Q&A: Why God Is Not Subject to the Principle of Causality
Why God Is Not Subject to the Principle of Causality
Question
In your formulation of the cosmological argument, you decided to change the wording of the first premise, following the question “Who created God?”—to the claim that everything we have experience of must have a cause (or source).
But in any case, there still needs to be an explanation for why there should be anything at all that does not need a cause, since the principle of causality is derived from reason and is supposed to apply to everything. Do you have an explanation for why God does not need a cause?
In any event, seemingly the creation of the universe ex nihilo is also something that does not exist within our experience, and seemingly it could be the first cause. So if we have no sufficient reason to say that God does not need a cause, why not assume that the creation of a universe ex nihilo does not need a cause for its existence? (Because if the whole reason we say that God does not need a cause is simply that He is not within our experience, then by the same token the creation of universes is also not within our experience.)
Answer
A strange question. The world is a collection of things familiar to us. It is within our experience. Therefore I argued that it presumably was not created ex nihilo. So are you claiming: yes, but the coming-into-being of the things within our experience is not within our experience? Or are you claiming: true, things within our experience were in fact created by someone, but the world was not. And when I ask why there is no contradiction between the two parts of your sentence, you will answer: because the world created itself, and its coming-into-being is not within our experience.
In short, I hope you understand the question. I don’t.
Discussion on Answer
I have no answer because I don’t see a question. The argument proves that there must be an initial link in the chain that is not subject to the principle of causality. What explanation do you want for why it is not subject to it? Are you expecting a description of its internal mechanism?
As I explained, universes coming into being are nothing more than the coming-into-being of the collection of things that make up a universe. I also have no experience with worms coming into being. But I know worms, and I know they come into being for a reason.
That’s it. I think I’ve exhausted the point.
First of all, I understand from what you wrote that you don’t have a good answer to the question of why God doesn’t need a cause..
And regarding the substance of your remarks, what I’m basically assuming is that your distinction between things that are within our experience and those that aren’t stems from the fact that we simply know that causality exists only for things we are familiar with, and therefore only about them can we determine that a cause is needed. But regarding universes that come into being ex nihilo—we have no idea; only regarding things that came after the universe was created. So your premise does not include universes coming into being, and consequently there is no reason at all to think they have a cause (because it’s not as though you have any reason to think God has no cause other than the fact that He is not within our experience, and the same would apply to the coming-into-being of the universe).