Cosmological Argument

Warburton points out that the design arguments are empirical; that they are based on direct observation of the universe. The First Cause or Cosmological Argument is instead based merely on the fact that the universe exists. This is important for understanding the Argument, its objections, and the responses to those objections.

The Argument states:

1. Whatever exists has a cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Notice God is not attributed to being this universal "cause". If he was, we would have the objection Warburton raises first. The Argument is self-contradictory because it shows that nothing exists that is uncaused and yet doesn't apply this premise to God. He is the uncaused cause. By the logic of the Argument, wouldn't we be justified in asking, "what caused God?"

The atheist conversely promotes the view that the universe is eternal, an infinite regression of causes. But that would violate premise (1) because the infinite string of causes, namely, the always-existing universe, is causeless. It is the one exception. Just like God in the alternative.

This is why I prefer the Argument as structured above for its simplicity and its invitation to investigate the nature of the concluded-upon cause. Inevitably we are forced to "empiricize" the Argument further than simply that the universe exists in order to improve its force in proving God's existence.

Let's return to the idea of an infinite regression of causes. This is preferred by atheists to the standard Big Bang model because it escapes the need to explain the original cause, the "big banger". An eternal universe is not a new idea, the Greeks assumed it, and the modern cosmologist seeking to avoid the implications of the Big Bang devises clever alternate theories all based on an infinite universal past. (Multiverses, for example)

But can an actually infinite number of real things actually exist? A potentially infinite number of things can surely exist: a given distance can be divided in half, those halves into fourths, those fourths into eighths, on and on into infinity. But can an actual infinite number of things exist?

Contemporary mathematics says no, simply because real, actually infinite progressions produce self-contradictions. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Zero, you might respond, but consider this: if you had an actually infinite progression and subtracted every odd item, 1, 3, 5, etc. on into infinity, your math problem's solution, infinity minus infinity, now equals infinity (every even item), not zero! So an actually infinite series cannot exist, they are just ideas.

Now, accepting that the universe has a cause, and since time and space itself came about as a result of the Big Bang, we can deduce that that cause is transcendent, that is, outside space and time. Since the idea of casuality is bound to time-space, we have ample reason to conclude the universe's ultimate cause is an un-caused cause, so as to avoid Warburton's objection of self-contradiction.

His final objection is the same as with the design arguments: that the Argument is limited in what it proves of the theists' traditional definition of God. I concede this, with some modifications to what Warburton says the Argument does show about God. We agree the Argument shows an all-powerful God able to create everything within time and space. Warburton however denies that the Argument proves omniscience. I contend it does, since an effect cannot be greater than its cause (the so-called Principle of Causality). It would be absurd to claim that God created a universe that contains more knowledge than he as Creator possesses. He would have to possess at least as much knowledge as is in his "effect," or Creation, and since the idea of knowledge existing outside our universe is pure speculation, we may at this time conclude God to be omniscient from the Cosmological Argument.

Theist philosophers also contend the Argument shows a personal, rather than mechanical, first-cause, because for a transcendent cause to make a temporal effect, it has to be a personal agent freely choosing to cause an effect in the temporal realm. If the transcendent cause were mechanical, its effect would be, logically, likewise transcendent, not temporal.

The Cosmological Argument is mute on God's all-goodness, due to the fact of the existence of evil and suffering in the universe he caused to exist. This will be addressed in a later argument.