Question

Regarding the cosmological argument
Hello Rabbi. I read the Rabbi's booklet on the cosmological argument, but I still have a few questions. I’ll try to summarize here the main arguments I understood from the booklet against an eternal universe, and I’ll try to reject them one by one. But first I’d like to ask some more general questions.
1. What exactly are we trying to prove and gain here? Even if we prove that there is a first cause, and call it God, there is still a long way to go before saying that this is an entity with will and morality that speaks to man. In my opinion the Rabbi addressed this a bit in the booklet, but I’d be glad if he could expand.
2. What exactly is God here? Is He a cause with nothing before it? Is this a cause that is actually its own cause (which sounds a bit absurd, and it seems one could in the end reduce this to a regress to a cause with nothing prior to it)? Is it an infinity of causes that we circled and called God? (That sounds somewhat meaningless, because it basically says nothing. You can always circle an infinite set of explanations and just call it God. What does that explanation even give us?)
And now I’ll summarize the Rabbi’s objections to an eternal universe (please correct me if I’m mistaken or missing something)

1. Just as everything in our world requires a cause, so too the universe requires a cause. If you say the universe is eternal and goes back through infinitely many causes, that is an infinite regress. If you say that the universe as a whole has something beyond its particulars that makes it not require a cause, I’ll call that something God (but there is also a problem here: that’s rather pantheistic, and we’re Jews, no?)

2. The principle of sufficient reason — as I understood it, this explanation forces there to be a reason for the universe, but it does not really contradict its eternity.
3. The Big Bang — science showed that the universe began at the singular point.
Objections.
2. I’m not really rejecting this explanation, because as I said, as I understand it it does not reject an eternal universe (right?), and it itself can also ‘manage’ with emanation ‘alone’.
3. I’ll begin by saying that in my opinion one should not mix physics and philosophy — all the more so astrophysics, where every few years some genius can come along and overturn all our understanding, and real explanations and answers cannot be built on something like that. I also don’t understand astrophysics, so for me it’s almost like an explanation in Chinese; I don’t understand Chinese. In addition, physics at that level includes very many unknown and unclear things, so how can one make theoretical claims about reality with the help of something so fluid? Better an explanation that is as theoretical as possible, one that we can define and analyze from every angle.
And another thing — so what, was Maimonides, who didn’t know about the Big Bang, ‘stupid’ (Heaven forbid) for believing that the Creator exists, while we are so wise because we have telescopes and know about the Big Bang? And what will they say about us in another 500 years? If this explanation isn’t good enough for Maimonides, then it also
probably isn’t good enough or true enough for me.
As for the matter itself — one could also say about the singular point itself that it is eternal, or that it existed that way for an infinite amount of time (but really time was created with the Big Bang, so there is no meaning to ‘infinite time’ before the Big Bang, and therefore perhaps one can simply say that the singular point itself is in fact the first thing with nothing before it, and that is the beginning. As for the mismatch with the need for a cause for all the objects within the universe, I’ll address that below.
One can also say that the universe contracted and expanded infinitely many times backward (a bit like the chicken and the egg). As for the contradiction with infinite regress, I’ll address that immediately.
1. I’ll try to reject this argument from several directions.
A. On ordered infinite regress
The Rabbi referred several times to the principle that an infinite regress of causes is basically meaningless, since it is more an evasion of giving an answer than an answer in itself. I agree, but I think this needs qualification.
It is obvious that if we ask the child who broke the window, and he says that it was the monkey that escaped from the moon, where a spaceship arrived… and so on with infinitely many explanations — then clearly this is nonsense; he is inventing each explanation on the fly and evading an answer rather than really giving one. For cause A he gives cause B, and for B, C, and so on, each time inventing a new excuse. Clearly this is nonsense.
But what about an infinity of explanations that has order to it? Like the egg preceding the chicken, preceding the egg, preceding the chicken.
The main difference between this series of explanations and the series of explanations of the child with the window is that even though there are infinitely many explanations, there is an order to them.
The real and fundamental problem with infinite regress, as I understand it, is that instead of finding order and understanding what the law and pattern is for the cause of a certain thing, instead we got chaotic nonsense. But what about an infinite series when that infinity has a law? The series is infinite, but the order is preserved. Like an infinite line — we cannot describe the line and tell you all the points on it, but that doesn’t bother us, because the equation of the line (= ‘law/order’) gives us the ability, at any place on the line you want, to tell you all the points.
So too with the egg and the chicken — even though there are infinitely many causes here, since we know ‘all’ of them and we know what the series is, the order is preserved, the chaos has fallen away, and the cursed regress is not here. Even though there are infinitely many causes here, that does not bother me, because there is infinity in this order.
If you say (and you probably will say) that there is a problem with this argument, because in the end if you ask me for the cause of the chicken, I won’t really answer you, since I will now have to state this entire infinite series in order for the explanation to be satisfactory. And since that is impossible (because it is infinite), then in effect I have not given an explanation for the chicken, and the original difficulty returns.
I don’t really agree with that claim, because implicitly it refuses to accept eternity. For really, when you ask what the cause of the chicken is, you can ask this in two ways: a) what is the direct cause of this chicken? b) what is the overall cause of this chicken? For a) the answer is obvious. For b) the answer is that there is none! That itself is the claim of eternity (roughly): there is no first cause!
I’ll try to illustrate this with a two-dimensional circle of causes.
What is the cause of a certain point? The point before it. And what is its cause? The one before it, and so on to infinity. And if you ask what the first cause is — there isn’t one! There is no beginning in a circle! And if that is hard for you to accept — that’s your problem. I have no problem here of chaos in the matter of a cause emerging from nothing — every cause has a cause. But what is ‘the’ cause? You assume there is such a thing, but perhaps reality does not really require that; perhaps reality is just like that.
And similarly regarding the egg and the chicken — every egg and chicken has a cause, but what is ‘the’ cause? Is it some alpha-chicken? No! That itself is the claim of eternity: there is no beginning.
B. On the universe and the reasons for particulars
One of the arguments against an eternal universe is that just as every particular in the universe requires a cause, why should the universe itself not require a cause?
This needs examination. What do we mean when we say that everything in the universe has a cause? The intent is that if we landed on Mars and found a car there, it would be unthinkable to say that this thing has no cause, and that it simply grew there on trees a million years ago. Clearly such a thing requires a cause.
But we wouldn’t ask this about stones, right? We do not think — or are not so troubled by — what the initial cause of matter itself is, in the way we are troubled by the initial *form* of matter.
And now for the general rule: every *form* of matter in the universe needs a cause, but the universe itself — the primordial hyle, the initial matter — does not itself require a cause, and about it there is no problem saying that it is eternal.
So far 🙂