but it was quite strong enough even if the world had no beginning.
geoffrey
Maybe so; but this means that we are moving on to your second kind of cosmological argument—“sub-group” I think was your expression.
The Quest for a “First Cause”
leslie
Yes, I think that’s right. The second sub-group may be described, roughly, as the quest for a “First Cause.” Not necessarily first in time; more the starting-point of all causal series. The idea is that there are such things as causes and effects in the world; that causes explain their effects; and that there cannot be an infinite series of cause-and-effect with no beginning, because then, if there is no First Cause of all, there is no explanation for anything at all. What have you to say to this form?
geoffrey
That it is no better than the first. Probably worse. It tries to argue to a First Cause behind all causes. But this is based on a false way of looking at things.
Firstly, because there is no reason why the series shouldn’t go back for ever. Advocates of this argument have admitted that as far as philosophy can tell the world might have had no beginning in time. But in that case at least one series of causes and effects—that of events in this world—actually could go back for ever. It is not easy to see that there is any other series of causes and effects. And if there were, the same might apply to it; it too could go back indefinitely.
leslie
Unless the members of the series had to co-exist. Duns Scotus thought that was the case with what he called “essentially ordered” causes—causes which were responsible not for the existence of their effects but for their causative powers.
geoffrey
And William of Ockham pointed out that there was no reason why an essentially ordered cause should not cease to exist before its effect did; so that we were no further on than before. And even if Ockham were wrong, which he wasn’t, why might not this series, or any other you may name, go back for ever?
leslie
It has usually been answered that this would mean an infinity of co-existing things, and that this is impossible.
geoffrey
I do not see why it should be impossible. And the way you phrased your point suggests that you aren’t very sure of it yourself. The point I made earlier still holds good: if God is infinite and almighty, why couldn’t he create an infinity of things all existing together?
And I have another problem for you. We have been talking of “causes” and “effects” for convenience’s sake. But isn’t such talk very misleading?
leslie
Come, come! We talk about them every day. You are not, surely, trying to say that it is very misleading to talk about the “causes” of the First World War, or to say that lung cancer is a distressingly common “effect” of smoking?
geoffrey
No, I’m not. In such cases we are interested in questions like “How might the First World War have been averted?” or “How can we reduce the incidence of lung cancer?” That way, we can single out particular factors which are of special interest or usefulness and call them (for convenience’s sake, as I said) “causes.” But the truth of the matter is that wars and cancers (and more pleasant things too) are the result of enormously complicated states of affairs, linked to one another by the laws of nature. And it is no good trying to move by way of the laws of nature to a First Cause which is not part of nature at all.
myra
I’m not very happy about that, even though I am unsure about attempts to prove the existence of the Lord. You seem to be saying that God could not be the First Cause of the universe, not just that we can’t prove that He is. And this is ridiculous. Moreover, isn’t the will of God in itself a “law of nature”—indeed a more profound one than any other?
geoffrey
Yes, I suppose you are right, or rather would be right if there were a God. If there were, it would be possible to speak of him (or his creative will) as the cause of the universe in much the same way as one might speak of Anglo-German naval rivalry as one of the causes of the First World War. For it would be by his creative will’s being altered that the world could have been prevented from coming into existence. But it certainly isn’t possible to prove the reality of any such will, or of a God to exercise it.
“Contingent” and “Necessary” Beings
myra
What about the idea Leslie mentioned, near the start of our dialogue, of distinguishing between “contingent” and “necessary” beings—beings that exist but might not have, and beings that couldn’t not-exist?
geoffrey
It makes things worse, not better. For the notion of a “necessary being” is not at all a clear one. It seems to mean much the same as a First Cause plus an extra idea imported into the argument from nowhere—the idea that God’s existence is not only a truth but a necessary truth, like the truths of logic. If there were anything in the First Cause argument, it would show only that there was a being who was uncaused, not that there was one who was “necessary.”
leslie
It goes against the grain, but I’m inclined to agree with you.
myra
I am not sure that I am. If God really is God, it seems absurd to say that he might quite well never have existed.
geoffrey
Isn’t this getting perilously close to the “ontological argument,” which tried to show that since the very idea of God implied, as you say, that he was in some way “necessary,” he must exist? We none of us care for that argument, and in any case we agreed at the beginning not to discuss it.
myra
I wasn’t trying to devise an argument at all; just a comment on what Leslie was saying. Sorry, Leslie; you carry on.
leslie
What bothers me is that Geoffrey seems to think the existence of the universe as a whole is something that requires no explanation. To be honest, I have not spent very much time or energy defending the first two forms of this group of “cosmological arguments” because I thought the third was far and away the strongest.
myra
Then can we hear this “strongest argument,” please?
An Explanation for the World?
leslie
Generally speaking, we can look for explanations of things—of events, say, or states of affairs. Obviously, in many cases we don’t bother to look; but even when we don’t, we assume that there is some sort of explanation somewhere. Certainly we can always ask for one. Now this applies to the state of affairs which we call “the existence of the universe.” Why does this state of affairs hold? There must surely be some reason. But the only possible candidate is what you called “the creative will of God.”
geoffrey
You know the obvious answer to that just as well as I do. If everything requires an explanation, doesn’t the existence of a creator require one too?
myra
In some forms of Hinduism it actually has one. Brahma, the Creator, is himself derived from the supreme deity Vishnu; and Vishnu himself may be thought of as deriving from an impersonal Reality which lies beyond even him.
leslie
But that actually illustrates the point I was trying to make. You have to stop somewhere. It may be at the immediate Creator, or some being from whom even he derives; but there is an ultimate Explanation. If this dialogue included a Hindu—at least, a Hindu who held the position Myra has just described—I am sure it would make for much interesting discussion, but it