Q&A: The First Cause
The First Cause
Question
Hello Rabbi, wishing the Rabbi a healthy winter.
People say that the proof for the existence of God is that everything needs a cause. But this law itself—that everything needs a cause—was itself created by the Big Bang. So there is no question here of who created the world, because that came into being together with the law that everything needs a cause.
Answer
Laws are not created by the Big Bang. On the contrary, it came into being within their framework. Beyond that, as David Hume showed, this law is not empirical but a priori, and therefore it is reasonable that its validity is not dependent דווקא on our reality.
Notice that you are also assuming that the law of causality itself (that everything needs to have a cause) also needs to have a cause (the Big Bang).
Discussion on Answer
A law is not an entity, so I see no necessity to assume that it was created at some point. Just as the law 2+3=5 was never created, so perhaps also with regard to the principle of causality.
What does that mean? If the world did not exist, there would be no such concept as a law, and certainly not an a priori law. That means it obviously depends on reality in order to exist at all…
It means that there is a law even without reality. A law is hypothetical by essence: if there are two masses, they will attract one another with a certain force. Its actual realization depends on the existence of masses.
Choosing to insist…
Can one not say that if masses did not exist, then there would be no law—that reality creates the law? For surely without existence/reality there is no law and no masses…
Thank you very much for the answer.
It still isn’t clear enough to me.
The question is not necessarily about the Big Bang, but suppose even before the Big Bang—the question is whether it is possible to say that suddenly a law came into being that everything needs a cause, and there is no question about that law itself, how it came into being, since they came together.