The Cosmological Argument

This argument is more down to earth than the previous one. It doesn’t proceed from logic or what Kant called ‘pure reason’ but actually looks at the world and tries to prove that the very fact of the world’s existence demands the existence of God. In other words, that the world, as it exists and as we perceive it, needs the action of God in order to account for its existence.

The cosmological argument (cosmos world) can be put as follows. 

Everything that there is came from something else. I came from my parents. They from theirs and so on right back through evolution to the first signs of life on the planet. Earth itself came from off the sun. The sun is a star among many stars. These came from atoms of helium. The helium was formed through the rapid movement of hydrogen atoms. God made the hydrogen atoms.

It doesn’t matter which particular theory of creation’s history you take. The cosmological argument claims to be valid for all such theories. Do you think the world began with Adam and Eve? Very well, who made them? Did it all start off quite differently with a few atoms of cosmic dust? So where did the cosmic dust come from? Was the origin of the universe a big bang? Then who was responsible for the bang?

The cosmological argument is about what happened in the first place. Those who support it (they include the great theologian and saint, Thomas Aquinas: 1225-1274) will not allow that history just stretches back into time forever. They don’t believe in infinite series when it comes to things. It’s all right for numbers. You can, at least in theory, go on counting forever. But objects we can touch and see must have had a beginning. And, so it is argued, if a beginning then a creator. And that creator they call ‘God’.

The first objection to this argument is simply put: ‘Why need there ever have been a beginning? I see no compelling reason to think that things haven’t always existed in some shape or form’.

Sometimes the reply to this might be: ‘Well, everything you see in the world had a beginning at one time or another, so it’s reasonable to assume that the world itself had a beginning. And if a beginning, then somebody must have begun it’.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) questioned this. He said, ‘Because all the parts of the whole had a beginning is not sufficient reason to believe that the whole itself had a beginning’. In other words, to ask, ‘Where did shoes come from’ or even ‘Where did the dinosaurs come from’ are questions different in type from the question ‘Where did it all come from?’

Another objection to the cosmological argument asks quite abruptly ‘Who made God?’ And this isn’t as silly or as childish as it sounds. For if you’re not satisfied with cosmic dust or hydrogen atoms as the first thing in the universe, then why be satisfied with God as the first cause either?

If the reply is, ‘Ah, well you see, all those other things depend on God for their existence, but God is different from them in that he made them. He is eternal’. Then someone might answer: ‘How do you know?’ Two replies might possibly follow:

(1)     ‘1 know God is eternal because he is the one who made all that there

is.   He must be the First Cause. He must be eternal.’

To this the answer is simple: ‘But that God made all that there is, is precisely what is at question. So you’re just arguing in a circle.’

(2)     ‘God is different. He is defined as the First Cause of the universe. That’s what the word “God” means.’

The answer to this brings us back to familiar territory: ‘But why should I accept your definition of what “God” means? And how do you know that your definition of God, in your own mind and in words, corresponds with any such real being? This is just the ontological argument you’re giving me all over again! For unless you can prove on other grounds that God exists, there’s no reason for me to accept your definition of him.’

Summary

The cosmological argument seeks to demonstrate the existence of God from the fact of the existence of the universe: ‘Someone must have made ’. It is based on a strong dislike of an infinite series of events (sometimes called ‘an infinite regress’). But it may be objected that, while each individual thing in creation was created or formed out of something which came before it, there’s no sufficient reason to suppose that the whole universe must have had a beginning. Furthermore, simply to bring in the idea of God as a creator, or first term in the series, doesn’t make any useful contribution to the argument since the question can always be asked, ‘Who made God?’ If the reply is that no one made God for he is, by definition, the eternal creator, then this has no logical power to persuade, for there is no reason why anyone should accept that particular definition. The attempt to define God into existence is merely a version of the ontological argument whose defects are well known.