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Periodically someone will say to me, "I don't understand how anyone can be an atheist. How else could one account for the origin of the universe itself?" The Christian apologist, Hugh Ross, makes an argument much like this. He argues first for the thesis that the universe had a beginning, the moment of the big bang. Second he assumes that there must be a cause for the big bang. Next, if all physical reality, including time and space, arise out of the big bang, then, whatever the cause may be for the big bang, it must be something that transcends the physical universe.
Coupling this consideration with the apparent fine tuning of natural law which makes life possible and the claim that it would take a super intelligent being to so arrange natural law, Ross concludes that this transcendent cause is God. Those familiar with the traditional arguments for the existence of God will recognize that Ross' argument is a combination of the design argument (here from apparent fine-tuning) and the first-cause argument (the argument that the universe could not be its own cause). At a later time I will mention and discuss the hypotheses that atheistic scientists have been advancing to account for the origin of the universe they do not accept the assumption that one must postulate a transcendent cause but in what follows I will restrict my comments to an older objection to the first-cause argument, an objection which may be given the label "What caused God?" It is an objection that one often encounters in introduction to philosophy classes and one which the instructor usually takes to be persuasive. The philosopher Bertrand Russell is one of the many who have voiced the what-caused-God objection. In his essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian?" 1 he 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. " 2 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. " 3 Russell's argument can alternatively be stated as follows.
The principle that everything must have a cause is either true or it is not. If it is true, then God must also have a cause. To fail to seek a cause for God is to abandon the premise that everything must have a cause. In other words, if one thinks that something, God, can exist without being caused by anything else, then so much the worse for the thesis that everything must have a cause.
And if the principle that everything must have a cause is false, then why posit God as a cause? Why not simply stop with the universe and suppose that the universe came into being without a cause? Alternatively, why not suppose that the universe has always existed? "The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. " Russell's conclusion therefore is that there cannot be any validity in the argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject. " The argument is really no better than that. 4 In response to Russell, one thing that needs to be said at the start is that when Russell wrote this essay (originally a popular lecture in 1927), the big bang theory had not yet arisen. According to big bang cosmology the universe sprang into existence some 12 to 15 billion years ago. And since time is part of the physical universe, time too had a beginning. 5 Thus, even though one may be able to imagine the universe as having always existed, there are scientific reasons for thinking that the universe had a beginning. 6 This, of course, does not address the "fallacy" that Russell says is committed by the first-cause argument.
It doesn't address the apparent conflict between the principle that "everything must have a cause" and allowing that God be uncaused. To see what is wrong with Russell's claim, let's alter the Indian tale. Suppose that upon being asked, "What about the tortoise?" the response had been, "The world rests on the back of an elephant, and the elephant on the back of a tortoise, but all three rest in infinite space. " If this had been the reply, it would clearly block the further question, "But what does infinite space rest on?" Were such a question asked, the Indian master would rightly have replied, "Your question reveals that you do not understand the concept of infinite space. " At this point, it might be objected that God is not infinite space. This is, of course, true, but God is in some respects more like infinite space than like any finite thing. God is not some sort of cosmic superman who is like other beings but possessing super strength and abilities. God is infinite.
He is omnipotent, omnipresent, all good, and perhaps even unlimited by time. God has no difficulty in attending to every single person and indeed has no difficulty in watching over the entire universe. Again the reason is not just that God has a lot more power than we do, it is that God's power is literally without limit. 8 Furthermore, although we refer to God as "a being " God does indeed exist there is an important sense in which it is inappropriate to think of God as a being, one more being amongst the many that exist. God's nature, is in some ways reflected in what God has created, but God is categorically distinct from all that he has created.
When the theologian Paul Tillich said that God is "the ground of our being, " he aptly expressed the idea that God is not just another being, he is the ground of all being. God not only created the universe and all that is in it, he sustains its existence moment by moment. As the apostle Paul says, quoting a Greek philosopher approvingly, "In him we live and move and have our being. " (Acts 17: 28) In an important sense, therefore, God is not an object or a thing at all. We can relate to God, and we speak of God as the object of our worship, but God is not an object or an entity in the sense that all finite things are. God is not another "thing; " he is the creator of all things. Coming back to Russell, when Russell says, "If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause, " he is taking "everything" to mean all that is real.
God is real, but one must ask whether God is the sort of being which one should expect to fall under the principle "everything has cause. " Every thing may have a cause, but is God is a thing in the sense which this dictum supposes? 9 To illustrate the caution here, consider the reality of mathematical truths. The metaphysical status 10 of mathematical truths of mathematical entities is a difficult issue, but suppose one were to say that mathematical entities are real, should one therefore expect that they are caused? It would be rather odd to suppose that they must be caused. Mathematical entities are not at all like physical entities. Experience tells us that physical entities are caused and there existence seems to depend in an obvious way on prior states of affairs. But mathematical entities, if they exist, do not seem to have this same sort of contingent status.
Now, this in itself does not demonstrate that it is utterly impossible for mathematical entities to have been caused God might in some sense cause or sustain the existence of mathematical entities but at minimum it would seem quite unwarranted to suppose that mathematical entities must have a cause. In a similar way, it may or may not be logically coherent to ask whether something could have caused God. Whether or not such a question is logically coherent depends on how the concept of God gets defined. But at minimum it would be unwarranted to suppose that God must have a cause.
Given that God is infinite and has the character described above, there is good reason for suspecting that the principle "everything has a cause" ought not to be applied to God. Does this mean that the first-cause argument is a compelling argument? Not necessarily. At the beginning of this monograph I mentioned the fact that atheists are trying to account for the origin of the universe in purely naturalistic terms and this is a topic that I will address at some future timeout what can be said here is that if the first cause argument is less than compelling, its weakness does not lie in the sort of fallacy that Russell says it commits. Indeed, it seems that the person who advances this objection, either does not comprehend the concept of God or is not taking the concept seriously when the question is asked.
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