Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: The Cosmological Argument (Part 6)

Lord, we pray you would bless this hour to the nourishment of our souls. That we might understand our Christian faith and commitment better. And we might understand better how to defend it. Present it in such a way that indeed those who need you the most might see the truth, the Scripture, and they might come to have a similar commitment as we have. How we thank you that your spirit has granted to us faith and how you've given us enlightenment in this course. At this point, we pray that you continue to be with us in Jesus name. Amen. Well, last time we were together, we were talking about the cosmological argument. I think we'll continue to do that today. Let's see if anybody remembers last time or the reading. Give me the basic structure or map of the cosmological argument. How do all cosmological arguments reason? There are different expressions, different ways of arguing, but they all have a similar structure. Effect to cause. From effect to cause. Okay, that's basically very simple but accurate description of cosmological arguments. They argue from effect to cause. But now, I did say that if you argue from effect to cause, in a sense, that's a trivial way of putting it. Let's see if we can go and do it again now with a little more detail, a little more sophistication. Not a lot more, just a little more. Remember I gave you premise 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 last time. Some fact is in your experience. That's right. First of all, you notice some facts in experience. What kind of fact might this be? Somebody. What might you notice in your experience what kind of fact changes. There are changes taking place. There is motion. Okay. And secondly, there must be some causal principle which causes that event. Okay, you appeal to a causal principle. And here's where we want to distinguish between a feeling from an effect to a cause. That's true. By definition. Every effect has a cause because that's what we mean by effect. That's what the word effect means. Something has a cause. And so usually the causal principle is every event has a cause. An event is understood in the broadest possible sense. A thought is an event. The existence of a body is an event. Because there is some kind of eventuation even in the existence of a body, if it's a stone or a living body. Okay, we notice that there's motion in our experience. Okay. We appeal to a causal principle. Say this event, this motion needs a cause. And then we conclude that there must be a God. Right. Go right for the juggler. Right. Then. Right. Clinch the argument. No. What do we Conclude at three series of stereotypes. That's right. There must be a series of causes. Okay, and then we add another premise to this sub conclusion. What is that? There cannot be an infinite causal series. And then we conclude. That God exists. Or let's keep it in the form of the argument, there must be a first cause which we call God. All right, does this strengthen your faith? You find this convincing? As you look at it, putting yourself in the shoes of the unbeliever or in the brain of the unbeliever got the wrong part of the anatomy as you're thinking. And as an unbeliever might think, would this convince you? Well, what sorts of problems might there be found in the argument? I said when we were together last time that the really crucial premise, actually, in any argument, every premise is crucial in a sense, but the one that really is bearing the weight, that is the hinge of this argument, is the idea that there can be no infinite causal series. There can be no infinite regression of causes. Thomas Aquinas argued against the possibility of an infinite causal regress. He argued against the possibility. However, in the article that we read by Edwards, he pointed out that Aquinas really gave us a very poor argument. Aquinas kind of passes over this point without. Without the kind of detail that he usually gave things, and the argument's not a good one. And Edwards points out Aquinas allows for the possibility elsewhere of an infinite series, and indeed, he allows for certain kinds of infinite causal regressions. Okay, so this is rather destructive to Aquinas argument to point out that even he elsewhere grants there can be an infinite causal regression. Okay, now what is done now by Thomists, followers of Aquinas, those who want to have a natural theology, what is done to try to resurrect this argument or to reconstruct this argument to avoid this damaging concession that even Aquinas elsewhere in his vast body of literature granted infinite causal regressions. Well, now we're either still on vacation, two kinds of. Can't give up now. I mean, all of the history of natural theology is resting on the answer to this question. If somebody look here, you have a guy who is. I mean, Thomas Aquinas is the natural theologian par excellence, right? And he's numero uno when it comes to this sort of thing. He says no infinite causal regression. His critic says, oh, is that right? Well, did you notice, by the way, over in chapter 15 of this other book you wrote, you granted that there are infinite causal regressions? I mean, does that shoot the whole thing out of the water. What is going. You're gonna have to draw some kind of distinction, right? Aquinas is gonna have to say, well, yeah, that was one kind of infinite causal regression I'm willing to grant, but there are other kinds I won't. Ordinary and special regression. Now, I put it in my own language that there are ordinary causal regressions and there are extraordinary or special kinds. And the problem with the argument is going to become. Now, how can Aquinas be sure that his argument works when he appeals to his very specialized notion of causal regression? You see, he wants to say there are certain kinds of causal regressions that we'll grant, but there are other kinds we won't. Okay, now, the kinds that he won't grant depends on a notion of cause that turns out to be rather extraordinary. Now, I started to distinguish between various kinds of causal chains toward the end of our time last week. We talked about a. A causal chain that is modeled after propulsion, one that's modeled after genetics or genealogy, and another one that it turns out is kind of a law analogy of causation. Can somebody explain this? What kind of causal chain is the chain of causes sent seen in propulsion? What is it that makes that an instance of this particular kind? What is the salient feature of propulsion? The causal chain of propulsion? Okay, I have a stick. I move my hand, which moves the stick, which hits the ball, which moves the ball. Now, what is it that makes that the kind of causal chain that it is? The motion of each event is related to the other in terms of the kind of motion involved. Okay, Or I put it this way. You have a cause that brings about an effect. Now, that effect is itself a cause, which brings about an effect which is itself a cause bringing about an effect. Okay, let me go through this now, putting in the detail. My hand moves which has the effect of moving the stick. Now, the moving of the stick is itself a cause. The moving of the stick is an effect of the moving of the hand. It's also a cause of the moving of the ball. So you see how the effect and the cause are one and the same thing here. But now, is that true when it comes to the causality. Causality of genetic relations? Okay, so here you have. We were using Abraham, as I recall. Abraham is the cause of Isaac, right? In the sense that Abraham's relationship with his wife brings about the birth of Isaac. Okay, now this is the effect. Abraham's relationship with his wife brings about the effect of the birth of Isaac. It's also true that Isaac brings About the birth of Esau? No, we're going to use Jacob. We want to be covenantal even in philosophies and covenant. Now, is it true that this effect is the cause of Jacob? Did the birth of Isaac bring about the birth of Jacob? You don't have to have a lot of philosophy to know the answer to that question. No, you see, Isaac had to have relations with his wife, and then that brought about the birth of Jacob. So it turns out that Abraham is the cause of the effect, Isaac. But Isaac is the cause of the effect Jacob in a way different than his being the effect of his father, Abraham. Okay, it's really not all that complicated, but I mean, to express it in an English sentence, it gets kind of convoluted. You understand? Abraham is a cause. He brings about, in effect, the birth of Isaac. Isaac brings about the birth of Jacob, but not as the effect of Abraham. He brings about it as a separate cause. Here the effect and the cause that we call Isaac are different. Up here, the effect and the cause in propulsion are the same. The moving of the stick and the moving of the ball are the same. Okay, go ahead. Reading through that stuff again, hearing it said, it just strikes me that there's two different kinds of causation depends upon an artificial discrimination. What you have to admit in the genealogical side there, that there are many causes for Jacob. One of those causes is Abe having had Isaac. There are other causes as well. And a multiple causation theory, which is hardly even touched on, the propulsion is very simple causation. There is one cause for each effect. Well, there's really multiple causes there too, to be honest. Right, to be honest. But they aren't. They never really discuss that. And if you start bringing in the multiple causes involved, you can trace, according to. Some people would be able to trace it back that Abe is one of the causes. There are also many other causes. Let's ask this question. Given the moving of the stick in the particular way described, is the moving of the ball necessary? I'm sorry? Given the moving of the hand in the particular way described, is the moving of the ball necessary? Okay, yeah, it is. But now, given Abraham, is Jacob necessary? No, that's why it's called. That's why this is called cause per accidenta or whatever the Latin is. It means accidental causation. There's nothing necessary if you start with Abraham that you're going to get to Jacob because, you know, there has to be a whole life history here of Isaac, and he has to have a wife and they have to have a certain kind of relationship before they. They have a child too. And so there's nothing necessary in this cause that brings about this effect. But given this kind of cause, this effect is necessary. And that's why it's called essential causation. Necessary causation. This is accidental causation. So I think that probably is a very good distinction philosophically, it's one that we should respect. But then what happens in Patterson Brown's article? Patterson Brown says there's another kind of causation, apparently that Aquinas is really resting on and the thrust of the argument rests on. And that is this kind of law analogy, what he calls responsible causation. Responsible causation. What is it that is responsible for this effect as we now see it? What is responsible for it? Okay, remember he gives the illustration of a traffic pile up, okay? So Mr. A hits Mr. B, slides into Mr. C, slides into Mr. D. Okay? Now if you go to court and D here wants to claim damages, we can trace causation back using a legal frame of mind. We're looking for responsibility here, legal responsibility. And so D blames C, but C says, ah, no, no, I was hit from behind by B. And B says, oh, no, no, I was hit from behind by A. Turns out that A is the first cause in the sense that he is responsible for the whole P. And what Patterson Brown is saying is this seems to be the kind of reasoning Aquinas is using. We notice in our experience here at D motion in the world, let's say it's the turning of the earth, okay, Night and day. So here's this change, this motion in our experience. Now that must, there must be something responsible for that. It turns out in the Aristotelian framework, that's the moving of the spheres in the heavenly bodies above. And because the spheres in the heavens are moving, they are turning the gases, the ether between the stars and the earth. And as it's turning the ether, the ether is turning the earth. Isn't that right? You didn't know that? That's Aristotelian physics, okay? There are no empty spaces. What you have is the turning of the stars, you see, is kind of like if you get a watery track around the earth, okay, if you get the water moving, what's going to happen? That's going to communicate motion through the water to the edges of the Earth. And although you're not going to get the same kind of ratio of turning, that's going to get friction moving on the outer surface of the Earth. And get it moving. So ether kind of does that sort of thing. It's this blue of the universe. And so you have cause, cause, cause. But you finally have to stop somewhere. What's responsible for the turning of the stars which turns the ether, which turns the earth? God. Okay, who. Who is responsible for this? Now, I think the reason Patterson Brown points out the law analogy of responsibility is because the causation that is being used here is really a form of explanation. Explanation. How do you explain the fact that there is something rather than nothing? How do you explain the fact that things are in motion? Well, let's say somebody takes a very mundane approach to this and says, well, you want to know why things are in motion. Okay, what do you want to know about? Well, here's D back here. You want to know why that's in motion? Well, because of C. Okay, that's it. Somebody says, oh no, wait a minute, wait, why C in motion? Now I want to know more. And you say, oh, well, can you do the analysis? And lo and behold, something we call B causes C. Okay, now that's it, right? We've got an explanation of what we want to explain here. And after a while, the natural theologian gets impatient. He says, no, it's not enough to give an explanation for every particular thing. In my experience. What I want is an explanation for the whole chain of causes, the whole chain. And this is where we turn to the short piece by Samuel Clark. Samuel Clark, in your reading, this is the nature of the cosmological argument. And somebody challenges four here. It says there's no infinite. The premise is there are no. There can be no infinite causal regression. And somebody says, well, why does that have to be. Now Samuel Clark says, okay, I give up. There can be an infinite causal regression. I grant your point. I concede the argument, but I'm still going to make the cosmological argument work. And the way Clark does that is after granting the point. He wants to rescue the argument by saying what causes the whole series of causes, everything taken together. Even if you have an infinite chain, okay, moving all the way back, even if you have an infinitely long chain. Clark says we need to have an explanation for the whole series by granting the infinite length of this chain. He cannot argue there must be a first class cause in the sense that there must be an A back here. That is the absolute rock bottom first. That's what Aquinas wanted to do. Now Clark tries to resurrect the argument, if you will, by putting it in another form. He means first cause in the sense of what stands over all of it, what brings about the whole series, not just what causes the first point in the series to get rolling, and then that causes the second, third and on. He wants to know about the whole shooting match. Why is the whole series exist? And his conclusion is, well, there must be a God that explains everything taken together. You know, before I, before I erase this right here. Does everybody have the basic natural theological form of the cosmological argument? Because it's going to take another form. Obviously, with four taken out of here, we're going to have a different kind of argument. And that's what we have to look at here for a few moments. And now this way of putting the argument is if you want an explanation for D, okay, you can get it in C. If you want an explanation in C, you can find it in B. An explanation for B is found in A. And then on and on and on we can go. There is an infinite causal regression here. Every point in the series is explained by the previous point. But the question is, how do you explain the whole series? How do you explain the whole series? That's Samuel Clark's point. The only way you can explain the whole series is now to. Is to make it dependent upon God. Now, David Hume as well as Paul Edwards more recently, have both these men, these philosophers, have disputed this argument. They've disputed the point. Anybody tell me, in your own words what the problem with this argument is. Of some necessary existence. What is the necessary existence? Does it go back to linguistics? I don't know. I don't think so. It's really a logical point here. Yeah. Hume says when he asked the question, how can anything that exists from eternity have a cause? And since that relation implies a priority in time and a beginning of existence. Yes, that's one way in which Hume argues against this. He says, if this is an infinite series, then it's eternal. And so it makes no sense to speak of it having a cause, because that would have to be something that is pre eternal. Now, would it be heresy to agree with him? What's that? Would it be heresy to agree with him? Hume, heresy to agree with him? It'd be heresy if that was your theology. But I think philosophically he's right. That's a good criticism. And therefore we better get our ducks in order if we want this argument to work. But now I'm looking for another form of criticism, one that's not even as subtle as the one that has been read. The assumption here is that if you explain every member of the series. You haven't explained the series as a whole. That the explanation of the whole series goes beyond the explanation of the individual parts. The presupposition of Samuel Clarke's argument is that when every member of the series has been explained, we still have the sequence as a whole left to explain. And that's a serious philosophical confusion. Why is it that we should have to explain the entire series now, once every point in the series has been explained? Let's say we're walking in downtown Ashland this afternoon, and lo and behold, to our surprise, we find out on the corner of the main street somewhere, five Eskimos standing together in their traditional Eskimo guard. Five Eskimos. Somebody says, now, how do you explain that five Eskimos standing on the cliff corner of Main street downtown Ashland, on Wednesday afternoon? How do you account for that? And so somebody says, well, Eskimo number one here happened to be in town visiting his parents and came downtown to buy something at the store. At this particular time, Eskimo 2 is waiting for the bus, wanting to go back home to Alaska or wherever. Eskimo 3 was dropped off here and told to wait for his ride. Eskimo 4. Eskimo 5. Okay, we give an explanation for every Eskimo being on that particular corner that particular time. Okay? So the person who's riding in your car, who was asked the question, this person has said, how do you account for five Eskimos on the corner of Main street on Wednesday afternoon right here in Ashland? Okay? And you've given an explanation for 1. You've given an explanation for 2. You've given an explanation for 3. You've given an explanation for 4, you've given an explanation for 5. And then your writer says to you, oh, that's all well and good, but how do you account for all five of them being there? You would probably look with some puzzlement at him. You say, now wait a minute. I accounted for all five of them. Them. Watch. Explanation 1. Explanation 2. Explanation 3. Explanation 4. All five. You can see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Every one of them has been accounted for. He says, but wait a minute. Isn't the whole greater than its parts? I mean, you've accounted for every part of the complex there, but how do you account for the complex as a whole? There'd be a serious confusion in this person's thought. You would recognize an immediate one. Now, is there not such a confusion in Samuel Clark's argument? He says, okay, we grant an infinite causal regression. Every point in the series is explained by the previous point in the series, on and on and on and on and on. And then Clark says, but how do you account for the series as a whole? How is that different than asking for an explanation for all five of the Eskimos even though each particular Eskimo has been explained. Yeah, why are there Eskimos Is not been answered. Explaining how the Eskimos came to be in Ashland does not explain why there are not Eskimos at all. No. In the particular story I told, the question is how do you explain them being on this corner at 5:30 in the afternoon in Ashland, Ohio? Which is the problem, because the analogy does not, the individual explanations does not go back far enough. When you explain the seriation, the parts. Yeah, that explains the cause of this there being a series at all. Okay, now who you're, you're, you're really giving, you're giving the argument to, to say, the cosmological argument that is advanced by one of the other people we've read for last time and for today. Who's that? I'm ready to move on to that. So this is a good lead into it. William Rowe. Okay, What Rowe says is what we need to do is clarify the kind of argumentation Clark was using. He's not asking about the explanation for the whole series in terms of accounting for five Eskimos in the same way that you for the individual Eskimos. Rowe says, when we ask the question, why does the sequence exist at all? We're asking, why does the sequence have any members at all? Why does the sequence have any members at all? Why are there any Eskimos? After all, to use my little story, okay, when somebody says, okay, I see how you've accounted for all five of the Eskimos, but why is there a sequence? Why is there a complex of Eskimos? That question, which is what Clark was asking, Samuel Clark was saying, how do you account for the whole sequence should be clarified in this way, says William Rowe. You all know Rowe, you've read that Rowe says that really amounts to asking why does the sequence have any members at all? So even if each member in the sequence is explained, we still do not know why the sequence has any members rather than none at all. Why is there a sequence rather than nothing? Or let me simplify it, put it right down to your front yard. Why is there anything rather than nothing? Why is there anything rather than nothing? Well, that's the question Jean Paul Sartre asked, why is there anything rather than nothing? Why do our sequences have any members rather than no Members at all. Why is there a universe response to that from sophisticated unbelievers? I think, is that, is that asking such a question, such an ontological question with this kind of air of existential astonishment that's really the thrust of the argument. I mean, why is there anything, I mean, how do you account for the fact that there are any members to the sequence asking that kind of question with that kind of cutting edge to it? Maybe nothing more than realizing our anxiety over our individual precariousness. They give a psychological explanation for that question. Maybe asking that question just goes to show how upset you are about your own contingency, you know, or if you want to be a little more blunt, perhaps asking that question shows nothing more than a desire for a kind of pseudo profundity. Okay, you asked me to account for what you see in your experience, and I account for Eskimo 1 and I account for Eskimo 2. And after I get done with all this and we fill all the encyclopedias in the world, then you say, but why is there anything to explain rather than nothing to explain? The unbeliever is likely going to say, isn't that just being a little silly, pseudo profound? I filled all the encyclopedias in the world explaining everything in your experience, and now you want to go back and say, well, why are we explaining anything at all? Well, because that's just our human predicament. We look for explanations of things and to say, now we need an explanation for the whole explanation game, it's just kind of, you know, doubling over on yourself. There's just no purpose in that. What we want to explain are particular problems, particular issues, particular facts of our experience, and we've explained them, or we're in the process of explaining them. And when all the explanation is done, we don't have to take another step back and say, but now why was there anything to explain to begin with? There just is. That's just the way it is. You know, people don't have a choice of the ontological worlds in which they will occupied. And in this particular world, in this particular situation, you find yourself having things to explain. I mean, why do we have to go any further than that? Why must we explain? Because we must explain. Explanation is its own explanation. Now I realize that as Christians, you're probably not satisfied with that. And by the way, the existentialist realizes that as an unbeliever, he's not satisfied with your explanations. But what's the difference between them? Is it just psychological? Some people are willing to say explanations go Back, back, back. And finally we have to have the explanation that beats all explanations. Or we go back, back, back, and the unbeliever says, an explanation is its own explanation. Okay, Explanation is its own explanation. You Christians are looking for the all time explanation. You want a God at the end of the series and we're just saying the series is its own explanation. Now somebody says, now wait a minute, a series can't be its own explanation. That's cheating reasoning in a circle. I mean, that's not letting the series itself be explained. If the series is its own explanation, if the series of explanations is its own explanation, then what you're really doing is begging the question. Okay, let's say you want to take that approach to the unbeliever. You want to say, no, wait a minute, explanation can't be its own explanation. You just can't say. We stop at this particular point. There's got to be another explanation for the whole thing. What is the unbeliever going to do? I mean, if he's sophisticated and philosophically sharp, he's going to turn right around and say, oh, okay, then what's the explanation for your God? Get a few amens on that one. You see, if we insist that everything's got to have an exponent that goes behind it so that you can't stop somewhere, Mr. Unbeliever and say, well, the whole chain just explains itself, then he's going to say, okay, then what explains your God? We say, now wait a minute, in the very nature of the case, God is the being that explains himself. God is self explanatory. Okay? And I think that's true, by the way. That's my own particular religious commitment. I think God does it with. We don't require an explanation for who God is or what God is or the way he does things. God is his own explanation. He is self existent. He is self explanatory. But if we are going to allow ourselves the privilege of stopping the chain of explanation somewhere with God, who is self explanatory, then we have to recognize that the unbeliever could deify the world and say the world, world is self explanatory. He could make just the material world his God, if you will, and it will perform the same function that our God does. The world becomes self explanatory. Somebody says, well now how do you explain the world as a whole? He says, I don't. That is the explanation. And if you want to go any further, you're just being pseudo profound. Because when you get to the self explanatory, you go no further. But that's what we do when we appeal to God too. We say God is self explanatory, he's the Eternal One, and that should put an end to the chain. Okay, what has happened in this series of discussions is we find out that the cosmological argument usually calls for a first cause, but there is no assurance that the first cause must be what we call God. Now, the unbeliever can grant the argument to say, okay, I'll call it God, but that means for me, the world is God, as in the way I'm accustomed to speaking. But since you people insist on this religious vocabulary, okay, well then the world's God. Now you think you have a personal God that goes beyond the world, but all you've really proven is you've got to stop somewhere. And I'm willing to stop at the world or at the universe or something like that. Okay? Way back when we started this discussion, I said there are ways to trivialize the cosmological argument by saying every effect has a cause. And then what happens is you've got to argue that the world is an effect, lo and behold. Now, now that we've taken a more sophisticated approach to it, we're right back to the same problem, aren't we? How can we prove that the world is an effect? That's what it all comes down to. Why can't the world be the first cause? Or God, or the universe as a whole, if you will? Questions? Go ahead. I'm a bit confused as to the difference between the legal responsibility and propulsion. Now those are both first cause, are they not? Therefore, how do they differ? Well, one is scientifically accepted that when it comes to local motion as propulsion would be that there must be a cause behind every particular motion in the series. The question is, when we're talking about physical world, we believe in the need for propulsive causation explanations. That's fine, that's acceptable in scientific jargon and the way scientists do their work. But is the legal analogy acceptable to natural science? Must there be a responsible cause in the sense that we define responsibility in a court of law? Who is accountable for all of this? And that's what Patterson Brown leaves his article with, asking that question. He says, is there any assurance this very specialized notion of causation that Aquinas wants to use? Is the notion of causation used in science? Well, it either is or it is not. If it is, then we've got a fairly good argument. But we've got to prove that it is. We've got to prove that scientists are using the legal analogy. And then if we can't prove it, that is to say, if it is not being used, then what we have is a very specialized notion of causation. And that gives a whole new complexion to the argument. The argument does not rest upon its, if you will, intuitive properties. It does not have the same persuasive power when we find out that the word cause is not being used in the ordinary way, the ordinary sense of propulsion. Cause. In science, we think of cause as propulsion, but now we're not thinking of propulsion in this argument. So to what degree is this a natural argument for God's existence? Is it really arguing from the natural world and what we know about the natural world? I think most philosophers who are inclined to disbelief would want to say this is really the imposition of a concept of causation on the natural world. It's not one that we take from the natural world itself. Propulsion we see in the natural world, legal accountability is something that comes from our own minds and our attitudes and values. And so we're mixing categories. When we take the legal analogy and then try to make it work in an argument from the natural world, from motion or contingency or that sort of thing, isn't that just dabbling with semantics? You mean the Thomist is dabbling in semantics or the critic of the Thomas. I don't understand what the difference. If I want to take propulsion model or the legal model one, I would say you could say in the scientific sense, propulsion. We have that in our natural scientific realm. But why couldn't I equally say that of what we call a legalistic model? Okay, let's take the legal idea. We'll call it responsibility. Cause means responsibility, legal responsibility. Okay, now, is it true that everything in the natural world has a legally responsible cause? I think, frankly, that's pretty unlikely. Pretty unlikely. And you look at a certain chemical reaction in a test tube and you say, okay, now who's legally responsible for this reaction? We don't think of it that way. We may think of what caused the reaction, what propelled the reaction, if you will, by this chemical and this chemical having this effect on each other. But we wouldn't ask the question who or what is legally responsible here. Legal responsibility is in the realm of human jurisprudence and social relations. So it doesn't seem that this pertains to the natural world. And yet the argument by Aquinas is taken from the natural world. He says, look, everybody knows there's motion, how do you account for it? Now, his asking for an account of the motion is not really asking for a propulsive account of the motion when all is said and done. It's really looking for, according to Patterson Brown's interpretation, a very special kind of causation and that he likens to legal responsibility. Legal responsibility is. Now, I happen to use an example, by the way, where propulsion is involved. One car hits another, hits another, hits another. But when you go to court, not every establishment of responsibility in court depends upon propulsion, okay? I can establish. I can establish the guilt of somebody at a distance who didn't shove anybody. I mean, if you pay somebody to shoot your wife, okay, you are legally responsible for that act, but you may not have propelled the gun into the hand of the murderer and pulled the trigger for him, okay? So legal responsibility doesn't have to have propulsion, and propulsion, on the other hand, doesn't have to have legal responsibility. So all Patterson Brown is doing is pointing out that we. But with these two different notions of causation, Aquinas may not be proving his point at all. The argument must go much further than Aquinas took it. If by using law analogy, we therefore cease to have a cosmological argument, what kind of an argument for God would it be? Would you call that a moral argument for God if one wants to use law analogy? No, I would call it this idea of explanation or what it's really looking for an explanation for things. And what kind of a proof would that be? Not cosmological, not ontological. But what would we call that? Well, I think it's just a variation of the cosmological looking. Causation is a way of explaining things. Okay. It just turns out that the causation we're using to explain here is not the kind we find in the natural realm. Compulsion. Yeah, it's just. It's different kind of explanation. Other questions. Let me go on with further problems with the cosmological argument here. It seems to me that the cosmological argument used by Aquinas presuppose, if you will, a univocal knowledge of God. A univocal knowledge of God in that when we speak of a mover or a cause, when we speak of intelligence or necessity, that we are assuming that God is just like the creature, but in maximum degree that God is a cause. But he's the biggest cause, if you will, as we're assuming that God causes things, as we cause things, and therefore, since we have to give an account for the things in our experience, we finally get to God. And what we do is we make him the grand cause. That is to assume that the creature and the Creator are really quite alike ontologically. It's just that one is, if you will, more of the same. God is the greatest cause. That really gets to the heart of immanent God. The cosmological argument, if it's using cause as we use the word cause, if it's using movers in the way that we use the word mover, makes God just like any other mover in any other cause. But he has these properties in maximum degree. He is, if you will, an imminent mover, an eminent cause, rather than a transcendent mover or transcendent cause, The human. Kant put this argument on a sophisticated philosophical footing. They said, on an empirical basis, one cannot generalize from observed causal and teleological relations within the world to a cause or purpose for the world. The argument says, okay, we have D to account for. Okay, that's caused by. Which is accounted for by B, accounted for by A. Now, this is supposed to be an empirical line of reasoning. Okay, we understand this. We're appealing to cause in each case here. We understand that on empirical basis. That is to say, on the analogy of what we find in the scientific realm. Cause is being used in this empirical, scientific way. So D has got to have C, has got to have B, has got to have A as their empirical causes. Now, notice that all this argument is an argument within the natural realm. Within the natural realm. We're arguing that D in the natural realm is accounted for by C in the natural realm, which is accounted for by B in the natural realm, if you will. Here is this natural hand moving, this natural stick moving this natural ball. All here in the created, eminent realm of our experience. All within the world. Now, all of these causes and effects are within the world. Hume and Kant go on to ask, how can you generalize from a series of causes and effects within the world to a cause that is outside, outside the world? How do you get from within the world? This is a chain of causes within the world. How do you get from within the world to a cause that is outside the world? And the argument, I think, is basically a good one. This is getting at what I was putting in theological jargon a moment ago, that the only kind of confidence, cause or God or mover that is proven here is a natural, immanent God, if you will, a cause or mover that is just like every other cause and mover in this world. But he has those properties par excellence. That doesn't mean that you have a transcendent God. You haven't got a God outside the world. You've just got a greatest cause within the world. And of course, the unbeliever then has the door swung wide open for him to say, I think the world as a whole is this cause. Why must there be a transcendent God given the cosmological argument? Now this is, I think, my way of thinking anyway, the most devastating critique of the argument. And for that reason, I don't want to go on unless I'm sure everybody is really resonating to this. Is there anybody who doesn't quite catch the force of this? In one sense, it's very basic. It isn't all that complicated, but it's really quite devastating. I mean, it just tears the heart out of the argument. Because what this shows is that all this, okay, we're paying said the argument, you know, runs on for 300 pages in some, you know, scholarly tone on the cosmological argument and all this detail. But you notice all the detail is about things in the natural world, okay? And there must be a first cause for all this stuff we're looking at, okay? The unbeliever says the first cause is some natural cause you've reasoned from within the world. How can you then take a step back and say the explanation must be outside the world? How do you reason from a causation chain within the world to a purpose for the world as a whole? How do you step outside? Since your argument pertains to everything inside the world, none of us has any experience of the world as a totality sufficient to justify an inference from everything in the world to something outside of it. Kant said none of us has experienced the world as a whole, so none of us is in a position to say what must lie outside the world. And therefore the cosmological argument proves only a first cause within the world, a natural cause like every other kind of cause. So, if you will, God is the biggest chemical reaction of all? No, the Christian wants to say, no, he's not a chemical at all. They say, well, that's what your argument had to with do. Do with chemical relations, physical relations. What makes you think you can go beyond physical propulsion to a non physical propeller? Why must we have all these empirical causes and movers and then take a step outside the realm of the physical? Why must we now have a spiritual cause? This doesn't prove anything about the Christian idea of God. It seems to me that some basic presuppositions are coming into conflict here. Whereas the non believer is arguing from a naturalistic presupposition that this universe is a closed system and therefore there isn't something outside that could reach in even if it wanted to. No, although that does come to bear, and I think you're your perceptive to see that that happens when believers and unbelievers argue. The unbeliever has kind of a universal negative. It says it can't be. I won't let an outside cause into the picture. In this particular case, all we're saying is, since the argument is all about material within the world, that even Christians can't jump from an argument about things within the world to something outside the world. Human conduct is saying. All you've shown is that there are this series of causes in our experience. But how do we say that there must be a cause outside of our experience? Why must this God be transcendent? Why can't it just be the biggest chemical reaction? To use my analogy, okay, we've been dumping on the cosmological argument for a while. In my last few moments here this afternoon, I'd like to turn the tables for a minute, as I did with the ontological argument, and say, now what is the usefulness of this argument? Nevertheless, what is the usefulness of this argument? Well, you know, there must be some usefulness to this kind of reasoning because the Bible uses it, doesn't it? God says to Job, where were you when I was creating the world? Job, you're not to supposed self explanatory. Only I am. I can question you about your origins, but you can't question me about mine. So there's some kind of cosmological thrust to this reasoning. Paul does say in Romans 1, people looking at the natural world, the realm of creation, know the Creator. They know just by looking at the world that God is the world who has brought it about. And so there's got to be something more to be said than just that. The way the proofs are usually formulated is not philosophically acceptable. I do think the proofs, if they're formulated on a presuppositional basis, you're beginning to hear that a few times now. If you formulate the proofs on a presuppositional basis rather than on an autonomous basis, that is, instead of just giving up our presuppositions and reasoning as the unbeliever, I don't think you're ever going to get anywhere that way because you're caught behind enemy lines. But if you use the presuppositions that are most basic to Christian philosophy. We can make some use of this argument. In the first place, I think the argument is very useful as an ad hominem device. What does ad hominem mean? To become negative on somebody? Well, negative, but it's become political. You become against the man, ad hominem to or against the man. Okay? Now in philosophy there are arguments that are ad hominem that are thrown out of court sometimes. Okay, so let's say somebody comes into our room and tries to give you an argument for the sufficiency of Thomas reasoning here. And I'm listening to his argument, watching it on the board and I say, yeah, well, that can't be right because he's a communist. Okay, now somebody would say that's an ad hominem way of arguing. I'm arguing that since he's a communist, as good as it may look on the board, it couldn't be right because just look at the man himself instead of looking at the argument. That's a fallacious use of ad hominem argumentation against the man rather than against his reasoning. But there is a sense in which we can make useful. We can use the cosmological argument in an ad hominem or reductio way. If people act on certain assumptions, that is, they act on the assumption that there are causes in their experience, that there are, there's a criterion for things or purpose in their everyday life, why do they not make the same assumptions at the ultimate level as when you see people, you know, following a normal common sense or scientific way of thought about causes in their experience? Why do they get very sensitive about that? When you start talking about ultimate matters? You can be very ad hominem here and say, well, it doesn't seem to bother you to talk about causes when we're discussing the cup of coffee on the table. Why does it bother you to talk about causes when we're talking about you as a person or the human race or the world as a whole? The only unbelieving response to a consideration of causation for these things is a kind of reversion to irrationalism. Why is it a reversion to irrationalism? It's to say, well, the chain of causes is infinite. If the chain of causes is infinite, then where does the explanation begin? Well, I guess it just begins anywhere you want. Arbitrarily. You just have to jump onto the merry go round somewhere. I want you to follow my line of reasoning here. I'm not going to put it real philosophically. I'M just going to. You're talking to somebody and you say, well, now, how. How do you account for this world in which we live? He says, well, there were these gases many years ago that came together and there was an explosion. You get some of the most weird scientific fiction in people talking about the origin of the world imaginable, but nevertheless, okay, it came from a black hole. Kind of a golf analogy of the world. What you want to say is, okay, where did the black hole come from? Or where did these gases come from? The person says, well, there's an account for that too. We don't know what it is yet. And then there'll be an account for that account. We don't know what that will be either. That's a kind of irrationalism, isn't it? That's saying, we don't know. We just don't know. Now some of you are saying, how do you account for that cup of coffee on your table? And if you said, beats me, coffee just appeared there. The person said, man, you're kind of loony now. Ad hominem. Why can we not say that of the unbeliever when we want to talk about the world as a whole, when he wants to get into these things? Well, nobody knows quite for sure where the gases came from or why there were black holes or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I should say that's a little loony, isn't it? Here we use causation and explanation in our normal experience. And now when we get down to the ultimate level, when it really starts to count, and if you will, it really starts to rub against you in terms of your moral rebellion against God. Now you want to cop out. You just want to become irrationalistic. Nobody knows for sure. Maybe there isn't an ultimate cause, or maybe it's infinite, which is just to say there is no explanation for anything. Okay, if the cause, if the series of explanations and causes is infinite all the way back, that's to say it didn't start anywhere. If it didn't start anywhere, that means you can start anywhere you please. But now, does that happen in science? If you were to go into a chemistry class and the professor wants you to work out some equation and you were to take the last step. Okay, let's say the equation to work out the problem takes 20 steps. If you begin at step 19 and then gave the conclusion, would he accept that? Of course not. He'd want you to start at the beginning and work down to the 20th step, which is the conclusion of this chemical equation. And if you start at step 19, he's going to say that's arbitrary, you can't do that. And then you say, okay, professor, how do you account for this world as a whole? He says, well, I mean, it's an infinite series of explanations. It goes all the way back, there is no beginning to it. And you say, in other words, you're just starting the explanation where you want to, then you're just jumping on the merry go round as you see fit. You see all of a sudden what he does in his day to day experience, he won't accept when it comes to reasoning about ultimate matters. So that's what I'm getting at when I say that there's an ad hominem force to these arguments and for that reason I make use of them. I wouldn't rest my ultimate apologetic on them, but I'm glad to take people who are arrogant in their own autonomous reasoning and point out that they don't even live according to their standards of reasoning. The very arbitrariness they won't accept in science is the arbitrariness they're demonstrating when it comes to ontology. Okay, secondly, when these proofs are revised, I'm going beyond the ad hominem force, if you will, the reductio ad absurdum of the person who wants to use causation in everyday life, not when it comes to ultimate matters. Beyond that, we can revise the arguments and set them forth on a Christian basis to show our belief in God. Within a Christian framework, we want to say to the unbeliever, within the Christian framework, we can point out that the concept of cause and motion presuppose God for their intelligibility. Unless God exists, it makes no sense to speak of anything as a cause of anything else. Unless God exists, it makes no sense to speak of anything as cause of anything else. Without God everything is, if you will, just an empty tablet. There is no explanation for anything. Or on the other hand, without God everything is nothing but the happenings of chance. Let's take both of those possibilities before we run out of time this afternoon. If there is no God, there is no God. We want to account, let's say we want to account for the fact that apples grow on trees and we get a certain scientific explanation for the growth of seeds and where the seeds come from and all this. So we have this long series of sophisticated scientific explanation of why apples grow on trees. Trees. So we get back here to where the scientist has ended his explanation. You know, you can just Guess where that might be. But the question naturally is, well, how do you account for that? He says, well, we just really don't know. It just kind of happens that way. I guess just to say that we have an empty slate here. That is to say the explanation hasn't been completely completed, we've taken it back and all of a sudden it's dead ended. On the other hand, you can say, well, it just happens by chance. If it happens by chance, then the relationship between A and B is a relationship of chance and the relationship between B and C is a relationship of chance. That is to say, the relationship. We have no explanation at all. It just accidentally happened that way. Is it going to happen that way tomorrow? Who knows in the chance universe what's going to happen tomorrow? Okay, he either says, we have a very definite causal relationship here, but it ends all of a sudden, which is to say it kind of just falls off, you know, the edge of philosophical certainty. I don't know what has happened to causation. Where does causation come from? Why should there be any causal relations? If God isn't governing the world in this way, if he doesn't have an explanation for that, then it's just kind of all in the void. It's just a blank tablet. It looks like an explanation, but it's just a parenthesis. And what we want to know is about the boundaries out here of this explanation. Why does he just take a little chain in here and there's nothing at this side, nothing on this side? What is the explanation for these things? He has none. Or he could say it's all by chance, but if he says it's by chance, then he doesn't have causation here. He just has some kind of arbitrary random relationship. That is to say, without the concept of God, you can't have a concept of causation. God is the first cause. God is the controller. God is the providential governor of the universe, is the presupposition of causal reasoning. If you say there is no explanation, then of course you've got irrationalism. You just have this blank tablet. And if you say it's the explanation of chance, then you have to say the relationships we've been calling causal relationships are nothing but chance relationships. And so either way you lose cause, you lose cause because it arbitrarily ends here, or you lose cause because the nature of these relationships is subject to randomness. Does everybody follow what I'm getting at? The presuppositional formulation of the cosmological argument is that Without God, the concept of cause loses its intelligibility. Without God, you can't account for anything ultimately, and therefore you have an empty blank, if you will. Just a dead end. Who knows why causation stops where it does? Or you can say you have chance controlling everything. And if that's true, then it's just a matter of chance that the apples growing trees, for all we know, apples might spring up from the fountains of the earth next time we look, if it's just by chance. And so if we live in a chance world, there can't be any scientific causal explanation. If we live in an atheistic world, the causal explanation we have apart from chance, ends arbitrarily somewhere in which case no cause is beginning. There is no explanation. Finally, and so we find that the presence of God is necessary in our reasoning when we just look at our situation itself. Creation itself cries out for the acknowledgment of the Creator. And in that sense we're using the basic religious thrust or motive of the cosmological argument. Any questions? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's a little unrelated that you might have touched on last week, but I missed class. I was wondering if there, when we speak of ultimate concerns, if there are a standard, for instance, maybe there are five that are recognized, whether the thing where author X, philosopher Y and person Z have different kinds of alternate concerns. I would say that that's just a matter of how you cut the cake. You know, it's how you want to do your outlining. You have a field of opinions and you can organize them this way. So there are 10 basic answers you could also organize. There are two basic answers, Christian and non Christian, or three, there is a pantheistic and then theistic and then there's Islamic, Christian. I mean, it's just a matter of how you're going to outline it, I think. And so, yeah, I guess There are five basic answers, also 10 basic answers and probably 23 basic answers. It's just a matter of how you. It's a. See that organizing I see, is nothing more but a pedagogical issue. How do you want to present the subject? How do you want to organize the field of answering? Yeah, I don't see I'm agreeing with what you're saying, but I don't see how we can claim that we have a safety zone and saying we can't explain all that God is and why we can't allow the unbeliever that same safety zone and saying we simply don't know yet. Somebody can Ask us, how did the incarnation happen? And I can say, well, it's really beyond me. It's something that I may know at some point in the future, but I don't know right now. Why can't the unbeliever have the same kind of thing as far as the causation of the universe, saying, good, it's something beyond me. And that's why the first week of our class is so important here. What you're saying is we're appealing to mystery. Why can't he appeal to mystery? You know, mystery is a form of irrationalism that goes beyond my mind. I have no reasonable account for it. Okay, And I said that Christians have. The Christian world and life view combines rationalism and irrationalism, doesn't it? Okay, now the unbeliever combines rationalism and irrationalism too. And that's what you're reminding us here. If we appeal to mystery, he can appeal to mystery. But what I would suggest is you go back and look at when he appeals to mystery, what happens? He loses the whole shooting match. Because for him, irrationalism is always working against his rationalism. Remember, he says there must be some mind that accounts for everything. But obviously my mind can't do it. I'm ignorant. And so he has this. He's working, you know, some minds got to know everything, but he recognizes no mind knows everything. And he's always trying to bring this oil and water together. There's this tension in his world and life view. Whereas for the Christian, our rationalism and irrationalism, our mystery and our rationalism go hand in hand. It's just because God is the one who knows everything, that mystery is acceptable. When he says to us, I'm the one who's created things. I'm the one who controls the seasons. I'm the one who brings about the incarnation. Incarnation and the resurrection and the final judgment, we can say we don't understand how all those things work. We understand there is a God who, because of his very nature can do these things. The rationalism and the mystery go hand in hand, whereas the rationalism and the mystery and unbelieving thought do not. They are working against each other. If you review your notes from that week, you'll see the dialectical tension we all remember, the dialectical tension that's in now part of our vocabulary as Christian thinkers. And so I commend you. You're right. You're reminding us. We appeal to mystery. He has a right to appeal to mystery. But what we want to point out is that the minute he does that he's engulfed himself in mystery. We haven't. We have mystery because we submit our minds to an all knowing God. He has mystery because the whole universe is just without explanation. Or as Dr. Van Till says, for the unbeliever, everything is chaos and old night. Everything is just. Who knows why anything happens? We say we know why it happens this way, but we don't know how God does it. I know why the incarnation came about. I just don't know how God accomplished it. But he says, boy, this is just sound and fury signifying nothing. When he appeals to mystery, he always goes too far. He cannot bring his mystery and his rationalism together. Okay, now we were supposed to do the teleological argument today. And when we come together on Friday, I'm going to try to take about half the period to summarize the teleological argument, then make some summary remarks about arguing for God's existence. And for those of you who would like to do some extra preference preparation on Friday, it's not at all required. But I think you'll find an interesting analogy to the teleological argument in Dr. Van Till's Little pamphlet, why I Believe in God. There. Dr. Van Till doesn't argue from order to an orderer. He argues that there can be no order at all without God. And so there are some subtle connections between what he's doing in the teleological argument. And I'll try to draw those out for you on Friday. Thank you.