God is
Uncreated
The problem of “what created God?” is
summarized well by Bertrand Russell’s rather dismissive treatment of the First
Cause argument:
It is
maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back
in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and
to that First Cause you give the name of God. That argument, I suppose, does
not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not
quite what it used to be. The philosophers and men of science have got going on
cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart
from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is
one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and
was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time
accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of
eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography, and I there found this
sentence: “My father taught me that the question ‘Who made me?’ cannot be
answered, since it immediately suggests the further question ‘Who made God?’”
That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the
argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must
have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be
the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.[1]
Serious Metaphysicians
Don't Dismiss First Cause
The major thrust of Russell’s argument
concerns the universality of the causal principle. Russell believes that “First
Cause arguments” are based on the assumption that “everything must have a
cause.” If any metaphysician seriously assumed this, then he would be liable to
Russell’s judgment that his argument is (stupidly) open to the question, “What
caused God?” Fortunately, I can attest that very few metaphysicians in
history were stupid enough to argue Russell’s “universality of causation,”
making his rendition of “First Cause arguments” a straw man. It
should be noted that in the three philosophical proofs given in NPEG (Chapters
Three through Five), it was never assumed that “everything has a
cause.” Indeed, the assumption was quite the contrary.
In the metaphysical proof (given in Chapter 3
of NPEG), a complete disjunction was given: In all reality there is either only
conditioned
(caused) realities or there is at least one unconditioned (uncaused)
reality. This proof does not assume that everything has a cause,
but rather demonstrates that an unconditioned reality (i.e., an uncaused
reality) would have to exist if the hypothesis that “all reality is
conditioned” entails that nothing exist. It does entail this. And
hence, the proof does not fall prey to the question, “What caused God?” because
this question, within the context of the proof, would be “What caused the unconditioned
(uncaused) reality?” which is, of course, absurd. The Lonerganian
argument rests on grounds similar to the metaphysical one (see Chapter 4,
Section II.A of NPG), and so does not fall prey to Russell’s objection for the
same reasons.
In the third proof (given in Chapter 5 of
NPEG), it was not assumed that everything had to have a cause, and a first
uncaused caused was likewise not assumed. Rather, it was shown that
a
first cause of past time had to exist because the hypothesis of infinite past
time contradicted the constitutive nature of time necessary to prevent
contradictions in history. Thus, a first uncaused cause was
shown to be necessary, and further, to transcend temporality altogether.
In sum, all three proofs never assumed the
universality of the causal principle (“everything must have a cause”). Indeed,
every proof assumed the hypothetical possibility of the contrary (i.e., that an
uncaused
reality could exist).
Russell’s statement also includes another
objection, namely that proofs of God have inadequate definitions of causation:
“The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has
not anything like the vitality it used to have….”[2] Since
the days of Hume[3] and
Kant,[4] the
objection has been raised that we do not know precisely what a cause is. In
recent years in the areas of quantum mechanics and Relativity Theory, the
notion of causation has expanded enormously to include information in quantum
fields, changes in space-time geometry, non-aggregative motion in plasmas, and
a host of other non-linear, non-experienceable, seeming causal relationships. Most
philosophers and scientists do not believe they understand one one-hundredth of
the possible manifestations of causes. But one does not have to
understand or experience the full range of causation in order to use some general
principles of causation within the arguments for God’s existence.
Recall for a moment that science is quite
different from metaphysics. Science seeks to understand the
particulars of data (say, causation within a quantum field), while metaphysics
uses completely disjunctive categories with the most general definition
possible. Thus, the only definition of causation with which the
above three proofs are concerned is what is completely disjunctive to “an unconditioned
reality” (first and second proofs), and “a creator of past time
outside of this universe” (third proof). These proofs do not require an
experience or understanding of every possible manifestation of the above three
references to the “caused.” Indeed, they do not have to make recourse to
the notion of “causation” (with all of its historical baggage) at
all.
Recourse was made to three categories which
could adequately cover the entire range of action, interaction,
interrelationship, and energy emission in the General Theory of Relativity,
Quantum Theory, quantum cosmology, string theory, etc. – namely, “conditioned
realities” (realities which depend on the fulfillment of conditions
of any kind for their existence) and “conditions” (any reality
upon which a conditioned reality depends for its existence) and “unconditioned
reality” (a reality which does not depend on conditions of any kind
for its existence). Conditioned realities and conditions can include space-time
manifolds, electromagnetic fields, quantum fields, plasma fields, positions in
the space-time manifold, structures of complexes, magnetic monopoles –
literally any reality which is not unconditioned.
Dependence on conditions is all that needs to
be known in order for the proof to function. The
kind of condition is absolutely irrelevant to the functioning of the proof. No
doubt, in the future, the meaning of causation will be enhanced and changed
with respect to the kinds of conditions and conditioned realities. But what
will remain unchanged is that there will be conditioned realities, and that
these realities will not, by themselves, be able to exist without an
unconditioned reality. Furthermore, what will remain unchanged is
that an unconditioned reality must be absolutely simple (proved
in Chapter 3, Section II.B of NPEG) and unrestricted intelligibility (proved in
Chapter 4, Section II.B of NPEG); and that absolute simplicity and unrestricted
intelligibility must be unique; which means that everything
else in reality must be conditioned. This puts to rest Russell’s
further criticism that “if there can be anything without a cause, it may just
as well be the world as God.”
By now it will be clear that the first two
proofs do not assume that realities need a cause. Far from it – they actually
demonstrate that all realities which are not absolutely simple and unrestrictedly
intelligible must be conditioned (caused) realities. So long as the
proofs require nothing more than these most generic, completely disjunctive
definitions of “causation,” philosophers and scientists can keep changing and
expanding their views of causation without affecting the intelligibility or the
validity of the three above-mentioned proofs.
We now proceed to Russell’s third objection,
namely, “how do we know that there are not many uncaused realities?” The only
reason this question comes up is because Russell has not analyzed any real
proofs for God’s existence – but only his strawman argument. If he had read any
of the proofs which resemble the two proofs in NPEG Chapters Three and Four, he
would have noticed that after proving that there must be at least
one uncaused reality, most metaphysicians prove that there can only be one
uncaused reality (see NPEG Chapter Three, Section III and Chapter
Four, Section II.C). After showing that there can be only one uncaused reality,
it is easy to show that everything else in all reality must be
caused. This follows by a simple disjunctive deduction (i.e.
everything else besides the one uncaused reality must be caused). Thus, these
proofs do not assume that there can only be one uncaused reality; they prove
it. Russell’s third objection, then, is irrelevant to these proofs,
and as we can see, the proofs of God actually help to clarify
the caused status of everything else in reality.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if Russell had assessed any
rigorous proofs for the existence of God, he would never have asked the
question, “what created God?” Rigorous proofs first demonstrate that
there must be at least one uncaused cause (They certainly do not
assume that everything must be caused as Russell suggests). Rigorous
proofs then go on to demonstrate that there can only be one uncaused cause,
which leads inevitably to the deduction that everything else besides the
one uncaused cause, must be caused.
