Q&A: A Question About the Cosmological Proof
A Question About the Cosmological Proof
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask: in the cosmological proof, following the failure of the claim that everything has a cause, one proves by way of negation that there is God. And one uses a lex specialis move to remove the principle of causality from one member (at least) of the chain.
But why couldn’t the primordial matter of the Big Bang fit that role? After all, it is an unfamiliar object. Just as, according to science, only after the explosion did the laws of nature take shape or come into being, people speak about it as having existed from eternity, and so on—that same singular point, or whatever it is called.
I am asking the Rabbi here wearing the hat of a scientist and philosopher.
Personally, this does not sound reasonable to me because of dualism (and the physico-theological direction), but I think that from the standpoint of positing an unfamiliar entity, it would seemingly fit the criteria quite well. A hand to a cup. And a mask to a face.
Answer
In principle, the cosmological proof establishes the existence of something primordial that created the world. It could be anything, including the primordial matter, if that really is something different from the matter familiar to us.
But the primordial matter that existed in the Big Bang is matter like any other matter, and therefore it is not reasonable to view it as something that exists without a cause that created it.
It seems to me that I said one should not detach the cosmological proof from the physico-theological one. The complexity of the world requires an intelligent creator.