Q&A: What Is the Cause of God’s Existence?
What Is the Cause of God’s Existence?
Question
Hello Michael,
If I understood correctly, you believe that what you call the principle of causality must exist in every reality, just as logic must exist. I understood this from your debate on Head-to-Head, where you tried to explain to Aviv that causality is like a mathematical proposition or something along those lines.
If so, then why doesn’t God’s existence also need a cause?
Answer
This question has been answered here and in my books many times. The consideration of infinite regress leads us to the conclusion that there must be one exception that serves as a first link that does not require a cause. That is God. But when there is a reasonable a priori principle, we make only the minimal exception to it. And we certainly do not make exceptions for objects and events in our world, regarding which we have experience (in my sense, not Hume’s) that they are subject to causality.
Discussion on Answer
Everything has already been asked to exhaustion, and it is explained in the notebooks and in The First Existent. Infinite regress is a hypothetical state. There really is no infinity. In mathematics, infinity is seen as a potential concept (a limit), not a concrete one. You can look at the Wikipedia entry on Hilbert’s Hotel. Think about the well-known joke about “turtles all the way down.” The world stands on a turtle. And what does the turtle stand on? Another turtle. And that one on yet another. And so on all the way down. Is that really an answer? Is there even such a thing as “down”?
One last flyover, if I may 🙏
In mathematics, infinitely many numbers *do exist*. They’re really there in that abstract world, despite the concept of limit.
And can I infer from this that you think cosmologists should already have concluded that the world is finite? Neither spatially nor temporally?
Not infinite*
The existence of concepts is not existence in the world. And even if you are a Platonist, there is no necessity to claim that every number is an existing concept. In any case, that says nothing about our universe.
Just clarifying a point you misunderstood; maybe it’ll help a bit.
Causality is not like a mathematical proposition. Far from it. It is a principle that exists in our cognition. What Michi explained in the debate (presumably—I don’t remember; I watched it back when it came out) is that the principle is not learned from our experience, and yet we still recognize it as real. Therefore, to assume that before the Big Bang the principle did not exist is unnecessary skepticism in the face of an intuitive and sound argument.
Rabbi Michi, I’d be glad if you’d correct me or sharpen the wording if needed.
Unnecessary skepticism* that is, I should say
A correct and necessary addition.
Thanks for the quick answer.
Why is infinite regress a problem? Why does that lead us to a first cause rather than to the conclusion that there is an infinite chain of events and the universe is eternal, with no first cause?
Sorry if this has also already been asked.