Q&A: Is the God of the cosmological argument a God of the gaps?
Is the God of the cosmological argument a God of the gaps?
Question
Hello Rabbi.
From what I understand from reading the second booklet, in a certain sense, the God established by the cosmological argument is a God of the gaps.
After all, we rely on the fact that we do not know of things that have no cause, but that is only a limitation of science, isn’t it?
Theoretically, it could be that the first cause from which everything began was some stone with rare physical properties, from which the entire world was created.
Why is it actually preferable to posit some new entity instead (something we do not know anything similar to, admittedly with justification), rather than say that one of the objects familiar to us created the world, and then it itself did not require a cause?
Answer
It seems to me that I explained there (or in the third booklet) why this is not a God of the gaps. A scientific explanation usually refers to the coming-into-being of one thing from another thing. Therefore it will never find an explanation for the first cause. And even if it does find a first cause that does not require another cause, that itself is the God of the cosmological argument. After all, the argument assumes nothing about it except that it is some kind of existent that does not require an external cause outside itself.