36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction

_{Donald McLaughlin

November 23, 2009

Cosmology, Culture, Philosophy, Physics, Religion, Science}

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The title of this post is also the title of a recent book by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. According to the website for The Edge Foundation,

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, known to Edge readers as a philosopher who has interesting things to say about Gödel and Spinoza, among others, enters into this conversation, taking on these and wider themes, and pushing the envelope by crossing over into the realm of fiction.

Goldstein isn’t the first novelist to appear on Edge, nor the first to discuss religion. In October 1989, the novelist Ken Kesey came to New York spoke to The Reality Club. “As I’ve often told Ginsberg,” he began, “you can’t blame the President for the state of the country, it’s always the poets’ fault. You can’t expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don’t have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.”

It’s in this spirit that Edge presents a brief excerpt from the first chapter, and the nonfiction appendix from 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

Included in the review by John Brockman is an excerpt from the first chapter along with a non-fiction appendix that lists the 36 arguments for the existence of God to which the book title refers. The latter includes analysis of the ‘flaws’. I’ll give one example here. The appendix discusses the cosmological argument thusly:

1. The Cosmological Argument

1. Everything that exists must have a cause.

2. The universe must have a cause (from 1).

3. Nothing can be the cause of itself.

4. The universe cannot be the cause of itself (from 3).

5. Something outside the universe must have caused the universe (from 2 & 4).

6. God is the only thing that is outside of the universe.

7. God caused the universe (from 5 & 6).

8. God exists.

FLAW 1: can be crudely put: Who caused God? The Cosmological Argument is a prime example of the Fallacy of Passing the Buck: invoking God to solve some problem, but then leaving unanswered that very same problem when applied to God himself. The proponent of the Cosmological Argument must admit a contradiction to either his first premise — and say that though God exists, he doesn’t have a cause — or else a contradiction to his third premise — and say that God is self-caused. Either way, the theist is saying that his premises have at least one exception, but is not explaining why God must be the unique exception, otherwise than asserting his unique mystery (the Fallacy of Using One Mystery To Pseudo-Explain Another). Once you admit of exceptions, you can ask why the universe itself, which is also unique, can’t be the exception. The universe itself can either exist without a cause, or else can be self-caused . Since the buck has to stop somewhere, why not with the universe?

FLAW 2: The notion of “cause” is by no means clear, but our best definition is a relation that holds between events that are connected by physical laws. Knocking the vase off the table caused it to crash to the floor; smoking three packs a day caused his lung cancer. To apply this concept to the universe itself is to misuse the concept of cause, extending it into a realm in which we have no idea how to use it. This line of skeptical reasoning, based on the incoherent demands we make of the concept of cause, was developed by David Hume.

COMMENT: The Cosmological Argument, like the Argument from the Big Bang, and The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, are expressions of our cosmic befuddlement at the question: why is there something rather than nothing? The late philosopher Sydney Morgenbesser had a classic response to this question: “And if there were nothing? You’d still be complaining!”

This analysis doesn’t work because the argument is mis-stated. The first premise is not “anything which exists must have a cause”, but “anything which begins to exist must have a cause”, which makes a huge difference in the analysis. Well known theistic philosopher William Lane Craig states the Kalaam Cosmological Argument this way:
Premise 1 – Anything that begins to exist must have a cause
Premise 2 – The universe began to exist
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

So stated, this is a deductively valid argument in that if both premises are true, the conclusion logically follows. The question is are the premises true? I don’t know of anyone who has refuted this form of the argument, though there is debate on premise 2. Premise 1 seems unproblematic. The analysis presented in the appendix simply does not address the correct form of the argument, but gives the impression that the cosmological argument is easily refuted. I guess you can make that claim when you mis-characterize an argument.

I’ll leave it to readers here at UD to discuss some of the other analyses of the 36 arguments presented in the appendix. Its interesting reading for sure.

Comments

Premise 1 seems unproblematic. A lot of good philosophers do find premise 1 problematic - so maybe a bit of justification would appropriate. You only have to look at the Stanford Encyclopedia entry to see that it is far from accepted that everything that begins to exist must have a cause. And if there are any exceptions, the universe seems like a good candidate for being one of them - the whole event being a bit out of the every day.Mark Frank_{November 23, 2009
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For shame, Professor Goldstein. I fault you on three counts: (1) willful mis-characterization of the modal cosmological argument (setting up a "straw man" version which is easily refuted); (2) not having bothered to read any intelligent defenses of the argument since Bertrand Russell's famous debate with Fr. Frederick Copleston in 1948; and (3) sheer lack of intellectual curiosity, as shown by your total inability to put yourself in the shoes of those whose arguments you criticize, and make a serious attempt to re-construct their reasons for believing in the argument in the first place. Those are serious charges to make against a Professor of Philosophy, and yet I make them nonetheless. My readers can judge for themselves if my charges are justified. In short, Professor Goldstein: if you're going to criticize a widely-respected philosophical argument for God's existence, academic courtesy demands that you make sure you criticize the best version of it that you can possibly formulate. First, I have to say that I don't know of any modern proponent of the modal cosmological argument (a.k.a. the contingency argument) who asserts that "Everything that exists must have a cause." Traditional proponents of the argument, such as Aquinas and al-Farabi, regarded God as an Uncaused Cause, not a self-caused cause. In fact, Jean-Luc Marion, in an essay entitled "Thomas Aquinas and Onto-Theology" in Mystics: Presence and Aporia (eds. Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard; University of Chicago Press, 2003) provides detailed references which establish this very point (p. 71, footnote 47):
Respectively, Summa Theologiae Ia, q.2, a.3, resp: "Nec est possibile quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius, quia sic esset prius seipso, quod est impossibile" and also Contra Gentiles I, sec. 18, n.4; or Summa Theologiae Ia., q. 19, a.5 respectively. The denial of any possible causa sui was not restricted to St. Thomas Aquinas, but a unanimous statement from St. Anselm (Monologion VI) to Suarez (Disputationes Metaphysicae I, sec. 1, n. 27; XXIX sec. 1, n. 20, 25:11 and 26:27). See my studies on that issue in Sur la theologie blanche de Descartes, sec. 18, 427ff., and "Entre analogie et principe de raison: la causa sui" in Descartes: Objecter et repondre ed. J.-M. Beyssade and J.-L. Marion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 308-14). (Emphasis mine - VJT.)
(Sections of the book can be accessed online at http://books.google.com/books?id=OxW6UIOpO2UC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Anselm+causa+sui&source=bl&ots=si2_1xhhz6&sig=XNLVWD1a32yGgjANryDMLW2xldw&hl=en&ei=EtgKS-_KBYfxkAXH34W0Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Anselm%20causa%20sui&f=false ). Marion explains in his essay (pp. 56-58) precisely why Aquinas found the notion of a self-caused Being (causa sui) so repugnant: for God (and God alone), essence and existence are necessarily identical. Why? Because for every kind of contingent being, its essence is in some way distinct from its existence, as shown by the fact that I can know what it is - e.g. a four-winged bird - without knowing whether such a being exists. A self-caused Being, if it existed, would have to be one whose essence made it exist - i.e. one whose essence was in some way distinct from and (at least logically) prior to its existence. But a being whose essence was in any way distinct from its existence would still be contingent. Hence God cannot be self-caused. It is true that Descartes and Spinoza characterized God as a self-caused being, despite the inherent absurdity of the idea. Marion, in the essay I cited above, traces this back to a flawed concept of God on Descartes' part. In any case, neither Descartes nor Spinoza is cited by modern defenders of the modal cosmological argument. Moreover, they were not the originators of the modal cosmological argument. Instead of asserting that God is self-caused, proponents of the modal cosmological argument typically base their argument for God as an Uncaused Cause on premises like the following: (i) a rationality norm: that for anything which can be conceived of as ceasing to exist, it is perfectly reasonable to seek a cause that explains its existence; (ii) that all demands for an explanation must stop somewhere, as an infinite regress of explanations is (by definition) no explanation at all; (iii) in any case, the entire Universe, viewed as an ensemble of physical entities conforming to certain regularities which we call laws of nature, can still be conceived of as ceasing to exist, which means that it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether it too has a cause; hence (iv) we are driven to the supposition that there must exist something which cannot be conceived of as ceasing to exist. For such a Being, there is not - and by definition there cannot be - a causal explanation. Notice that the concept of God employed by this argument is a constructive one: the meaning of "God" only emerges during the course of the argument, as we are forced to the conclusion that an Uncaused Cause must exist. Thus Hume's objection that we can also conceive of God's non-existence, misses the point: we simply don't have a pre-specified, a priori concept of what God is. Professor Goldstein's mis-characterization of the cosmological argument seems to have been borrowed almost verbatim from Bertrand Russell. In his essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian?" (in Why I Am Not a Christian: and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, essays by Russell ed. by Paul Edwards (New York: Simon and Schuster [a Clarion Book], 1957), pp. 3-23), Russell mis-states the first-cause argument as follows:
...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.
According to Russell, the fallacy in the argument is that "If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause." What's more, "If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God" (op. cit., pp. 6-7). I can only conclude that Professor Goldstein is poorly acquainted with the modern literature on the modal cosmological argument. Had she wished to do so, she could have read Robert Koons' A New Look at the Cosmological Argument (1996) which is available online. For a less technical exposition, she could have availed herself of Koons' online lectures on Western Theism (1998). Another book that I would recommend for a better understanding of the cosmological argument is Germain Grisez's book, Beyond the New Theism (University of Notre Dame Press, 1975, ISBN-13 978-0268005672). It helped me a lot in my undergraduate days. Concerning Russell's objections to the cosmological argument, Robert Koons writes in his article, A New Look at the Cosmological Argument : "Almost fifty years later, Russell's objections seem quite dated, dependent on a form of logical empiricism that has not weathered the intervening years well." The claim that the notion of a cause is best defined as "a relation that holds between events that are connected by physical laws" is dubious, as it dogmatically excludes the possibility of singular causes (event A caused event B) which cannot be subsumed under any law-like generalization. Koons, in the article I cited above, is far less dogmatic. His argument rests upon three assertions about causes and effects: a cause and its effect must both be actual; they must be distinct from each other, with no overlapping parts ("separate existences" in Hume's terminology), and finally, every wholly contingent fact has a cause. Moreover, Dr. Goldstein's claim that "[t]o apply this concept to the universe itself is to misuse the concept of cause" is tantamount to claiming that the only good explanations are physical ones. This is a question-begging assertion. I have to ask: why? And what does "physical" mean anyway? For Koons, the rationale of seeking a causal explanation for the Universe as a whole is as follows (pp. 13-14):
We know that all (or nearly all) wholly contingent facts have causes, the world is such a wholly contingent fact, and therefore we may conclude that the world has a cause, unless some relevant consideration pointing to the opposite conclusion can be produced... I am not claiming that the axioms of causality I am appealing to are known by us prior to their application to the world of experience. Instead, I appeal to our success in finding causal explanations as empirical evidence for these generalizations.
By the way, if Dr. Goldstein is correct in saying that the term "cause" has meaning only within our universe, then we can rule out the multiverse in advance as a valid explanation of any feature of our universe - which means that the standard atheistic response to the fine-tuning argument is invalidated. Finally, Dr. Goldstein writes:
The Cosmological Argument, like the Argument from the Big Bang, and The Argument from the Intelligibility of the Universe, are expressions of our cosmic befuddlement at the question: why is there something rather than nothing?
Nonsense. We cannot answer that question. But we can answer the more modest question: what kind of "something" would it be unreasonable to seek an explanation for? The answer is: something incapable of coming into or going out of existence. A "something" of that sort simply is (Exodus 3:14). The universe, however, is not a "something" of that sort. Everything about it - its physical parameters, laws, initial conditions, size and duration - screams: contingent! It takes a profoundly incurious mind not to ask for an explanation of a universe like our own. On a lighter note, may I suggest that Professor Goldstein purchase a copy of "Who Made God?" by Professor Edgar Andrews (EP Books, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-85234-707-2) or else have a look at the Web site http://whomadegod.org and in particular, the chapter, Sooty and the universe , which is a highly entertaining excerpt from Professor Andrews' book.vjtorley_{November 23, 2009
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Since Mung brought it up, here is a summary of Aquinas's version of the telological argument from his Summa Theologica.
"The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things that lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God."
If you take out the parenthetical examples from the version in the Appendix, it doesn't differ too much in substance from this one, I don't think. The real problem is in the analysis or the "Flaw" section as Barb pointed out. Whether or not Darwin showed that "the process of replication could give rise to the illusion of design without the foresight of an actual designer" is even true is itself part of the issue. Here, the writer of the Appendix just assumes it...otherwise known as the fallacy of "begging the question"...speaking of "flaws"! Even if there are some minor differences in the presentation of the TA in the Appendix versus Aquinas, the real flaw exists in the analysis, not the argument.DonaldM_{November 23, 2009
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Mung, when your purpose is to make it appear as if all these arguments (read: old canards) have been dealt with and are easily refuted, then I guess little niggling details like presenting the correct form of the argument are inconsequential.DonaldM_{November 23, 2009
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3. The Argument from Design A. The Classical Teleological Argument 1. Whenever there are things that cohere only because of a purpose or function (for example, all the complicated parts of a watch that allow it to keep time), we know that they had a designer who designed them with the function in mind; they are too improbable to have arisen by random physical processes. (A hurricane blowing through a hardware store could not assemble a watch.)
Hint's of Paley anyone? This is not the classical teleological argument, I'm not even sure that it's Paley's argument (which likewise is not to be confused with the classical teleological argument). The classical teleological argument has nothing to do with "complicated parts." Kenneth Miller makes this same mistake:
The rise of Christianity established for its believers that the ultimate designer was God the creator. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of Christian philosophers, made this argument explicit: Wherever complex design exists, there must have been a designer; nature is complex; therefore nature must have had an intelligent designer. This straightforward argument is one of Aquinas's five ways to demonstrate the existence of God, and was adapted brilliantly in Rev. William Paley's 1802 book, Natural Theology
Edward Fester writes:
Aquinas's first three Ways are all variations on what is known as the "cosmological argument " for the existence of God ,,, The Fourth Way is sometimes called the "henological argument" ... The Fifth Way, in turn, is commonly taken to be a version of the "teleological argument" ... Etymologically speaking, this is an apt name for the proof, but it is also potentially misleading given that when most contemporary philosophers hear the expression "teleological argument" they naturally think of the famous "design argument," associated historically with William Paley (1743-1805), and defended today by "Intelligent Design" theorists critical of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Indeed, many writers (such as Richard Dawkins) assume that the Fifth Way is just a variation on the "design argument." But in fact Aquinas's argument is radically different from Paley's, and the standard objections directed against the latter have no force against the former. - Edward Fester, Aquinas (p. 110)
Mung_{November 23, 2009
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The Teleological Argument: FLAW: Darwin showed how the process of replication could give rise to the illusion of design without the foresight of an actual designer. Um, if something appears to be designed or has the illusion of design, why not state clearly that it was designed? Replicators make copies of themselves, which make copies of themselves, and so on, giving rise to an exponential number of descendants. Yet at no time do these replicators change from one species to another. In any finite environment the replicators must compete for the energy and materials necessary for replication. Since no copying process is perfect, errors will eventually crop up, and any error that causes a replicator to reproduce more efficiently than its competitors will result in that line of replicators predominating in the population. Or it will result in a grossly deformed mutant replicator, which will die prematurely. Mutations are generally harmful. Look at it this way: would you allow a surgeon to operate on you if he made 20 mistakes for every 1 good operation he performed? How about 10,000 mistakes for every 1 good operation? After many generations, the dominant replicators will appear to have been designed for effective replication, whereas all they have done is accumulate the copying errors which in the past did lead to effective replication. The fallacy in the argument, then is Premise 1 (and as a consequence, Premise 3, which depends on it): parts of a complex object serving a complex function do not, in fact, require a designer. Dr. Behe correctly pointed out in his "Darwin's Black Box" that nobody has ever successfully disproved Paley's teleological watchmaker argument. He's right. They may ignore it, but it's still there. If something as simple as a watch requires a designer, then surely something as complex as the universe does as well. That is simple logic.Barb_{November 23, 2009
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