In other places I have detailed at least portions of a proof for an entity I call "the uncaused cause", or "God." Here I have devoted a post exclusively to proving the logical necessity of an uncaused cause by presenting and affirming each of the premises necessary to arrive at such a conclusion. Philosophers and theologians sometimes call this argument/proof the Kalam Cosmological argument, and it has enjoyed great popularity in recent times among Christian apologists and deists alike. Even if Christianity, a very specific form of theism, had absolutely no evidence to support it, I could not simultaneously be a rational person and deny the contents of this post to follow. I have placed the main premises and the conclusion of this proof in bold and will explain each premise.
1. Something exists.
Anyone who denies that something exists has to exist in order to deny the proposition. That makes this truth something I refer to as an axiom--a truth that holds no matter what else is true, and one that no one can deny without appealing to it and thus proving it in the process. This also makes the truth of the claim self-evident. By this I mean that since no one can refuse it apart from the contradiction of relying on it, it is immediately evident to any being with properly-functioning cognitive faculties.
2. Everything that exists either had a beginning or had no beginning.
These are the only two options; no other possibilities exist. Anyone who rejects this truth has abandoned reason and must therefore use logic to argue against logic, a hopeless contradictory exercise.
3. Everything that begins to exist has a cause; nothing can be caused by nothing.
Nothing can come out of absolutely nothing. I am not merely appealing to a complete absence of an experiential or scientific basis of something arising uncaused from absolutely nothing. I am not relying on a probabilistic case based on estimates of probability derived from sense experience, though everything in modern science does suggest that everything that begins to exist must have a cause. If the best argument for the fact that everything that begins has a cause rested on mere lack of anyone experiencing something appearing out of nothing, then it would not have an actual proof. However, I am not appealing to this (true) point. I am noting that it is logically impossible for something to arise and begin in a complete vacuum of anything. Out of nothing nothing comes. Logic proves this impossible.
The first three premises/statements (in bold) that I have presented in this post can be known by immediate, infallible reasoning. The first is self-evident, because someone has to affirm it in order to deny it. The second is nothing more than a simple use of the law of excluded middle. The third articulates an immediately obvious logical truth that no scientific discovery could ever overturn.
4. Infinite regress of cause and effect is impossible.
If cause and effect (or time) extended infinitely into the past, nothing could ever actually happen, as there would always be an infinite number of causes and effects in the past and thus no particular effect could ever actually be caused. This also applies to time, as I have explained before [1]. No present moment of time could ever arrive if there were always an infinite number of moments in time before it. For this reason someone cannot count down from either positive or negative infinity to any particular number; there has to be a starting point for any counting down of numbers to be achieved.
I will recite words I wrote last year to demonstrate this:
"Someone can know with absolute certainty--with no way he or she is wrong--that any possible universe must have a beginning by using logic and math, both of which contain principles that are knowable a priori; that is, for certain components of them nothing more than brief rational reflection is required to understand the proof. It is absolutely possible count down from 5 to 0. This is obvious. A person could even count down from 6,000 or 13,000,000,000 (both the general opposing estimates of the age of the universe from different ideologies) to 0, even if it takes a monstrous amount of time. But no one can count down from infinity to 0 because it is impossible to do so without a fixed starting point. Otherwise the person would be forever counting and never reach 0. In the same way, it is impossible for any possible universe to not have a beginning because the present moment of time could never arrive. Nothing could ever happen in a universe with an infinite past because there would be no starting point to reach any particular event or moment from. Because the material world--the natural world--had a beginning and nothing can be responsible for its own creation, since self-creation is impossible because something would have to exist before it existed in order to create itself, the cause of the cosmos must by definition and logical necessity be supernatural" [2].
Anyone who denies that past moments of time exist has embraced an impossible idea, for a moment of time passes from the future into the present, and from the ever-so brief present into the past, where it becomes a part of elapsed moments of time. Time is a duration of existence, divided up into individual moments by which we measure it. Anyone who believes time is an illusion must think and reason in time to even come to that belief.
5. Therefore an uncaused cause exists.
Since something exists, nothing can come from nothing, and an infinite regress of causality and time is impossible, an uncaused cause exists by pure logical necessity. Something has always existed uncaused, uncreated, and outside of the need for time. I call this entity or thing God. I have elaborated in other posts on what attributes this uncaused cause must possess (you can see excerpts about this below in the footnotes). This truth remains unaffected and mandatory in any material world, so no one can use the simulation hypothesis, multiverse theory, or panspermia theory (the idea that aliens created humans) to avoid it. Whether or not the uncaused cause crated humans directly has nothing to do with this proof for its existence, so the possibility that, for instance, aliens created human life does not negate the absolute need for an uncaused cause of everything in the material world. The uncaused cause is not an unnecessary notion--without such a thing nothing else could ever come to exist. Even apart from all of the evidence for Christianity, logical proof of a theistic entity was available to all people at all points in history; they only needed to reflect using pure logic to arrive at this conclusion.
No, this does not prove that the uncaused cause is the Yahweh of the Judeo-Christian worldview. No, it does not prove that the uncaused cause has a moral nature or a loving one. It does not follow from the conclusion that the uncaused cause is even a personal being. In addition, there are things that neither were created nor depend on the uncaused cause for their existence, since they exist by intrinsic necessity of their own (the laws of logic and the space that holds matter [3]), although almost all theists deny this brute fact or are ignorant of it. What this syllogism does prove is that an uncaused cause exists by inescapable necessity, regardless of how fiercely some people may hate the potential ramifications.
[1]. See the following for more details:
A. "This cosmological model has sparked some speculation that a multiverse would be eternal in the past. Contrary to what some new atheists like Lawrence Krauss have implied, a multiverse cannot escape an initial "Big Bang" (a beginning of the multiverse). Allow me to demonstrate why. It is impossible for there to be an infinite number of events or moments of time in the past. If I asked someone to count down from 63 to 0, they could do so. Even if I asked this person to count down from 15,000,000,000 to 0, it would be possible to comply even if an extraordinary quantity of time was spent doing this. However, if I requested that he or she count down from infinity to 0, they would be entirely unable to. Why? With no starting point, this individual could never reach 0, much less even begin their task. In the same way, there cannot be an infinite amount of time in the past because there would be no way for the present moment to arrive. Thus, time itself had an absolute fixed beginning that each second moves me further away from. A multiverse cannot avoid this fact or threaten it in any way. Note that this proof has nothing to do with whether or not the future is infinite; there can be an infinite number of moments in the future but there cannot be in the past."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-multiverse-part-1.html
B. "I decided to state up front that, usually, I do not like citing scientific evidence for the Big Bang as support for the fact that the universe had a beginning and I want to explain why: although the existing scientific evidence for the Big Bang is very strong, logic and its counterpart/extension mathematics are necessary to prove that there is no such thing as an infinite number of moments in the past and therefore it is logically impossible for there to not be a finite beginning to time and thus the universe also. While current cosmology strongly supports a finite past, logic alone can actually prove that the past is finite."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-god-of-big-bang.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/simulation-hypothesis-hints-of-theism.html
[3]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-ramifications-of-axioms.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-refutation-of-naturalism-part-2.html
No comments:
Post a Comment