Is There A God Argument
Is there a God?
November 4, 2011
Dear Cecil:
Have you ever addressed the question of God? It would seem like a fairly important question in the fight against ignorance, yet I couldn’t find anything like “Does God exist?” in the archives. Was there ever an article about this or some equivalent topic?
Cecil replies:
Nope, I've never written about this. Nobody ever asked. That all you wanted to know?
Didn't think so. Fine, have a seat while I … well, to say I'm going to prove God exists sets the bar pretty high. Let's just say I'm going to show such a proof could be made.
We start with medieval Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, the grand master of exploratory theology. Thomas proved the existence of God, to his satisfaction anyway, in his Summa Theologica. The core argument, if you'll allow me to brutally oversimplify, is as follows: the transitory and inconsequential phenomena we see around us, such as humanity, the solar system, and rock ÔÇÿn' roll, are but contingent beings. (I use the term "being" loosely here. Deal with it.) Each was brought into existence by some previous being, such as the apes, the solar nebula, or the blues. Each of these, in turn, was engendered by some still earlier entity, and so up the line until we get to … the First Cause.
There must be a First Cause, Thomas reasoned. Think about it this way. You and I, contingent beings that we are, are mere dominoes in the great chain of existence, devoid of autonomous impulses or pretty much any clue whatsoever and dependent entirely on previous beings to kick our butts into gear. These antecedent beings are likewise contingent, as are those earlier still, and so on. However, it affronts reason to suppose that all beings are contingent, since creation would then consist entirely of passive mope-like entities, waiting for someone (or something) else to make the first move, absent which no first move would ever be made.
Therefore, Thomas concluded, there must be a First Cause, or shall we say a First Finger, to administer the first flick to the first domino, and thereby jar the cosmos into motion. To this First Cause – essential, eternal, and unchanging – Thomas assigns the name God.
The usual objection to this proof (as a college sophomore I made it) is that there's no obvious reason why the chain of causation has to start somewhere. Why can't it extend forevermore in both directions, without beginning or end? Indeed, scientists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have conjectured that the Big Bang, once thought of as the starting point of the universe, was merely the latest burp in an endless cycle of colliding membranes in an 11-dimensional reality that, one gathers, has always been there.
But Thomas isn't arguing there's a First Cause chronologically. Rather, modern commentators tell us, he's claiming there's a first underlying or sustaining cause, in the sense that, say, the sun and its energy are the cause of life on earth. The distinction may strike the lay mind as rather fine and in any case seems of little consequence, since most thoughtful observers agree that in positing a First Cause and calling that God, Thomas assumes what he's trying to prove. Thus his attempt to demonstrate God's existence fails.
Let's not be too hasty, though. Thomas has shown us a couple things.
First, the distinction between a chronological first cause and a sustaining first cause is in fact crucial, as we'll see.
Second, although Thomas labors mightily in the Summa to establish the attributes of God, one of which is personhood, no one can seriously claim the result is a personal God – the warm and fuzzy but also detail-obsessed entity who, if you were Roman Catholic, would condemn you to eternal fire if you died unshriven after eating meat on Friday prior to 1962. Thomas's work is considered the definitive explication of Catholic theology. From this we deduce that, from the standpoint of one of the world's great religions, an impersonal, abstract, and frankly mechanistic God is nonetheless God.
We turn now to the work of physicists, who in their way are also searching for first causes. Steinhardt and Turok have written of the endless universe, which on first thought seems to undercut any notion of a prime mover. However, calling to mind the Thomistic distinction between temporal and sustaining causes, we realize the conjectured 11-dimensional reality of which they speak arguably is itself the First Cause from which all else springs.
Other scientists, taking a different tack, search for the First Cause in the quantum lint of which matter is composed, going so far as to call the hypothesized fundamental force holding all else together the God particle. A scientist's joke? Not entirely. The God particle and 11-dimensional reality are, Jah knows, on the woolly fringe of science. However, should the existence of some such First Cause be demonstrated, one might, on the logic of Thomas Aquinas, be entitled to call it God.
(For a followup column, click here.)
Dear Cecil:
Know what I think about your answer [to the question of whether there's a God]? (I mean, besides the fact that it was a load of soft-pedaling quasi-theistic horseshit?) I think the subtext suggests we have a case of Antony Flew-ism here. [The late philosopher was a longtime atheist who embraced deism late in life.] You're of the age when one starts hanging one’s hopes on there being a god after all, and just don’t give as much a damn about the rational truth as you once did. Old age and death are scary. They’re the great unknown. So much so, they’ve driven more than one lifelong unbeliever into the arms of religion. Now, I don’t pretend to know what your position on the god question used to be, or even is now. But you're at least in your 60s, and given how ruthlessly factual and rational you have always been in answering other weighty matters, and how mushy and indulgent towards theism you were on this question, I personally detect something of a soft spot, a chink in the armor, probably related to a desire for there to be Something Beyond.
Cecil replies:
Cyninga, you surprise me. The proper reaction, on encountering some seemingly uncharacteristic example of Straight Dope logic, is not to conclude that Cecil has gone soft. Rather, it's to humbly ask: What subtle gambit is the Master up to that I've unfortunately failed to grasp? This would then be followed by the necessary hours, days, or if need be years of patient reflection until the concept got through one's thick head. Let's consider the argument presented in our previous outing on this subject:
1. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas reasoned that the universe must have a First Cause, to which he assigned the name God.
2. Modern physicists in their way are likewise in search of a First Cause.
3. If the physicists succeed, one taking the Thomistic view of things might reasonably call that First Cause God.
The callow intellect might erroneously deduce from the above that the God so construed is the benevolent deity of Western religious tradition who invites us to join him in paradise. However, on further study, or actually if you were paying any fricking attention at all, you would notice that your columnist has described the posited entity as "an impersonal, abstract, and frankly mechanistic God." What solace I or any other doddering creature might derive from such a being is a mystery to me. Indeed, to even characterize it as a being is to grant it way too much, something I'll get back to in a mo.
One may ask: why call it God at all? Two reasons. First, entertainment value. It's easy to argue God doesn't exist, and all sorts of knuckleheads have done so. I could have rehashed their well-worn arguments, but how much fun is that? Second, unlike knee-jerk atheism, accepting that there could be a God provides us with an opportunity for an instructive exercise: if in fact there’s an Almighty, what's it like?
Thomas Aquinas, good monk that he was, persuaded himself that God had the familiar attributes of the Christian deity – free will, perfect knowledge, infinite power, and so on. Much of his reasoning is ingenious but absurd. For example, he purports to demonstrate that God consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which adherents of religions other than Christianity will find risible.
So let's set all that aside and focus solely on Thomas's idea that God is the First Cause – and remember, this is the core idea of one of the world's foremost religious thinkers. A useful proxy for the First Cause is energy, which has a number of qualities commonly ascribed to the divine. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, and thus presumably is immortal. Einstein's famous equation E=mc┬▓ suggests energy can be transmuted into matter and vice versa, and so may be said to be the wellspring of all creation, just as God is.
Yet no one thinks energy bears any resemblance to God in the traditional religious sense. It has neither knowledge nor will. It's not a person. It doesn't summon us to paradise or command us to embrace the good and shun evil. It provides our lives with no meaning. It's just there.
By this route we arrive at a fuller understanding of whether God exists. Can we identify some fundamental principle or essence at the root of the universe and define that as the deity? Sure. Does doing so provide us with grounds for belief in a benevolent, all-knowing Creator? Clearly not. In short, by acknowledging the possibility that God in some esoteric sense exists, which was the point of my original column, we show that God in the popular sense probably doesn't. To put it another way, the more closely we examine arguments for the existence of God, the more surely traditional belief in the deity slips from our grasp.
