The second way is very similar to the first but adds the idea of cause and effect. Again we get the premise from what we see around us, according to Aquinas “an order of efficient causes.” For Aquinas it is impossible for something to be the cause of itself because this would mean an object being prior to itself, a concept that does not make sense in a universe governed by time. There must therefore have been something outside of time that was the first cause that set the chain in motion.
The last of Aquinas’ interpretations of the cosmological argument is taken from “possibility and necessity”. All objects in the universe are either “merely possibles” or “necessary”. By “possibles” Aquinas means that all things in the universe can conceivably not exist because they depend on something else for their existence. There must be one thing that is not contingent on anything else for its existence. There must be one thing that offers an explanation of itself. Since nothing in the cosmos can do this, Aquinas says that this must be God.
The cosmological argument laid out by Aquinas and his followers has the advantage of being based on a premise that is irrefutable. We all must accept that the universe exists. However, this is not the case for the second premise and the conclusion that follows; that all effects have a cause. As David Hume argued it is possible to conceive a cause without an effect and an effect without a cause. It is only the fact that we are conditioned to expect certain effects following certain causes. “For example we can imagine a fall in temperature occurring without ice forming or perhaps ice forming without a fall in temperature. So what, argues Hume, is so surprising about an effect i.e. the universe being there without any conceivable cause?” [The Christian Understanding of God – John Pugh – The Christian Theology Trust] It is illegitimate to move from the premise that every effect within the universe has a cause to saying that the universe as a whole must have a cause. One cannot move from individual causes to the claim that the totality of all has a cause.
All of these ways beg the question; why can the chain of causes not continue backwards in time in an infinite regression? In Aquinas’ first way he gives a reason why it is not possible for the chain of causes or movers to continue “ad infinitum”. In a situation of an infinite regression there would still need to be a first mover. No process would have been started for the causes to reach us today. Almost like an infinite row of dominoes, he would say that effects would all just stand in potentiality. Without an outside cause there would be nothing to start the dominoes off at any stage. “It is necessarily the fact that, when the first mover is removed or ceases to move, no other mover will move or be moved.” [Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays – Edited by Anthony Kenny – Notre Dame Press, 1st Edition, 1976 – Infinite Causal Regression – Patterson Brown - quote taken from Summa contra Gentiles]
This is difficult to accept because an infinite regress would have no stage at which it would start. The whole point of an infinite regression is that it needs no beginning. Every cause can be intermediate. It is true that removing any stage from a causal sequence does prevent any subsequent effects from happening. However, it is not a case of removing the first cause. Denying that any cause is the first cause does not remove a cause but shows that it is perfectly conceivable, or at least as conceivable as a creator, for time to have no beginning.
This idea was taken up by Leibniz and combined with a form of the contingency argument. He believed that the “great principle” of the cosmological argument is that of “sufficient reason”. The sufficient reason is like a complete explanation. Saying that the each effect was has a cause and each cause has something that, in tern caused it ad infinitum, does not offer a complete explanation of the universe. An infinite regress cannot satisfy as sufficient reason because it always leads to another thing that demands another explanation. God, however, who is uncaused, can offer a complete explanation of the universe because God needs no explanation.
It is possible that this “Principle of Sufficient Reason” only holds a regress as lacking, because of its nature as infinite in contrast to the finite nature of the human brain. However many brain cells there may be, there are never enough to comprehend the never ending number of causes in an infinite regress. Infinity is not something that is truly knowable because “a quantity is infinite if it is such that we can always take a part outside what has already been taken” [Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays – Edited by Anthony Kenny – Notre Dame Press, 1st Edition, 1976 – Infinite Causal Regression – Patterson Brown - quote taken from Aristotle’s physics] Aristotle a forerunner to Aquinas’ and Leibniz’s causal theory gives a definition that shows infinity to be beyond the human grasp and in doing so gives a reason why Leibniz is unable to accept an infinite regress.
Even if one were to accept the causal principles laid out in Aquinas’ version of the cosmological argument it does not necessarily point to God. Firstly nothing in Aquinas’ argument points to the idea that the universe could not be self caused. Why can’t the universe be, in the words of Bertrand Russell, “just there”, a brute fact in a similar sense to the idea of God that the cosmological argument advocates? There is an assumption that something outside of the universe that created the universe (God) must be the cause of itself.
These arguments pose a second question: Why does one logically have to assume that God is the only thing that is self moved or incontinent? There is no logical step that says a timeless being must be self caused. Perhaps something caused God. This is certainly a question that needs to be answered by those who wish to seek a sufficient explanation for everything. What is the sufficient reason for God?
It is not possible to come to any kind of solid conclusion about God’s existence from the arguments laid out by Aquinas. Even accepting his account of causation he does not lead us to a necessary God. He shows us, through empirical evidence, that God is a possible answer to the question posed by creation but does not show that other options like: an infinite regress or a self causing universe are impossible. He leaves the question balanced on a matter of faith. The question rests on how appealing each explanation or argument is to ones intuition. Although no argument cited in this essay proves that there is no God, they do show that there are other possibilities.
Bibliography
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Western Philosophy An Anthology – Edited By John Cottingham – Blackwell Publishers, 1st Edition, 1996
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Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays – Edited By Anthony Kenny – Notre Dame Press, 1st Edition, 1976
- The Christian Understanding of God – John Pugh – The Christian Theology Trust
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Philosophy Religion and Science In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries – Edited by John W. Yolton – University Of Rochester Press, 2nd Edition,