Cosmological arguments from

contingencyMichael Lacewing

enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk

The question

• Why does anything exist?• Unless God exists, this question is

unanswerable.

Necessary and contingent existence

• Something exists contingently if it is possible for it to exist and for it not to exist.

• Something exists necessarily if it must exist, i.e. if it is impossible for it not to exist.

Aquinas’ argument from possibility

• Things in the universe exist contingently: it is possible for them to exist and for them not to exist.

• If it is possible for something not to exist, then at some time, it does not exist.

• Given this, it is possible that at some time there was nothing in existence.

• If at some time, nothing was in existence, nothing could begin to exist.

• Therefore, there is something that must exist.• This necessary being is God.

Objection 1

• Just because it is possible for a contingent thing to cease to exist doesn’t mean that every contingent thing at some point does not exist– Not everything that is possible actually

occurs.• Reply: but if something with contingent

existence always existed, we would need a very special explanation.

Objection 2: the causal principle

• Is it true that if nothing once existed, nothing could later come into existence? Does everything have a cause?

• Hume: – The claims ‘Something cannot come out of

nothing’ and ‘Everything has a cause’ are not analytic, so are not certain

– Experience supports them, but can’t show that they hold universally.

Objection 3

• Why can’t it be that although any individual thing has not existed at some time, there has always been something in existence?– Aquinas applies his principle of contingent existence

to everything at once: everything exists contingently, so at some time, everything did not exist, i.e. nothing existed.

• But why think that any situation that is possible (e.g. nothing exists) actually occurs at some time?

• Reply: everything – the universe – itself exists contingently, and every contingent thing does not exist at some time.

Copleston’s argument

• Things in the universe exist contingently. • Something that exists contingently has (and

needs) an explanation of why it exists; after all, its existence is not inevitable.

• This explanation may be provided by the existence of some other contingent being. But then we must explain these other contingent beings.

• To repeat this ad infinitum is no explanation of why anything exists at all.

Copleston’s argument (cont.)

• Therefore, what explains why contingent beings exist at all can only be a non-contingent being.

• A non-contingent being is one that cannot not exist, i.e. it exists necessarily, and doesn’t need some further explanation for why it exists.

• This necessary being is God.

Objection 4

• Russell accepts that of any particular thing, we can ask what explains it. But we can’t apply this to the universe as a whole.

• The argument commits the fallacy of composition– An inference that because the parts have some property,

the whole has the property– E.g. each tissue is thin, so the box of tissues is thin.

• Reply: inferring from parts to whole does not always commit the fallacy of composition– Each part of my desk is wooden, so my desk is wooden– Each thing in the universe exists contingently, so the

universe exists contingently.

Objection 5

• (From Hume) we cannot know that every contingent being has (or requires) an explanation– Just as some things may be uncaused, they

may also be inexplicable.• Reply: if true, this shows that we cannot

prove God’s existence by deduction. But the argument still works as inference to the best explanation.

Objection 6

• Hume: why think God is the necessary being? Why not matter/energy?– A fundamental law of physics is the

conservation of energy.• But there is no reason to think that

this applies to the beginning of the universe– Big Bang theory suggests the

opposite – matter/energy comes into existence.

Objection 7

• Russell: the concept of a being that necessarily exists is problematic.

• See discussions of the ontological argument for development.