Q&A: What Is the God of the Cosmological Argument?
What Is the God of the Cosmological Argument?
Question
2. What exactly is God here? Is He a cause that has nothing before it? Is this a cause that is basically its own cause (which sounds a bit absurd, and something that can ultimately be reduced to a regress toward a cause with no prior cause)? Is it an infinite chain of causes that we circled and called God? (That sounds a bit meaningless, because it really says nothing. You can always circle an infinite set of explanations and simply call it God. What does that explanation even give?)
And now I’ll summarize the Rabbi’s objections to an eternal universe (please correct me if I’m mistaken or missing something).
Answer
God is exactly what was defined in the argument: the first cause in the chain. Nothing more. The term “cause of itself” is not a very good term; what it means is something that does not require a cause outside itself. The claim is that the only alternative to an infinite regress is to posit a first cause of this kind.
Discussion on Answer
Is what I wrote here clear? So what difference does it make?
When you gather all the turtles and call them by one name (assuming they add up to something), you arrive at a primary cause that itself has no cause. Either way, you get to the same place.
But in the booklet the Rabbi explained the first cause one time in this way and another time differently, so I’m a bit confused.
One time the Rabbi explained that God is as if we take all the turtles, put them inside one turtle, and call that God, right?