Cause and Effect and Cosmology
The theist asks the atheist who made the universe. The atheist asks the theist who made God. Both of them are pointing to the right issue. They’ve both found the question. Though they both may claim otherwise, they have not yet answered this question—but they have succeeded in asking it.
The issue concerns relations of cause and effect. We witness ubiquitous, constant, unwavering relations of cause and effect. We can visualize a sequence of such relations as a chain. The complexity and interconnectedness of many of these relations makes a web a better image, albeit still an inadequate one. But the image of a single chain keeps our focus on the connection between any one even and its particular cause (or causes), so it will work best for our present purposes.
The opening questions about where the universe came from, or where God came from, arise when we try to follow causes and effects all the way back to the beginning. The problem is that the chain of causation cannot go on forever. Picture it as a physical chain hanging down from the sky, each link in the chain hanging from its cause directly above it. We look up, and we may only see the chain stretching up and up, link after link. But somewhere, something different must be going on. Somewhere up there the chain must be anchored. Or perhaps instead something new and strange that we’re not familiar with stands in for such an anchor. But regardless, the chain links that we know so well cannot simply be hanging there in the air. Somewhere, something different is going on. That is the cosmological issue. Both the theist and the atheist must face it, and neither of them wins simply by invoking it against the other.
The theist claims that this something different is supernatural—an eternal God, who is uncaused. The atheist claims that whatever this something different is, it must be natural—perhaps that the Big Bang was a spontaneous occurrence since the “nothing” that “preceded” it was somehow inherently unstable, or that our universe is one among many within some larger reality.
The rub—for both the theist and the atheist—is that we only have the chain of cause and effect to work with. Everything we observe is part of that chain, and all the reasoning that we trust is tested and vindicated with reference to that chain. There seems to be no way to observe or reason beyond the Big Bang. Our physicists can theorize, but it doesn’t seem that we’ll ever have observations of “before” the Big Bang with which to test their theories. The theist similarly has no observations with which to test her theory. Logical possibilities for such a test abound, but we have no actual observations that prove the existence of a God.
Our attempts to observe and to reason seem unable to squeeze through the bottleneck of the Big Bang. We can postulate a natural or a supernatural cause on the other side, but we’re equally unable to confirm either one.
Thus spoke the metaphysicist. The existentialist would say that both people are silly and asking the wrong question to the wrong problem. It’s like asking why you are eating a peanut butter sandwich while you’re in the middle of chewing. It’s an unnecessary question (and unlike the sandwich, the universe has no answers, as you say). To even think about the cosmological question is like trying to change the wheels on the bike you’re riding. An existentialist focus would be on what to do now that you’re eating that sandwich.
I’m just finishing a book called “From Eternity to Here” by Sean Carroll which is a physicist/cosmologist’s take on the problem of time, or more specifically the unidirectional arrow of time. So having almost completed it I can say that one of the current theories about the Big Bang posits that it was a “cosmic bump” with time extending prior to the Big Bang off into eternity (but running the other direction). It all has to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics and entropy and some such.
An eternal universe of some kind avoids the problem of a first cause, presumably.
By the way, the “chain of cause and effect” is not very convincing as an argument either. The entropy thing is much more compelling to explain the evolution of the possible states of the universe, and it takes quantum probability into account.
One thing I picked up from the book is how strange and inexplicable the amount of entropy there happens to be in our observable universe. It ought not to be that way. And according to the author, the anthropic principle won’t help in any case. So mysteries abound, even in cosmology! (I mean deep, weird mysteries).
I’m not suggesting that anything follows from this other than it’s all quite interesting.
There are over-simplified parodies of all the scientific theories (evolution, quantum mechanics, inflationary theory, information theory etc) that make the rounds and cause many to place much too much faith in the significance of scientific explication.
I enjoyed these thoughts, and can’t imagine why Gabriel thinks it is enough simply to dismiss the question on the grounds of being an existentialist. That definitely isn’t an answer.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that neither the theist nor the atheist has given answers, however. Both groups have, of course, the debate is over how reasonable those answers are.
As a theist, I tend to agree that appeals to “nothing” (which is an equivocation on the relevant meaning of the term) or multiverses are inadequate answers. But they are answers nonetheless.
If these answers are too little, the atheist can complain that the theist’s answer is too much. That is, one can’t get to any particular god from this line of thought, and even theists (if they are reasonable) agree that other arguments would be needed.
What this clearly shows, however, is that there are limits to what science can tell us. Beautiful and powerful a tool that it is (I could go on for quite some time about the greatness of science, actually), it cannot answer every question. It was never meant to do so; that is part of its strength.
As such, we have no hope of finding the truth until we turn away from demands for empirical observation and dive into metaphysics.
I should clarify~ I’m not an existentialist or a philosopher; I merely find it a useful lens to examine some questions through. I actually think questions such as “why is there something rather than nothing” and “what made the universe” can be fun. Multiverse questions are fun too. They’re good and interesting questions, just like “Why does Darth Vader wear a cape?” and “What happens if you go back in time and kill your grandma?” and “What’s the difference between Coptic and Chalcedonian Christology?”
They’re all good questions. But in asking the question, it’s imperative to not forget one fundamental point – they are all silly. You can go around and around with the question about why there is something and not nothing; but what bothers me is when people forget that it is essentially a ridiculous question that should arouse about the same amount of passion as Darth Vader’s cape. I.e. Don’t worry about it too much.
Existentialism isn’t a ground for dismissal, it’s a response and search for a serious question. (Though it’s possible that a coherent existentialist would find existentialist questions silly too – I don’t know, I’m not an existentialist philosopher).
What this means is that asking the origins of the universe seems to be trying to define Being in terms of beings. That would be equivalent to trying to define an angle in terms of square-ness. What is the squareness of an angle? It’s a silly question because the angle is more fundamental than the square. What’s the angularity of a square is a fine question: 4 angles; 90 degrees. But the squareness of an angle doesn’t work. Just like the cause of the universe. That’s all I was trying to get at.
Thank you for a brilliant article. I find the atheist’s question as a misunderstand of what theist and some atheist philosophers mean by God. Asking for a made God is, I think, asking for a two angle triangle.
If God exists, then God is suppose to be necessarily, immaterial, nonphysical, spaceless, without beginning nor end, timeless. If that God exists, and big if, then asking what made something that always exists, is like asking who made number 7, or what made 2 + 3 = 4.
Theist’s question, I think, is on the mark. If the universe began to exist, at big bang or a beginning of a multiverse, as contemporary cosmology suggests, then what cause the universe to pop into existence seems a good question, which both theists and atheists need to ponder.
Let me hear your thoughts.
Your new blog reader and follower,
Prayson
Thank you all.
Gabriel, I certainly have some existentialist sensibilities. I gravitate toward questions that bear on how to exist, how to live, how to see and think and act from moment to moment. Cosmological questions could have such a bearing. If the universe were created by a God that cared about how humans lived, this would have tremendous existential import.
As for your images of chewing and riding a bike, they’re excellent illustrations but poor arguments. I’m not sure that I see in either of your comments adequate reason to conclude that cosmological questions are silly. I basically agree with you that this turns out to be true. But I don’t see how we’d know this a priori.
Abonilox, my last two paragraphs were focused on our knowledge. The chain of cause and effect is all we’re working with. There must be something else. But whatever it is, we don’t know it. And we don’t seem able to. The cosmic bump sounds fine, but we seem unable to confirm it, or any of its competitors.
Prayson, the idea of an eternal God who is outside of time and causation is explanatorily powerful, biblical, and rarely addressed by critics. But as I discuss here, “My problem arises not from dismissing the explanatory power of religion, but rather from appreciating just how radically effective its explanations can be.”