Stock Answer 1.0 the Cosmological Argument

This article is a part of a series called Stock Answers which is to designed to be a quick source of rebuttals in my encounters with theists online.

The Cosmological Argument

The theist has proposed that:

• All things have a Creator or a First Cause, or
• All things that "begin to exist" have a Creator or a First Cause, or
• All things that are finite or contingent have a Creator or a First Cause, or
• All things that exhibit the appearance of design (having beauty, purpose, complexity, etc.) have a Designer (a Creator or First Cause)

The second, third and fourth arguments exist because the first one fails on the grounds that, if all things need a creator, then A) since the creator is part of all things, he/she would also need a creator (and the creator's creator would need a creator, and the creator's creator's creator would need a creator, and so on ad infinitum), and B) who's to say that self-creation isn't possible? That is, if a creator can exist without having a creator, why can't we simply say that creation/universe exists without itself having a creator? Logically, there's no reason to say that the latter must have a cause but the former must not. And indeed Occam's razor demands that we not multiply entities beyond necessity, so if we can say that the universe is self-created, this would be preferable to saying that the universe was created by self-created creator.

Thus, the second, third and fourth arguments have been propounded so as to trump up the meaning of creation in such a way that it would be unable create itself. The premises of these arguments have been defined in such a way as to support the theist's foregone conclusion that God must exist.¹ As we shall see, however, these premises are unfounded.

The Problem of Induction

It should also be noted that, all four of these arguments run afoul of the problem of induction (a question regarding inductive reasoning which is often credited to philosopher David Hume). Induction is basically a generalization, a means of drawing a universal conclusion based on a finite number of examples. For instance, all swans that I have ever seen are white, therefore all swans must be white. While the premise may be true, I can't rightly make a statement regarding all swans based on my limited experience of swans (black swans do, indeed, exist). So it is with the cosmological argument; just because all things I have encountered have a creator (or have a beginning, or are contingent, or have been designed if they appear to be complex), it doesn't necessarily follow that all things have a creator (or a beginning, etc.).

Each of the second, third, and fourth arguments have been expounded upon a little bit below. Each of these arguments will eventually receive a more thorough treatment in their own articles, especially the Argument from Design. For now, I have proffered some basic, and perfectly viable rebuttals. 

Kalam's Argument

Kalam's argument is the version of the Cosmological Argument which posits that all things that begin to exist must have a creator or a first cause. But what is in the set of all things that begin to exist? All things. And what is in the set of all things that did not begin to exist. Nothing, just God. So, when one says "all things that begin to exist must have a creator" what she is actually saying is "all things are created by God".  But that is the proposition that we are trying to prove; the premise is the conclusion, and that is begging the question.

Aquinas' Argument

Aquinas's version of the Cosmological Argument is also called the Argument from Contingency, and it states that things that are contingent must have a creator or first cause. Contingent things are things that could conceivably not exist, there was nothing necessary about their existence.  Some examples of contingent things are birds, skyscrapers, planets, oatmeal, etc.  Frankly, it's difficult for me to see how this argument is different from Kalam's (above). Contingent things are things which didn't necessarily have to exist, but do anyway; in other words, they began to exist. Is there anything a theist would claim is contingent but did not begin to exist? It seems to me that the rebuttal for Kalam's argument would also apply here.

Paley's Argument

The Argument from Design is often connected to William Paley due to the Watchmaker Analogy he presented in his book Natural Theology (1802). However, comparing creation to a timepiece is not original to Paley; Cicero in De Natura Deorum made the same analogy using sundials and water clocks. The Argument from Design states a creator is evidenced by a perceived presence of order, purpose, or design. My first objection to this is argument is that we can cite examples of complexity without a designer, such as snowflakes and diamonds.

Furthermore, "perceived presence of order" suggests that there is a subjective element to what we deem as ordered, complex, designed, etc. But the human brain is hardwired to recognize patterns, and it has been shown that we sometimes see patterns where there are none². So, it doesn't necessarily follow that, if we see a design, that a design actually exists.

Lastly, if there was a designer, he was not very good at his job. Take, for example, vestigial organs. Why would a designer include unnecessary parts in his creation? But the theory of evolution by natural selection provides a tidy explanation, not only of why vestigial organs exist, but also of how complexity can arise from simpler beginnings (and, for that matter, why we see patterns where none exist). And if we have a better explanation for why things are as they are, why should we favor a worse explanation?

The reason the theist favors a worse explanation to a better one is that she believes it provides a reason to believe in her particular god. But even if these arguments proved a creator existed, that knowledge is of little help when one is trying to defend a belief in a specific god, as I will discuss in the next section.

Even if a Creator Existed...

Finally, and not least importantly, even if any of these iterations of the Cosmological Argument were valid (and hopefully I've shown how they are not), that would not be sufficient evidence to support that the theist's particular God is the Creator. For example, if a Christian theist proves that the universe displays evidence of complexity and purpose that could only be accounted for by a Designer, she has not even come close to proving that Jesus is God; take for example the Marcionites, who believed that the Creator God of the Old Testament was distinct from the father-god about which Jesus preached. Such a conclusion is just as possible as the Christian belief.

Nor even has the theist proved that Yahweh is the Designer; maybe the Creator is the demiurge, or Ptah, or Marduk, or Mbombo, or one of dozens of other Creator-gods that have been believed in by human religions, mythologies and philosophies. Maybe several gods took part in Creation. Maybe the impersonal creator god of the deists is the Creator. There might even have been a Designer that's not a god at all, a demon perhaps, or a mortal inhabitant of another universe. Maybe the creator god or demon or mortal has slipped out of existence since the moment of creation. Why not? Any of these possibilities are an equally logical conclusion we could draw about a Creator, if the theist had proved that a Creator necessarily existed.

But, again, the cosmological argument, in all its variations, fails to prove that the existence of a creator.

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¹ My suspicion is that most people who propound such arguments were not brought to a belief in God by these arguments, but instead use these arguments to support their already-existing (and likely unfounded) belief in their particular God. Admittedly, this is conjecture on my part.
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Stock Answers: An Introduction and Table of Contents

Introduction

Often enough I find myself debating religion on Twitter. However, it's difficult to do this without the argument devolving into an exchange of insults, and I think this is largely due to the space constraint of 140 characters.

Now, I enjoy a good insult as much as the next guy, but I do have actual reasons for agnosticism/atheism. Good ones too. These arguments deserve to be heard, especially by the believers with whom I'm debating. It would be quite handy for me (and perhaps for other atheist readers as well) if I had a single place to which I could link references pertinent to the topic at hand. That's why I'm starting the "Stock Answers" series here on my blog.

The "Stock Answers" will likely range in topic from philosophy, to theology, apologetics, science, biblical hermeneutics, and to whatever other field of study my discussions take me. Thus, if the person I'm debating begs the question, I can simply put a link in my Tweet to an article about why petitio principii is a fallacious argument.

Granted, no information here will be original (most of the theological and philosophical issues are much older than people realize). But it's important to me that this info should be A) easily accessible, and B) in my own words. Quite often I have had debates online where the opponent simply linked to an article that she felt was definitive, yet she herself ill understood it. That's an appeal to authority (a fallacy which I'll certainly write about in this series eventually), and that's something I'd like to avoid. Yes, I will try to cite sources when appropriate, but it should be known from the outset that I'm not simply regurgitating information that I've learned by rote; I've actually reflected on both sides of a given argument and have chosen the position that I feel is the most reasonable.

Why should we care what the most reasonable argument is? What other considerations are there by which we could judge the validity of an argument? Beauty? Impact on our feelings? Popular assent? Such considerations can change from person to person and from culture to culture. That is to say, they are subjective or culturally relative. Reason is universal; it is the same from person to person and culture to culture, and so it will be my guiding light for each post in this series.

Table of Contents

This section will be updated as new posts are made.
Part I - The Cosmological Argument






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