If something can indeed come from nothing without a spurious event (that is not God, who transcends and is outside of creation), then why is there
something rather than
nothing? Why does reality exist rather than not exist? He can’t appeal to outside extrinsic laws or characteristics of reality that somehow force ordered creation. If he does, that is what we mean by God.
And in regards to the infinite regression:
- You exist
- You exist because your parents existed
- Your parents existed because your parents’ parents existed, etc.
- Human beings (and your entire ancestral line) were able to exist because of the Earth
- The Earth came into being because the universe came into being
- The universe came into being because of the Big Bang
- The Big Bang came into being from a (possibly) natural cosmological event
- This natural event itself had a natural event that lead to its ability to come into existence
That’s essentially it. All natural phenomena are explainable by other natural phenomena, working through the linear arrow of time (cause and effect). We still weren’t able to explain ultimately why you exist, because of the unknowably infinite chain of natural events that preceded you coming into existence. Nothing holds within itself the inherent purpose for its own existence. That is, nothing exists simply to exist. Except for the logically and philosophically necessary existence of something upon which all existence takes its original cause, purpose, and foundation: God (YHWH: I Am He Who
Is).
You should watch Fr. Robert Barron’s discussions about Aquinas and his proofs for the existence of God. He’s a wonderful evangelist and intellectual.
I think there is a problem, however: our materialist friend could reply, “What if there were an infinite succession of Big Bangs?” Aquinas would say (and I agree with him) that there is no purely philosophical way to refute that argument.
Why not? Basically, most of the causes in the list are not causes in the strict sense of the word.
Aquinas defines a “cause” as a principle on which something depends, either for its being (existence) or its “becoming” (any changes that occur to it). The key word here is
depends. There is a simple rule by which we can identify a cause: if you take it away, you also immediately take away its effect. Remove the oxygen, and the fire goes out; don’t water the plants, and they wilt; stop eating, and you starve, etc. According to the Scholastic maxim, *sublata causa, tollitur effectus/] (remove the cause, and you take away the effect).
So, causes (strictly speaking) are always perfectly simultaneous with their effect: they are always
present.
Now, what confuses us is that there are a lot of things in the world that
were causes (in the strict sense) in the past, but are
no longer causes in this sense. For example, my parents: they
were the cause (in the strict sense) of my existence when they begot me, but they are not so anymore. For Aquinas, these “past” causes are an example of what he calls “
per accidens causes.”
The key difference, as I mentioned, is
dependence for being or becoming: without a cause (in the strict sense), the effect is impossible. The dependence is a strict one. For a so-called “per accidens” cause, the effect, as it were, only “happens” to depend on it. My parents, for example, are still living, but when they go, God willing, to their heavenly reward, I will not die at the same moment. My earthly existence does not depend on theirs in the radical way that it did at the moment of my conception.
And a series of “per accidens” causes really could go on forever, in either direction, if God wanted it to. (It is no harder for God to create an everlasting future—as He has in fact done for us—than to create an everlasting past.)
Now, returning to our proof for the existence of God, the way that Aquinas actually proceeds is not by the (
per accidens) “causes” of the past, but by the chain of causality that there is in the
present. So, the series could be
*]There is change in the world. (The sun rises and sets, the earth experiences seasons, we grow and change, and so on.)
*]A thing can only change if something else that already exists changes it. (Things don’t change themselves. A part of a thing can change another part, but not the same thing in the same respect.) So something must be setting those things in motion. (Gravitational attraction, the heat of the sun, the food we eat, etc.)
*]And possibly, something sets even causes those changes.
*]However, this series can’t go on forever because sublata causa, tollitur effectus: just as there are no buildings without foundations (otherwise it would fall), there must be an ultimate (or “first”) cause for all the motion (otherwise there would be no motion). This first cause must be uncaused, because otherwise it would not be the first one.
Can we prove that there is only one first cause? Yes, we can: you see nothing “changes” the First Cause (it is uncaused). In order for there to the more than one of something, for there to be “members” of a “species,” that thing must be “malleable” or “changeable” in some way (it could be this individual or that individual). But something that is absolutely unchanged, indeed the source of all change, must also be absolutely unchangeable (for there is nothing capable of changing it). That is the case of the First Cause (it is unchangeable, hence unable to be a member of a “species”); therefore, there can be only one First Cause.*
If it is not fundamentalists, it is secularists or atheists.