How to Think About God – Part 1: From Contingency

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It is often assumed that people cannot know anything about God aside from having faith in what has been revealed.

But such a position is simply presumptuous, and ignores the intellectually rich and rigorous tradition known as natural theology, or the study of God through a solid devotion to a deep, armchair-style of thinking–in a word, philosophy. Contributors to natural theology include the ancients (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), various neo-platonists (Augustine), medievals (famously Aquinas, but also many others), enlightenment-era thinkers (Leibniz, Kant), and no shortage of contemporary thinkers (Adler, Lonergan, Feser, Pruss, Swinburne, etc).

The point–indeed, the hope–of this series is not just to show there are arguments for the existence of God and that many of them are good, but that in studying these arguments we can come to know something rather very specific about God. Such that God is one, all-good, and non-composite, for example. Or, that God is absolutely simple, in the metaphysical sense.

Think of it this way: The study of natural theology can assist us greatly in narrowing the search of “possibly true” religions, by pulling out and casting aside everything God almost certainly is not (poly, or in space and time, etc). Natural theology is what brings us to the “God of the Philosopher”, as it were. From there, it is only a few short hops to Christianity, if you decide to keep sniffing down the trail.

But let me say this, before we begin. While I believe these arguments are good (they are, after all, what brought me out of atheism and through agnosticism), they are not of the sort that will absolutely compel a person to belief. Almost no argument can do that, religious or otherwise; that is much too unreasonable of a standard to hold.

So you will not hear me say that if you reject these arguments you must be an idiot or something like that. (First, that wouldn’t be very nice, nor would it set the stage for productive conversation.) The only thing you’ll hear me say is I think there are good reasons, given by various arguments of natural theology, to believe the conclusion is more plausibly true than not with respect to both God’s existence and attributes.

God, as it happens, does not make himself overwhelmingly knowable to us. He does not force our belief. He only provides the grounds to make it reasonable, while still respecting our decision to turn away. (This may seem odd outside Christian theology, but makes perfect sense within it. A conversation for another time.)

In other words, faith is still involved so long as faith is simply “trusting in that which we have reason to believe”, but perhaps cannot prove with hundred percent certainty. We all have this sort of faith, anyway: We have this faith in our loved ones, and that if we go outside we won’t be inhaled by a hovering space-craft. It just seems highly likely given the evidence we have that my wife really does love me as I love her, and that I won’t be abducted by aliens if I walk to the gym. And so I trust in these conclusions, and act accordingly–I believe my wife, and I go workout–even if I cannot prove these conclusions absolutely. I believe that is the best these arguments can give you: They give you all the grounds you need to assent from the head, so you can then make the move from the heart.

The Argument from Contingency – Part 1

We start with basic, everyday intuition that everything which exists can be explained, or at least has some explanation behid it. This intuition is often referred to as the principle of sufficient reason, and though the principle of sufficient reason has been presented in many (and often complicated) forms, I think we can stick with just a simple version for today, which is: “There is an explanation for anything that exists, either 1) from, through, or in another, or 2) from, through, or in itself.”

In other words, whatever exists can be explained either by an external condition (or cause), or a necessity of its own being. But however you want to phrase it, there are many reasons to think at least some form of the principle of sufficient reason is true. These reasons would include:

Denial of the PSR seems to lead to self-defeating skepticism.

If things can happen for no reason, this would mean our perceptual and cognitive states could happen for no reason also. But we assume our perceptual and cognitive states are happening for a reason—namely, that we have some (hopefully good) reason for perceiving and believing the things we do. To deny the principle of sufficient reason is to become vulnerable to the very possibility that we are hallucinating our experience; that all our perceptual and cognitive states, for example, could be happening for no reason whatever, in which case we should be skeptical of them. But this means we should also be skeptical of the cognitive state which includes the belief that the principle of sufficient reason isn’t true. The denial is thus self-defeating.

As philosopher Alexander Pruss notes, it also wouldn’t be of any use to say that such a false cognitive state would happen improbably, since probabilities attain only through objective, governing laws. Probabilities attain, in other words, because they have a reason to. But in denying the principle of sufficient reason, we have lost the grounds for saying that violations of the principle of sufficient reason (things happening for no reason at all) would be improbable.

Why aren’t there common violations of the PSR? 

If the PSR reason weren’t true, it seems the world should be quite different than it is. Why is it, we could ask, that we don’t experience Gary Oldman popping in and out existence while watching The Professional—or the entire T.V. set, for that matter? Why is it that we lack experience of events violating the principle of sufficient reason? Perhaps the reason is simply because the principle of sufficient reason is true, and that any being (say, God) that could pop Gary Oldman in and out of existence, is (for whatever reason) refraining from doing so.

(Objection: It is often brought up at this point that virtual particles seemingly pop into existence from nothing and therefore lack an explanation. But this is a confusion. Virtual particles are explained by what goes on in the quantum vacuum, which is a state of rich and complex, physical laws, and so very much “something.” Also, it should be mentioned, that an explanation doesn’t have to be deterministic of an effect; an explanation only needs to make an effect intelligible.)

Denial of the principle of sufficient reason would undercut science and philosophy. 

Science is the search for explanations from a (mostly) etiological standpoint—that is, how one physical state gives rise to another. But deny the principle of sufficient reason, and we’ve lost the foundations of many an important scientific theory, including evolution. If we assert that things could happen for no reason, we grant the possibility (that might not even be improbable, remember) of new creatures emerging from nothing, or hominids generating instantaneously from a sack of potato flour. Species could just wink into existence, as it were; no explanation needed. So, that’s a problem.

But philosophy too would go the chute, since the whole reason we have philosophical debate is because we believe reasons can be provided to explain things. The moment we let in the odd possibility that some things just have no explanation, much, if not all, of philosophy would be destroyed.

The principle of sufficient reason is intuitive, if not self-evident. 

We all accept that there are explanations for things, and, as it happens, when we look for explanations we tend to find them. How did my keys get over there? Why does shrimp taste good? Etc. But even in cases where we cannot find an explanation (say, a homicide scene), we don’t expect that there is no explanation to be found. Our intuition is that there remains an explanation, even if we don’t have enough evidence to know what it is. (Note: By itself the notion of something being “self-evident” would not be a satisfactory argument, but it’s certainly worth mentioning in light of the other arguments. Children know all about the principle of sufficient reason, let me tell you.)

In other words: The burden of proof is not on people in support of the principle of sufficient reason (thought I am hopefully demonstrating that such a burden can be sustained, regardless), but rather on those who suggest it can be denied and still remain coherent.

The notion of a “brute fact” would dispose of all explanations, not just one. 

Some have driven the line that we can only explain things to a certain point (the fundamental laws of physics, say) but then we must cease our search for explanations and be satisfied with what has come to be known as a “brute fact.” That is, at some point things just exist without any explanation at all. But there is a serious problem with the brute fact position.

As philosopher Ed Feser puts it, “Suppose I told you that the fact that a certain book has not fallen to the ground is explained by the fact that it is resting on a certain shelf, but that the fact that the shelf itself has not fallen to the ground has no explanation at all but is an unintelligible brute fact. Have I really explained the position of the book? It is hard to see how. For the shelf has in itself no tendency to stay aloft—it is, by hypothesis, just a brute fact that it does so. But if it has no such tendency, it cannot impart such a tendency to the book. The ‘explanation’ the shelf provides in such a case would be completely illusory.” (Five Proofs.)

In other words, explanations either run all the way through, or they don’t run at all. (Either the world is intelligible, or it isn’t.) But to say explanations don’t run at all just brings us back to unsustainable skepticism.

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So far it seems we have every good reason for thinking the principle of sufficient reason (in some form of other) is true, and no good, non-question-begging reason to think that it isn’t. We are now ready to move onto the next stage of the argument.

Remember: We say that everything which exists has an explanation for its existence either through another or though itself. We could rephrase this with some additional vocabulary to assist in moving forward. The two words I would like to now introduce are contingency and necessity. To say something is contingent is to say it exists through another, or that the explanation for its existence is found in some external condition (or cause). To say something is necessary is to say it exists through itself and that it could not have existed other than it is, and therefore could not have not existed, at all. In short: That which is contingent could have failed to exist; that which is necessary could not have failed to exist.

A contingent thing may also be thought of as a “caused cause.” It is something that can only exist if there exists that which it takes to exist (an external condition). A necessary thing, on the other hand, may be thought of as an “uncaused cause.” It is something that requires no external condition for its existence, but has the conditions for its existence built-in, so to speak.

Now, within the totality of reality, there must be at least one necessary reality. For if the totality of reality did not have at least one necessary reality, then the totality of reality would be a collection of caused causes without a cause, and therefore would not exist. To put it another way, if all of reality were contingent, and yet there lacked the necessary reality to explain the existence of that contingent reality, then that contingent reality would not be a reality. (Important: This would still be the case even if there were an infinite number of contingent things within that reality.) But contingent realities exist. Therefore, there must be at least one necessary reality to explain the existence of all contingent reality.

Let’s see if we can get at this some other way. Here is a list of some contingent things: People, bottle caps, planets, and beavers. These things exist but they don’t have to exist. For each of these examples, from people to bottle caps, planets to beavers, there is a reason for why they exist: You can explain their existence either with respect to their parents or a manufacturing plant or the study of planetary science, or whatever. What is clear is that these things not only do exist, but could have not existed (and in each examples, there was a point when that seems to have been the case.) These examples, then, we might say have a superficial contingency. We use the term superficial, because while we might say it’s true that these things are clearly contingent, it might not be true that the fundamental stuff these things are made of (fundamental particles, or what have you) are themselves contingent.

But it seems this objection will not hold. Because what is contingent is whatever could have been otherwise, even if we have never experienced it being otherwise, ourselves. And there is nothing about the fundamental stuff of the universe (whatever you may happen to think that is) nor the fundamental laws of the universe (whatever you may happen to think they are) that is necessary in its reality. To be necessary is to be something that could not conceivably have been other than it is, that has to exist in a way that 2 + 2 has to = 4. But surely, we can conceive of a possible world composed of entirely different fundamental stuff (or even a different collection of the same stuff) or run by a different set of fundamental laws. This shows there is not just a superficial contingency within our universe, but a radical contingency, as well. (Note this would still be true even of a multiverse scenario; it would be true, ultimately, of any physical state of affairs, period, since anything physical could have conceivably been otherwise—bigger, smaller, over here, over there, etc, or very simply, not at all.)

This reasoning is what helps us avoid falling into the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition is where a person unjustifiably assumes what is true of the parts is true of the whole, as well. For example, if every person has a mother, then mankind itself has a mother. That is clearly not the case. But would this be the case with respect to contingency and the universe as a whole? Well, for the reasons we’ve just examined, I don’t think so. A collection of contingent things is no less contingent than any one of its contingent parts, in the same sense that a collection of white blocks is no less white than any one of its parts. If anything, as Dr. Feser notes, we might even say the universe is “doubly contingent”, since the collection is dependent not only on the continued existence of each of its individual “caused causes”, but also on them being brought together in just the way they are. There is, then, quite clearly, both a superficial and radical contingency with respect to the universe. It exists, but it doesn’t have to exist—so, why does it?

Recall that even if the collection of contingent things is infinite in number or has existed for all eternity, it would still require an explanation for why it has exists in that way. Because even if all the caused causes had always been around, and even if there were a countless number of them, they would still be “caused causes” (contingent things), and would only exist if there exists that which it takes for them to exist: In other words, at least one uncaused cause, or necessary reality. To use the example from Leibniz: Even if you could explain an infinite series of individual geometry textbooks by way of how one was copied from another, you would still need to explain the series as a whole; there would still need to be something above and beyond series itself to explain its existence. We would still want to know (rightly so) why there is an infinite line of geometry text books, rather than no infinite line of geometry text books.

Philosopher Richard Taylor offers another illustration in this regard. Imagine finding a translucent ball in the woods. Naturally a person would find it quite bizarre if a person refused to admit that ball had an explanation—that such a thing could exist just inexplicably. But now increase the ball to the size of the universe and imagine the ball has always existed. Well, neither increasing the size of the ball nor its temporal duration would do anything to exempt it from requiring an explanation. The ball is still a contingent reality (it could have been otherwise), and so there must be something to explain why the ball—however big, and however old—exists.

This brings us to an important distinction. What we are attempting to demonstrate in this argument is not that a necessary reality must have brought some contingent thing into being some finite time ago (as might have been the case with the Big Bang; though if you accept the general consensus in modern cosmology that the universe had an absolute beginning it certainly helps to strengthen the contingency argument from a scientific standpoint, we are concerned only with making a philosophical argument, for now), but must here and now be the explanation for why any contingent thing (or collection of contingent things) exists, instead of nothing. The argument, in fact, has nothing to do with time per se, which is why we can concede (for the sake of argument) that the universe is past-eternal, since the eternality of the universe would be irrelevant to the case being made. What is relevant is the contingency of the universe, which would be true whether the physical universe is eternal or not.

But now, here we are. Because the universe (or the multiverse, if you want to posit that) is simply all of space-time reality, and the moment we conclude that all of space-time reality is contingent, we must then look for our explanation (justified by Occam’s rule) in something that is itself transcendent of that reality: In other words, in something that is not natural, but supernatural. This leaves us with only two possible options for what philosophers believe this necessary reality could be: Either abstract objects of some sort, or a non-physical intelligence. But abstract objects (like the number seven), if they even do exist necessarily (that is a debate for another time), are surely causally effete. They are not the sort of thing that could serve as the necessary reality for why any contingent reality attains. But a non-physical intelligence—that is, an immaterial, timeless, space-less, and all-powerful mind—most certainly could serve as that foundation, and would therefore have to. It is from there we conclude that God exists.

OK, let’s formalize the argument:

• For anything that exists, there is an explanation of its existence to be found either in a necessity of its own being or an external condition (or cause).
• If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
• The universe exists.
• Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
• Therefore, God exists as the explanation of the universe.
• Therefore, God exists.

Each of these premises has already been supported. The first is the principle of sufficient reason. The second (though provocatively stated) is merely the logical equivalent of the brute fact position or that the universe exists inexplicably. (The opposite of the universe existing inexplicably, of course, is the universe existing with an explanation, of which we’ve seen can only be God.) Premise three can only be denied by a person who is so determined to escape the argument they are willing to appear very silly indeed. The rest follows deductively.

– Pat

PS – In part two we’ll look at common objections (and offer some responses to them), along with other formulations of the argument from contingency for additional support and clarification. The plan after that is to look at the Aristotelian “unmoved mover” argument, Augustine’s argument from eternal truths, and a probabilistic moral argument after that. Once we have a sufficient compilation of arguments (10 or so? We’ll see.), I’ll want us to begin working out more of the divine attributes, or what God is like, from them.

PPS – In the meantime, you might enjoy listening to the Sunday School segment on my podcast, the Pat Flynn Show.

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