One argument for the existence of God is the design argument (William Paley). The universe resembles the productions or effects of human intelligence (premise), and similar effects proceed from similar causes (premise). So the universe is the production or effect of some intelligent being. But the universe is much more complex than any production of human intelligence (premise), so the production of the universe required intelligence much greater than human intelligence. However, the analogy between the universe and human artefacts is weak and intelligence is only one of the active causes in the world. Furthermore, even if intelligence is everywhere operative now, we cannot properly ascribe it to the origins of the universe and the origin of the universe is a single unique case and so analogies are pointless. In the absence of an independent argument for the designer’s perfection, the design argument does not acquiesce a being that is infinite in perfection or indefectible, eternal, necessary or even incorporeal. In a sense the theist argument about a first cause cuts the ground from under itself. Everything, it argues, requires a cause and to avoid infinite regress, there must be a first cause; however this first cause is something that has no cause. Therefore not everything requires a cause and the premise is invalid. Again, if there is a being which does not require a cause, why should this being not be the universe itself?
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) stated that there is no case known (nor indeed is it possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself, because in that case it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. In efficient causes it is impossible to continue to infinity. However, to take away the cause is to take away the effect, therefore, if there is no first cause, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. Consequently it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. He went on to talk about purpose, in which we see things which lack knowledge (e.g. natural bodies) and act for an end. This is evident from people nearly always acting in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their result not by chance, but by design. Whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are ordered to their end which is what we term God.
However these arguments are limited, as the causal argument proves – at most – that there was a first cause, but does not tell us what the first cause was like and does not prove that the first cause was mental; there is no reason why it should not have been material. Similarly, the design argument proves, at most, that the universe was designed. It does not show who or what the designer was, or whether the designer was a material or purely mental being. The designer might have been a computer game played by a child in another dimension. It might have been an enormous intelligent life form. The argument from design does not explain what the designer’s purpose was. It cannot prove that the universe was created for a “good” purpose; the universe could all be an ongoing experiment, an abandoned experiment, a joke, or a mystification. David Hume (1711-1776), suggested that the universe might be the work of an inferior deity and the object of derision of his superiors, or the production of an ageing deity which has run on out of control since his death.
Probably the most convincing purpose invented by theists is the one conceived by Mohammed, in which God created humans to contemplate him: “I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known.” By contrast, his motives would have been – in human terms – perverse if his goal was to create humans with all their faults and to test their ethics and devotion, only to violently wind up the whole spectacle and punish failures with eternal agony (i.e. not characteristic of a loving-God). The arguments cannot prove that the first cause and the designer were one and the same and the first cause may have started matter in motion, which a mental designer then worked on to shape our universe. Many Gnostics believed that the material world was not created by God but by an evil Demiurge. They cannot prove that the cause and designer are the God of any particular religion, or a God of any particular character, from which Aquinas abruptly leaps to the statement: “And this being we call God.” However he does not prove that this being is God, nor does he prove that it is his Christian Trinitarian God as opposed to the one Allah of Mohammed or other creator Gods. Moreover, he does not prove that the cause or designer was a personal, loving God who requires us to worship him.
Sceptics have long argued against the arguments from proof and cause. David Hume pointed out that God’s ideas were no true explanation of the material world, since a mental world required a cause just as much as any other. And if we had to stop our questioning there, then why not stop at the material world? “If I am still to remain in utter ignorance of causes, and can give an absolute explanation of nothing, I shall never esteem it any advantage to shove off for a moment a difficulty which…must immediately, in its full force, recur upon me…It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.”
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking has proposed a scientific approach to ending the cause question. He envisages a quantum universe where space-time would be curved back on itself like the surface of a sphere, and thus would have no beginning or end: the quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space time. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science break down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself and would neither be created nor destroyed; it would just be. Therefore there would be no place for a creator. A similar sphere or circularity might result if the universe had enough mass to be closed - that is, to recollapse on itself in a “big crunch,” which in turn might be followed by another “big bang.” In that case the end of one cycle would be the cause of the beginning of the next, and indeed there may have been the exact same moment in human history thousands, millions, even an infinite amount of times. Indeed this essay may also have existed an infinite number of times, which leads to the view that the universe has no inherent purpose as it will continue to repeat itself endlessly.
