah, we all have to have some kind of starting point. If you think that is the way to go, then, you know,

you've inherited an extremely mysterious worldview, so don't have scorn and contempt for alternatives. ultimately, I think cosmological arguments have a lot of explanatory power to them, but they also have a beauty to them. And I would like to conclude by describing the emotional impact that this argument has upon me, and I think it can have upon others, because it's emotionally impactful as well as intellectually forceful. It feels a little bit like Hamlet saying, wait a second, maybe there's not just the other characters in this play.

Maybe there's an author. Hamlet opening himself up to the possibility of a relationship with Shakespeare is the most fundamental and important thing that could ever happen to him. And so with us, considering this question of what if there's a world beyond the world? What if there's, you know, it's incredibly exciting. What if there are different kinds of being altogether? It's like the children going through the wardrobe into Narnia. The metaphor I used in my book is, imagine you've spent all your life living in the basement with no conception of what the outside world is. You've never seen trees or stars. and suddenly you crash through the wall one day and you realize, oh my goodness, there's more out there.

There's a staircase up here leading up and you see sunlight coming through the slit in the bottom underneath the door and you're about to walk up the stairs and open the door and see what's out there. You're thinking there could be anything out there. Who knows what could be out there? This is a little bit like the import of saying, what if there's a necessary being? What if there's something, a different kind of being altogether? This kind of ontological opening up is what this argument does for you. It's incredibly exciting. And I relate to the sentiment of G.K. Chesterton when he said,

if the cosmos of the materialist is the real one, it's not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. This is how Puddlegloom feels as well when he's talking to the witch, when he's under a spell in the silver chair. And I opened my whole book with that passage. Alternatively, what if there is something beyond the cosmos? What if there is a kind of primal super-react? that's infinite and that not only has existence, but possesses existence. It's not simply real,

it's reality itself, and everything else that is real is so by participating in it. They might say, well, that sounds too good to be true. Surely, no, our world is the only thing that exists, but what cosmological arguments are trying to whisper to us is, our world doesn't look like it's self-explanatory. Our world itself looks like it's suggesting otherwise. And I love that thought. If it's wrong, it's certainly not wrong because someone can ask what caused God. And of course, as much as I love all these arguments, I would say, as a follower of Christ, we have an even more certain testimony than these, even though they're very powerful. And that is the entrance of God's son into history and the entrance of the Holy Spirit into our hearts. And even though I know this will annoy,

this will annoy secular critics. For those in the middle, and if you're not sure, the best advice I have is just sincere prayer. I think that is our best tool when you're wrestling with these things. If you don't have peace, if you don't have assurance in the gospel, which is the purpose of my ministry, to give people assurance that Jesus is real, if you don't have that, I think the best way to get it is sincerity and prayer.

And just basically say, God, if you are real, help me. show me. And the best thing is, not only does do these philosophical appeals suggest it and excite you, but actually the one they are suggesting is actually the kindest person you will ever fathom. And he actually will respond to that prayer if you pray it. Pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments and let me know. Should we make the bumper stickers? How do we do this? What do we need to do? I mean, how do we just need to like plaster it everywhere? Everything needs a cause.

Is not a premise of the cosmological argument. I don't know. I don't know what we need to do, but we'll keep trying. All right, thanks for watching. Let me know what you think. And in the comments, and I'll read the comments, and we'll have some good discussion about this, hopefully. Thanks.