God as Cause: Why God Cannot Explain the Universe (Book Notes: Arguing for Atheism)
In Arguing for Atheism: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Robin Le Poidevin writes:
Why could the cause of the universe not be something like an eternal, immutable God, who needs no cause for his existence? Well, the mere existence of God, or of any other object, could not causally explain why the universe came into existence. It must be something about God which does the explaining, such as his willing the universe to exist. But has he, for all time, willed the universe to exist? Why, then, did it not come into existence sooner?
If there is a cause of the universe’s coming into existence at precisely the moment it did, then it is something which obtained just before that event. We are then led to ask why that cause obtained when it did, and so, by similar reasoning, we are led back to the regress of causes which the temporal argument was supposed to avoid.
Perhaps the most significant and fundamental flaw of all cosmological arguments for the existence of a god is, just as Le Poidevin says, the absence of any connection between the existence of the universe and the existence of an undefined god. If such a connection is to be made, there must be something special about this god which does the explaining. The existence of a person does not explain a fire, but various facts about that person might explain it quite well.
Thus, to claim that “god” is needed to explain the universe, we need to add qualities to this “god,” something about it which helps make the universe more intelligible. There are any number of possibilities, I suppose, but none of them can obviously be deduced from the existence of the universe. In the end, then, the cosmological argument is simply a rationalization of what people already believe and want to think is rational.
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Comments
Can you name anything, dear Austin, that has merely started being without being created first?Was the earth not created? Has it been here “from day one”, if you can even define day one. Can you please give me your theory of how the universe came into existence. I know you’ve read the bible, so thats my belief. Please give me some intelligent explanation and your thoughts on this subject.
Yes: rocks.
No.
Non sequitur.
I don’t have any personal theories; I accept what science has to offer. It’s proven far more reliable than Bronze Age superstitions.
Why not the Upanishads?
Please read what science has to offer.
Are you telling me that rocks come to form without the aid of anything else? Is this what your science has to offer? Are you kidding me?!What has your science offered to you as explanation of the earths beginning. The question the quotes ask is exactly right. The earth was willed into existence, if it wasn’t someone would have to put an age on it .If you read the bible, and its exactly accurate, it is approx. 7-9 thousand years old. Thats it. Do you have any scientific evidence (if you know anything about fossil formation, then you know that fossilization occurs very rapidly, not over long periods of time ie,floods)that the earth has been here for millions of years? Carbon dating?I have read what science has to offer, but not the scientists that quote on the sides of Wendy’s happy meals as factoids concerning dinosaur “facts”.I think that you will find that the bible is scientifically correct, if not, please point out where it is inaccurate. Thanks, by the way, when you cant answer something, do you just type in non sequitur? Stands for dont know. Talk to ya soon
By the way, if you google rock formation, it will tell you how rocks are really formed. Thanks
No, I am saying that they aren’t created - as in, made by some creator.
Buy an intro astronomy text.
Prove that it was “willed into existence.”
And since multiple lines of indisputable evidence prove that there was history before that time, you have indisputable proof that the Bible is wrong.
Also, if the Bible is “exactly accurate,” then you should have an exact date, not an approximate date range of 2,000 years.
Yes. We also have indisputable historical records going back longer than what the Bible allows for.
You just did by quoting that age.
Non sequitur means “does not follow.” I type it in when you say something that has no relevance to what I said before and, therefore, “does not follow” from anything in the conversation. Does your knowledge of Latin come from the same sources as your knowledge of science and geology?
I should’ve looked up the age, but I was too lazy to get off this chair. Thats not the point, point is its not 70 million years old. What indisputable historical records going back longer than the Bible allows for do you know of? Who was it written by? Is it still in print, or was it written modern day by a scientist or something which is not I guess a historical record. The only thing Ive ever read from an astronomy book ,intro or advanced, is what yall call the big bang, or some sort of prebiotic soup . Ive been waiting months to read your words from your computer about how this planet was formed and life started. Ive been reading your whole website and I know that you are pappa athiest. Just tell me ,and stick to the subject of your discussion,how did this earth form and when. Does my knowledge of Latin, which I obviously have none, pertain to this discussion?
Being too lazy to try to get your facts straight isn’t a good way to proceed. If you aren’t going to invest even the smallest effort to try to make sure that what you are saying is correct, you give me no reason invest much effort in responding.
You’re correct. The best scientific data is that the earth is over 4.5 billion years old.
We have historical evidence of human civilization, culture, and even writing older than your claim about the age of the Earth in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and also I believe India. The earliest known writing is around 5,000 years old and it’s already well developed, so it had to start well before then. The earliest archeological records of human settlements (modern homo sapiens) in Egypt alone go back at least 12,000 years.
It’s unlikely that any astronomy book would devote more than a couple of lines to “prebiotic soup” since that has nothing to do with astronomy.
I told you that if you want to discuss such things, you can post in the forum. They are off topic for this blog post. So is the rest of what you’re posting, as a matter of fact, so anything more that directly related to the blog post will be deleted. The forum is easy to use, so if you are sincere in wanting to discuss this I’m sure I’ll see your posts there soon.
That isn’t the subject of this blog post, as I’m sure you know. Post your question in the forum where it’s not off-topic.
Actually, it’s not on topic for this post, but the fact that you claimed to know the translation to a Latin phrase, despite having no knowledge of Latin, is arguably on-topic when it comes to evaluating the things you say.
The “subject” is the cosmological argument, not Jesus. I’ve deleted your post. You can put it up again in the forum if you want.
Joe,
Austin has been very patient with you, now it’s time for you to go away and pay a bit more attention to your school science lessons and a bit less to the pseudo science in those creationist comics your Mom is feeding you.
you are, presently, hopeless.
Joe:
Sorry to have to tell you, man, but people like you give us Christians a bad name.
***************************
The Bible is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a science book.
***************************
(Go back and read that again if you didn’t get it the first time. Or even the second. I’ll wait.)
Its earliest portions were written at least 500 years before the Greek concepts of “science” and “philosophy” came into being, and its final chapters were written some 1400 years before “modern” science began to take shape in the western world.
Nearly all the West’s early modern scientists were devout theists who studied the earth and sky for signs of the glory of God and believed that “God’s truth” was revealed not only in the written Word and the Church’s articles of faith, but also in the physical universe. For their efforts they were excommunicated, imprisoned, and even executed when their discoveries didn’t jive with dogma.
(The wrangling has continued into the modern era. Galileo wasn’t officially “rehabilitated” by the Catholic church until the late 20th century…….. but the Pope’s decree stopped short of an actual apology for the church’s having put him through the wringer.)
Yet centuries later, their “heretical” ideas (WHAT??? the earth isn’t the center of the universe? orbits aren’t circular? quick, call the Inquisition!!!!!) are accepted as a matter of course. We teach our kids this dangerous stuff in elementary school!
For the life of me, I can’t understand why folks like you are so afraid to get your nose out of the Book and realize that “the Heavens are telling the glory of God” as well. Stop acting as if your brains got washed away with your sins when you got baptized. You can still read the Bible to tell you why you’re here, but learn to read the “book of the universe” to learn how you (and everything else) got here.
At the very least, refusal to listen to what science really says about this magnificent universe is allowing fear to win out over faith. It’s blatant idolatry, worshiping the Bible instead of the God who inspired both it and the universe and gave you the senses (and the sense, if you’d only use it!) to understand and appreciate the wonder of it all.
Time after time, trying to shove religion and science into the same container has made for bad religion and bad science. Trying to use one God-given way of knowing to control or even deny another God-given way of knowing is trying to second-guess God, and as such, it’s outright blasphemy.
If you want to know where your head-up-your-ass attitude just might get you (and possibly the rest of us - American science education has been going down the dumper in recent years because of the wrangling caused by Fundamentalists seeking to impose their intentional myopia and paranoid fear on the rest of us), just take a look at Medieval history.
While Europeans were mired in the Dark Ages, Muslim science flourished under a series of liberal caliphs and became far and away the most sophisticated in the known world, and was to become the foundation of modern astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and numerous other disciplines (and perhaps even of the modern concept of science itself). Even much of our knowledge of classical Greek science, philosophy, and other classical literature owes its very existence to devout Muslim scholars who preserved that (”Godless!!!!”) literature in Arabic translation.
Muslim science in turn went into a nosedive in the later Middle Ages as Islamic thought turned inward on itself under the influence of a series of increasingly conservative leaders who “closed the doors of interpretation” - some time around the middle of the 13th century, if I recall right - and retreated into a rigid (and highly selective) Quranic literalism that holds up an alarming mirror to today’s equally rigid (and equally selective) “Christian” Fundamentalist Biblical literalism.
You’ll never prove or disprove anything about God by way of science, and you’ll never prove or disprove anything about science by way of religion. So grow up, use your God-given brains, and get a clue, fool!
End of sermon. (Sorry, Austin; people like this flat-out piss me off, and sometimes I just can’t keep from banging them over the head with their own 2×4s. GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!) We now return you to your regularly scheduled amazing universe already in progress.
Can you please give me your theory of how the universe came into existence. I know you’ve read the bible, so thats my belief.
Where does the Bible say how the universe came into existence?
Genesis says that Yahweh created the universe, but it is silent on the topic of how he did this.
You haven’t offered a theory about how, you have given some vague notions about who.
(with apologies if this hits twice - it doesn’t seem to have hit the first time.)
Zack, you hit the nail right on the head.
The big Achilles’ Heel of creation/”intelligent” design is that its advocates can’t say how things came into being after “God said, ‘Let there be….’” Instead of fighting science with science, they’re trying to fight it with theology, philosophy, and semantics - all of which are entirely irrelevant. They can’t even give a half-assed guess about how the process did take place, which is the only question real science is trying to
answer. All they can do is splutter, “It couldn’t have happened that way” and try to evade the question with a bunch of half-assed flawed “logic” and out-of-date arguments over “evidence” and ideas that real science left behind decades ago.
There they go again, second-guessing God (whom they’re coyly trying to avoid mentioning) because their heads can’t get get around the much-repeated and
(supposedly) fervently believed idea that “with God all things are possible.” What, God can make the blind see and the lame walk, and can flood the whole world, but can’t set up a universe in such a way that it will crank up instead of winding down? Or maybe he just gets his ya-yas out of sitting around up there like the Big Emeril in the Sky, saying BAM!!!!! BAM!!!!! BAM!!!!!”
Piffledygook! Even God says that’s bullshit. He spends about 6 chapters reaming Job a new one for exactly that sort of second-guessing.
Oops, I forgot. That’s a part of the Bible Joe and friends decided not to read ‘cuz it doesn’t jive with what they want to believe……….
‘Nuff snarking for now. I’ve got a cold and it’s making me cranky as hell, so
I’m being unusually pissy, but my point still stands. Read the “book of the universe,” Joe!
zack, something is eternal. why? i find it reasonable to think that something cannot arise from nothing. so, what is it? presently, we have, at least, two choices, which each individual must look at and decide for themselves, as these things cannot be proven. first, the universe definitely exists. everything that exists…space, matter, and whatever else that’s out there is the universe. the other possibility is some metaphysical explanation, like a god or gods. now, something that definitely exists, the universe, has a greater probability of being eternal than something that may or may not exist, a god or gods. so, the universe is, presently, the most likely thing to be eternal. in other words, the universe always was and alway will be. i understand that this idea is difficult to get ones mind around and we have been conditioned to be able to think that a god has done it but really, thinking that a god created the universe only makes the question more complicated and generally, the simplest solutions are thought to be the more elegant. the concept of the infinity of space is a very similar idea and just as hard to really get a mental grasp on. good luck, tuffy
Joe, the bible is scientifically accurate to the extent that the Earth is flat and the sky is a fixed bowl shaped firmament to which all the little stars are fixed. The are little aren’t they? According to god, the creator of the universe, if you climbed high enough, you’d be able to see “all the corners of the earth”. This is the same almighty creator that couldn’t defeat the people of the valley because they possessed “chariots of iron”. Look it up.
Oh, I forgot to add, my point is that the bible is a melange of neolithic tribal chest thumping and some silly proto-cosmology. The bible really is too silly to contemplate as truth. It’s not even close.
First, you have no clear definition of god, to whom you ascribe numerous absolute characteristics [omni-potent, omniscient, omni-present] that you, because of the inherent fallibilty of human beings, cannot justify. How is it that a book like the bible, mis-interpreted…re-translated and here is the kicker….written by men, sexist, violent, contradictory, is sanctified only by its own claim to fame. The truth exist apart from doctrine. Doctrine is a human interpretation of percieved truth and therefore also fallible. Why are christians, so secure in their faith, so desabilized when an atheist points out the falliblitiy of their arbitrary belief systems, which has nothing to do with science. First, Define Your concepts of god, then stick to your beloved commandments. That should keep you busy for a while.
Why is it that so much time is wasted on a subject that we can never really answer? Is it necessary to know how the world came into being in order to live in it? It seems to me that this topic serves to distract people from focusing on problems that we can do something about. Speculation about such things is a fun pastime, but I can’t take it seriously, especially when our planet is becoming a toxic waste dump. I am still amazed at how much emotional investment people have made in a topic that has little possibility of being resolved. Better to deal with what is real - while we still can!
mike, some people bake bread and some people philosophize. luckily science got off the ground so the probabilities about the biggest questions are continually becoming clearer. true, maybe we’ll never know THE TRUTH for sure but people wonder about it anyway. i like to look at it from the standpoint of astronomy/cosmology and another person will use physics. just like anything else, there is the evolution of philosophy. in 1,000 years our estimations today probably won’t look too sophisticated (assuming that civilization/science stays on course) but this is the best we can do right now. geniuses like johannes kepler could really understand it better and helped us advance. i like to think of our experience in existence as an interesting adventure.
From the second Law of Thermodynamics it seems impossible for the universe to be eternal. Roughly speaking, the second law says that in an isolated system, concentrated energy disperses over time, and consequently less concentrated energy is available to do useful work. Energy dispersal also means that differences in temperature, pressure, and density even out.
If you start with the premise that the universe is eternal I think that what you ultimately are saying is that the universe has been around long enough for the second Law of thermodynamics to have brought the universe to heat death. The fact that we are still around seems to imply that either the 2nd law of thermodynamics is incorrect or at least does not apply or that the universe has a starting point somewhat less than eternity.
I suppose that it could be argued that the universe has some sort of cosmic ebb and flow, where it expands and contracts and so periodically recreates itself. But the last research I looked at concerning the “red shift” of distant stars indicates that the universe is not only expanding but is expanding at a faster rate. If you still want to advocate that the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply it will be your responsibility to prove it.
What is left is an entity that is above/beyond/outside of nature and that has the ability and power to create the universe. That which is the “supra-natural”. And I think that by definition God is that entity that is beyond nature.
That’s precisely what many cosmologists think.
Please support the claim that this is only alternative left.
Unless this “god” has been observed and its “supernatural” qualities verified, then it is not a suitable candidate for the role you are suggesting. I might as well state that grabelug is, by definition, beyond nature and has the power to create the universe. What is grabelug? I just made it up — but it is no less valid than “god” as an explanation.
That’s precisely what many cosmologists think.
Thinking it is a long way off from demonstrating why it should be believed. Again, from the last research that I looked at, and admittedly it has been a couple of years that I looked it up, from the red shift from distant stars the universe is not only expanding but is expanding at a faster rate. The evidence seems to deny an ebb and flow. But rather points to an universe that is only expanding. What evidence would you give to convince me of ebb and flow?
Unless this “god” has been observed and its “supernatural” qualities verified, then it is not a suitable candidate for the role you are suggesting.
If we may concede that there are only 2 options, 1) There is a God, and 2) there is no God. The negation of one of the options only leaves you with the 2nd. If you assume there is no God, all you have left is nature/the universe. That means that God is the title that we have assigned to that being that exist beyond nature. Again if you believe there is only the universe, then the universe is all that exist. The universe being all there is becomes a closed system because there is nothing outside of it to feed it power or order in to it. And because there is nothing besides the universe it has never been created and has existed for eternity. Enter the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Given enough time the universe would have suffered heat death. Given that we still exist either the 2nd law of thermodynamics does not apply,(which I leave to you to prove), or the universe has not always existed. If it has not always existed then it needs something beyond the laws of nature, something not subject to the laws of nature to have created it. If you will, you need the cosmic pool player to “break”. To start things in motion. The name of that entity, that something outside of nature we generally call God. grabelug would not be appropriate because it does not carry with it any concept of something that exist or operates beyond the pale of nature.
Please support the claim that this is only alternative left.
If you do not believe in God or any god it seems that all you are really left with is the universe. You are only left with the things that are subject to the laws of nature. You are left with things that are subject to the second law of thermodynamics.
Why, then, did it not come into existence sooner?
How about an entity that is not bound by the rules of the world it is going to create?
It doesn’t have to follow these laws. It is more inexplicable than the universe it created.
How quickly conversations digress! Truth is truth regardless of opinion. The bible is truth. If you do not repent of your sin, you will go to hell.
Andrew
Prove it.
If Joe isn’t too lazy to return to this site:
World’s oldest rocks found in Quebec
Rocks found on eastern shore of Hudson Bay are 4.28 billion years old
Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 25, 2008
The geological world is buzzing with news that the oldest rocks on Earth are sitting on a windswept, barren shore in northern Quebec. An international team is reporting the rocks date back almost 4.3 billion years to when the infant Earth was being pummeled by meteors, comets and asteroids. There are also intriguing signs the rocks may carry the “biosignature” of the earliest life to emerge from the primordial seas.
“It really puts Canadian geology back on the map,” says geoscientists Boswell Wint, at McGill University, who suspects rusty rock at the site may prove to be evidence of ancient microbial life.
But for now it is the rocks’ antiquity that is making headlines. Researchers at McGill, the Universite du Quebec and the Carnegie Institution in Washington report Friday in the journal Science that rock found on the remote eastern shore of Hudson Bay is 4.28 billion years old.
“This would make them the oldest rocks ever found on the surface of the Earth,” says McGill’s Jonathan O’Neil, lead author of the report. He has spent the last five summers exploring the Hudson Bay outcropping and hauling chunks of the ancient bedrock back to his Montreal lab.
It’s been known since 2001 that the outcropping was old, but a speckled brown and beige patch O’Neil and his colleagues have pulverized and analyzed has proved to be much older than other rocks at the site. They believe it originated in a volcano that erupted in a shallow sea not long after the planet’s rocky crust began to form.
The Quebec find is sure to provoke plenty of debate because the team used a new dating technique, and there’s a possibility the rocks may have been reprocessed geologically not long after they formed.
“I can tell you there will be an incredible amount of activity and measurement going on in the next couple years to try prove them right or wrong,” says Wing, who is familiar with the team’s work and visited the site this summer.
Rocks from Earth’s early days are extremely rare, and the Quebec find is expected to see plenty of researchers swarm north for a look. “Anything from the first three-quarters of a billion years (of Earth’s history) attracts geologists like flies to dead fish,” says Roger Buick, at the University of Washington in Seattle, who specialises in the planet’s early evolution. He says he would love to get a closer look at the Hudson Bay rocks.
The Earth is said to have formed from a cloud of cosmic dust and debris about 4.567 billion years ago. Until now weathered granite in the Northwest Territories, dating back about four billion years, has held the title of the world’s oldest rock.
The Hudson Bay rocks appear to be about 300 million years older and scientists say they should provide clues about not just early geological processes, but also Earth’s early atmosphere, and perhaps even the microbes that are thought to have interacted with iron in the early oceans to create rusty sediments.
“It may, and that’s may in capital letters, be the oldest traces of life,” O’Neil says of the rusty streaks embedded in the Hudson Bay rock.
The outcropping is on Inuit land, about an hour’s canoe trip south of the Inuit community of Inukjuak. The Inuit have given the scientists permission to work on the site and have been helping with logistics. The researchers say the setting is ideal, with 10 square kilometers of ancient bedrock sitting right at the surface. Inuit guides drop the researchers at the shore, they set up camp, and walk about 100 metres and there are the world’s oldest rocks. “There are no trees and so much rock,” says O’Neil. “You can stand up there and just imagine being on the bottom of ocean floor 4.3 billion years ago,” adds Wing. “These rocks are that well preserved.”
Mike Carroll, general manager for the Pituvik Landholding Corporation that oversees use of the land for the Inuit, says the scientists gave the community the heads-up about the discovery when they passed through Inukjuak this summer. The corporation’s board of directors is now mulling over how best to manage the site. Everything from a “possible moratorium” on visitors to prevent abuse of the geological treasure, to incorporating a visit to the ancient rocks as part of a tourism package are up for discussion, says Carroll.
Andrew has written “The bible is truth.” Even a cursory examination of that ramshackle collection of legends, history, polemics and borrowed mythology shows that it is the last place to go for truth. He must be using an entirely different definition of the word, one which seems to have escaped my notice. Can you clarify that bald statement Andrew? As Pilate is supposed to have said, “What is truth?”
Andrew. Poor young fellow.
Sermon on the mount. Subject a guy called Jesus.
Another guy called Satan/Shatan?Devil/Diblo.
Jesus tells the story that he was offered the whole of the world. By the other fellow.
All four corners.
The world doesn’t have any corners and is not flat.. You can’t see all the world in one sighting even from the moon.
Your reckoning that the Bible is Truth.
Is a little bit like Islam means Peace.
Depends upon which glasses your using.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
“The bible is truth! Even the bits that contradict the other bits! I am NOT mentally ill!”
ANDREW.
Would you care to refute my observations of the
Sermon on the mount? Or alternatively prove that Jesus was telling the TRUTH when he said he saw FOUR CORNERS and the WHOLE world from a minor mountain top.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au