January 29, 2012
The moral argument for God’s existence turns on a point that is relatively simple to articulate. Nonetheless, that point often seems lost on those who reject the moral argument and the point is this: One need not believe in God in order to know moral truths, but “moral truth” is an incoherent notion if God does not exist. In his book On Guard (David C. Cook, Colo. Sprgs., CO, 2010) William Lane Craig expresses it this way, “While it would be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God, that [isn't] the question. The question [is]: Can we be good without God?” He goes on to explain that the issue is over the nature of moral values. Are moral values mere conventions, matters of taste, or are they real and somehow binding on us? More to the point, if they are objectively real, what is the basis for them?
The argument can be stated as follows:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
Before beginning a serious discussion of the moral argument, we may want to deal with a trivial but nonetheless misleading objection in order to clarify what is required of a sound argument. For the purpose of illustration this objection operates by substituting an absurdity in the place of God such as:
1. If purple unicorns do not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties exist.
3. Therefore, purple unicorns exist.
The idea here, of course, is to equate the absurdity of purple unicorns with God and thereby vitiate the argument for God. However, for any argument to be successful it must have three attributes. First, the argument must have true premises. Second, the argument must be sound, that is, it must be logically consistent and in accord with the rules of logic. By those rules, the conclusion will follow from the premises. Third, there must be some warrant for believing the premises to be true. The premises must be more plausible in light of the evidence than their contraries, or opposites. Though the unicorn argument is sound in its logical form the problem is that it uses an indefensible premise that is false on its face. The bare notion of purple unicorns in this context (not as a medieval symbol for Christ) lacks what theologians refer to as the “great making” property of moral perfection necessary to instantiate moral values and duties, and it has certain other defects not consistent with divinity. If, indeed, the unicorn in question had those attributes, then “purple unicorn”, though not the mythical beast, could be regarded as just another name for God. The premises for the existence of God, on the other hand, can as we shall see, be successfully defended. So, an argument must possess not only sound logical structure but defensible premises. With that in mind we can now turn to the consideration of the premises.
PREMISE ONE – If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
In defense of the moral argument’s first premise we will draw on another work by Craig, Reasonable Faith (Crossway Books: Wheaton, IL, 2008). First, we must say what we mean by moral values and duties. Moral values refer to what is good or bad. One can make a choice among bad options without being morally wrong. For example, in the movie “Sophie’s Choice”, Meryl Streeps’s character, a young Jewish mother with two children, was in a Nazi extermination camp. Forced by a Nazi officer, she had to choose which of her children would go to the gas chamber or else both children would die. By choosing one, what she did was bad but not morally wrong on her part.
However, moral duties carry the weight of obligation. Such duties entail what is right or wrong, not what is merely good or bad. When the Nazi officer in the movie just mentioned forced Streep’s character to make her choice, what he did was not merely bad but something worse: it was morally wrong. He failed in his moral obligation not to force harm on innocent human life.
Second, we must clarify what we mean by objective moral values and duties. These values and duties are objective if they are independent of what any person or people group thinks of them. For example, murdering Jews would still be wrong even if no one in Nazi Germany thought it so. But what can underpin these objective values and duties and give them force?
Can it be naturalism? Craig explains that naturalism holds that only those things susceptible to description by science exist. These descriptions, though, are morally neutral, and our moral values are then mere human illusions. If, as on the naturalistic world view, our moral values are the result of biological evolution and social conditioning, it is difficult to see how human beings have moral value to inspire cooperative, much less self-sacrificial, behavior. To imagine ourselves morally different from other beasts under these conditions would be what some have called a mere prejudicial preference for our own kind, or “species-ism”.
The sense of the first premise, then, is that if our moral deliverances are real and binding as moral duties, they must rest on an unimpeachable universal authority, one that, as Aquinas said, “all men mean by ‘God’ “. If our ethical beliefs stem from no such ultimate authority, then our notions concerning right and wrong are illusory or merely relative to our local, and escapable, reference frame. If God does not exist, naturalism is true and all actions lack moral significance no matter how useful or destructive they may be. Like animals we might take what was not in our possession but it could not be reasonably regarded as “stealing”. Though we killed, even randomly, it would be killing only, but not “murder”. At most we could only be accused of behaving unfashionably.
PREMISE TWO – Objective moral values and duties exist.
To avoid a lengthy discussion I will simply say that this premise tends to be self-evident. For example, it is difficult to argue seriously that torturing babies for amusement is a morally neutral act.
Some, however, entertain the possibility of the natural development of moral values and duties. Are they then illusions? To claim moral beliefs are merely the result of evolution or social conditioning commits the “genetic fallacy” which is to imply that the truth of a proposition depends upon its origin. How one comes to know a true moral proposition does not change its truth value. If one’s moral convictions were found written on the bottom of a rock they could still happen to be true. At most this objection might show that our perception of moral values has evolved.
But even if our moral beliefs did in fact arise in this way what might be the justification for holding them. Even though they were true how would I know my belief was actually valid? The object of evolutionary development is survival, not truth. There seems to be no reason on such an account to trust my moral intuitions. Yet, for most of us the sense of the truth of their existence seems inescapable.
CONCLUSION - God exists.
On the basis of our warrant for the premises and the validity of our argument’s form we conclude, “Therefore, God exists.”
August 11, 2011
Previously having briefly discussed the Leibnizian cosmological argument, we will look at another of the cosmological arguments, the Kalam. The explication of this argument in modern times has been the work of William Lane Craig as set forth in his book, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Wipf and Stock: Eugene, Oregon), and this essay draws from that and other writings by Craig.
The Kalam argument has its roots prior to and through the Islamic tradition but was also the subject of debate among medieval Christian theologians. Kalam, the Arabic word for speech, came to mean the argument upholding the statement of an intellectual position and ultimately progressed to being the name of a movement in Arabic thought. The argument itself can be stated quite simply. The discussion of its implications is voluminous. The implications themselves are infinite.
The Argument
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Discussion
The critical distinction in the first premise is that between “What Exists” and “What Begins to Exist”. Prior to “Big Bang” cosmology the received opinion of much of the scientific and philosophical communities was that the universe existed as a brute fact. No explanation being possible, none was therefore necessary and some simply believed we should regard the universe as existing eternally and necessarily. This attitude went at least as far back as Aristotle and probably before that. Only with the realization of a beginning explicit in the “Big Bang” did it become problematic and necessary to consider that there might be something other than the universe that was self-existent.
The thrust of much of physics today is to re-establish the purely materialistic character of the universe appealing to speculative notions of multi-verses or a greater “universe-as-a-whole”. However, attempting to dismiss the causal principle as applied to the universe while accepting it for everything going on in the universe is clearly inconsistent. This principle must apply not only to what one knows as the Standard Model of the universe but the radical variations such as multi-verses and so on.
Furthermore, cosmologists, Borde, Guth and Villenkin, have demonstrated that any model of the universe with an average Hubble expansion greater than zero has a beginning. This applies to all credible cosmologies including string theories.
Likewise all universes with a beginning must have a cause and that cause cannot therefore be anything that exists in the time and space of a universe since that would set up an infinite regress of causes of universes, a logical and material impossibility. Two arguments from philosophy and several evidences from the physical world support this.
Arguments From Philosophy
The arguments from philosophy hold that 1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist and 2) It is impossible to form an actually infinite collection of things by adding one member after another. These arguments are taken from the third chapter of Reasonable Faith, 3rd Edition by Wm. Lane Craig.
The first argument contends:
1) An actually infinite number of things cannot exist.
2) A beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite number of things.
3) Therefore, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.
Concerning the first premise one must distinguish between what is an actual and what is a potential infinite. Craig writes that “An actual infinite is a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number 0, 1, 2, 3…” He then says, “…a potential infinite is a collection that is increasing toward infinity as a limit but never gets there.” A collection like the latter is only indefinite, not infinite. Premise one refers to the former, an actual infinite.
The point is that philosophically speaking the universe (or any version of a universe) cannot be actually infinite because that would entail absurdities. To illustrate, consider mathematician David Hilbert’s “hotel”. In Hilbert’s Hotel, when every one of its infinite number of rooms is full and another infinite number of guests arrives no one ever need be turned away for a lack of accommodations. All the desk clerk needs to do is move every guest into a room with a number twice his original room number proceeding out to infinity and all the odd numbered rooms (an infinite number of them at that) will be available for a second infinity of guests. He could continue to increase the profitability of his operation by doing this an infinite number of times if actual infinities were possible.
Another illustration that I imagine (correctly, I hope) to be my own invention is one I call “The Long Black Train” playing off an old Johnny Cash song. If two trains from an infinite distance apart were moving toward each other on the same track, the passengers never need be concerned for the possibility of a head-on collision. In fact they could never even get any closer to one another since no matter how far they traveled they would still be coming from an infinite distance away. If today were a station called The Present on that train track, we could never reach it, because just as we could not reach an infinitely distant “starting point”, we could not come to The Present from there.
On the other hand, in the book Reasonable Faith, Craig points out that the infinity of God is rather qualitative than quantitative or mathematical. Craig writes that the infinity of God “means that God is metaphysically necessary, morally perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, etc.” Thus as it applies to God we are dealing with a different sense of infinity.
So, since a beginningless series of events in time entails an actually infinite series of things, a beginningless series of events in time cannot exist.
The second argument from philosophy holds that:
1) The series of events in time is a collection formed by adding one member after another.
2) A series of events in time formed by adding one member after another cannot be actually infinite.
3) Therefore, the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.
On the commonsense view of time, namely that the past, present and future are objectively real, one accepts the first premise. The second premise hearkens to the impossibility of arriving at a present from an unreachable infinite past recalling the absurdity of “The Long Black Train”. If the past is infinitely distant, all points in the future of such a past become unattainable which is an absurdity. Consider the objection that one can always come to the present from any specified point in the past. This fails to address how one completes the entire series of past moments, there always being one more through which one has not traversed as we go infinitely back. Further absurdities can be shown but this illustrates why one should accept premise two and so the argument goes through concluding that the series of events in time cannot be actually infinite.
Evidence From Physics and Astronomy
The Standard Model, as it is called, posits a universe with a beginning in the finite past now thought to be about 13.7 billion years ago. Despite the emergence of theories aimed at avoiding an absolute beginning of all that exists, the empirical evidence supporting such a beginning continues to mount. Starting in 1922, the solution to the field equations of relativity theory predicted the expansion of the universe which Einstein himself had tried to avoid by introducing the “cosmological constant” into the equations. Alexander Friedman and then Georges Lemaitre solved the equations revealing a prediction of an expanding universe. This changing universe was confirmed by the researchers working under Edwin Hubble in 1929 when they discovered the systematic shift of light from distant galaxies to be toward the red end of the light spectrum. It was compelling evidence of the recession of the galaxies and an expanding universe.
Evidence has continued to mount confirming the expansion of the universe and concurrently the beginning of the universe. The realization that the light elements such as helium and deuterium cannot be not formed in stars but only in the “Big Bang” event, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation which is the residual “echo” of the Big Bang, and the increasing frequency of the appearance of radio galaxies at greater distances all point to a past universe that has changed as the universe has expanded and matured. Also, the resolution of something called “Olber’s Paradox” demonstrates the expansion of space and the recession of stars from us by explaining how it is that all that star light out there is not burning us up. If the universe were infinite in age and static the light from all of its stars would reach us and the sky would be bright all the time. Since the universe is finite and expanding only a small portion of the light reaches us and the sky at night is dark.
Alternative theories to the Standard Model have been put forward in an attempt to avoid or explain away the intractable truth of an ultimate beginning of the universe. They have failed and continue to fail while evidence supporting the Standard Model continues to mount. A critical difficulty for all of them is their inability to avoid some kind of expansion or collapse. The Borde-Guth-Villenkin Theorem shows that any universe with an average Hubble expansion greater than zero is finite in the past. This theorem applies to all models including string/m-theory and multi-verses. Multi-verses could be real and string theory could be true but the point is that ultimately none of them would avoid some sort of absolute beginning to all existence.
Conclusion
Having established from both science and philosophy that the universe began to exist and recalling the inconsistency of holding to the causal principle for everything in the universe but not the universe itself, our premises are justified and the conclusion follows. But the question remains, where is God in this?
By concluding to a cause of the universe we are necessarily addressing an agent that possesses many of the attributes traditionally associated with God. For example, existing before time and space the cause would be timeless before the existence of the universe and non-spatial. That all knowledge and information came into existence with the universe implies that the cause is omniscient. Having the power to create all things requires omnipotence. It must itself be beginningless and uncaused since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
Most interesting of all, however, is the clear indication from the fact that the universe began at a particular time in the past. The question arises as to why the universe did not begin 5 billion years ago instead of 13.7 billion years ago, or maybe last week? The author of the Kalam suggested that the universe began at a particular time in the past by intelligent choice. After all, an effect cannot be absent in the presence of its cause except there be some restraint upon it. Thus we conclude not only to an all powerful, all knowing God but a personal God that acts according to his will at the time of his choosing.
August 8, 2011
The cosmological arguments are a class of arguments for the existence of God from the existence of the world or cosmos. Two such arguments of particular interest are that of Gottfried Leibniz, codiscoverer of calculus, and the Kalam cosmological argument expounded so successfully by William Lane Craig. The subject of this article is Leibniz’ argument in which he famously asks, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Craig explicates the Leibnizian argument also in his book On Guard (David C. Cook: Colorado Springs, Colo.) and much of this discussion draws on that work.
Leibniz’ argument has only four steps to a final conclusion:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
4. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence (1, 3).
5. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God (2, 4).
The first three premises of the argument are consistent with atheism. Until the mid-1920′s when Lemaitre and Friedmann working independently solved Einstein’s field equations discovering their prediction of an expanding universe, the opinion of most cosmologists and physicists had been that the universe existed merely by a necessity of its own nature. Expansion, however, implied a point of origin and therefore a beginning to the universe. While it may seem obvious that everything in the universe has a cause external to itself, the existence of the universe per se had up to then been considered by many to be a brute fact. Subsequent observations and philosophical reflection have shown that not to be the case. For example, the atheistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer chided that one could not dismiss the causal principle like a taxi cab having arrived at one’s destination. If the causal principle applies to everything that is in the universe it must apply to the universe in toto.
The second premise is a restatement of the atheistic contention that a) If atheism is true the universe has no explanation which is equivalent to b) If the universe has an explanation then atheism is false. Or as Premise 2 puts it, If the universe has an explanation then that explanation is God.
The Premise 3 seems obvious even on atheism in stating that “The universe exists.” Oddly, to most more literal-minded people anyway, some such as atheist Peter Atkins contend that nothing exists even now. This, he claims, is by virtue of their being a necessity of equality in the amounts of the “self- annihilating” positive and negative particles in the universe. The fact of our personal observation reassures us of the truth of Premise 3.
Glancing back at Premises 1 and 3 we may conclude to Premise 4, The universe has an explanation of its existence. Then from Premises 2 and 4 we conclude, The explanation of the existence of the universe is God.
In future meetings of RF Jonesville we pray to expand on the discussion of this and other arguments for the truth of Christianity.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
July 9, 2011
Lately the tragedy of Shannon Stone, the 39 yrs. old fire fighter and baseball fan who fell to his death trying to catch a baseball for his son at a major league game, has been in the news. Many will want to know what meaning could there possibly be in such an apparently pointless and tragic death. Here in Louisiana the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig explosion in which so many sons and fathers died provoked similar questioning as does every occasion of painful and profound hurt. When the spiritual darkness of personal disaster falls on us there is no answer that satisfies. Still, from a safer distance than the immediacy of the tragedy there may yet be some chance, at least after a while, for hope even if not complete understanding.
From the Christian perspective, we live in a fallen world and until Christ returns there will continue to be a need for our shared suffering. Because the ultimate meaning of life is in our relationship to Christ, that meaning endures even when this life does not. Like those who perished in the fall of the tower at Siloam, or those who died on that oil rig at sea, the judgement upon a life is not in how one died but in for whom one lived.
It has been reported that Shannon Stone’s last concerns were for his son. He makes a useful reminder of the selflessness of that One who at the end said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” That capacity to put another before one’s self in our concerns makes sense only in a world in which one’s hope has an object beyond one’s self. When Christ is the ultimate object of our hope, we at least have cause to look on, not only the future, but on the present with a sense of relationship that prevails.
Were this not so, then for Shannon Stone and those on the Deep Water Horizon meaning for them would have perished along with their mortal bodies. When those with whom they had earthly relationships are gone then it would be as though they had never lived at all. Some may claim that such is life anyway, and only a certain self-reliant mental toughness is appropriate in this circumstance of life in which we find our self. But if that were the case and no ultimate future beckons to us, then to what point is anyone’s swaggering about his ability to tolerate a meaningless existence? In a word, Who cares?
This last point was the problem of the French existentialists like Sartre and Camus. If God did not exist, they recognized the terrible implications of meaninglessness. All of our disasters and losses become just another part of the furniture of the universe. One wishes to avoid tripping over them, but it does no good to expect anyone to be moved to help us up when we fall. That God could indeed exist is the only thing that might give both hope and meaning and make the sense that keeps our tragedies from being merely absurdities.
So, whatever else Shannon Stone did in his life, and he may have done many good things - I did not know him personally, he at least left an example of the kind of affection and devotion that one hopes for in all fathers for their son. And because God exists, the loss of this man has meaning for us all. We shall keep Shannon and all of his family in our prayers.
