To say that an entity is contingent can be interpreted to mean (1) the entity is physically possible but not necessary, or (2) the entity is causally dependent on something outside itself. 1. ) The Ball just exists inexplicably you would either think he was crazy or was joking around. You start to hear a noise that gets slightly louder as time passes. The argument is called The Contingency Argument For Gods Existence. This is to say that the truth value of the proposition iscontingentupon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it. Using definition 2, when we say that B is contingent on A, we mean that A causes B. (follows from 1,2) 4. [4] He asks us to imagine someone who borrows a book from someone who borrows a book, and so on backward in time. I might be talking about a fluffy pink stole made of ostrich feathers. PersonalThis is an entailment of the causes immateriality. If the house burns down, it is destroyed but it creates debris. We as humans are contingent beings, meaning we didn't have to exist. My writing differs from Aquinass writing not only in volume, but also in tone. His point would be valid if existence and non-existence of objects was random and the universe had finite material. We often think of things as contingent in the sense that they could have been different. That all things except the first cause has an explanation to its cause. (Again, note that the argument proceeds from empirical evidence; hence it is an posteriori or an inductive argument.) The philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong puts it this way: to avoid begging the question, ones reason to believe the premise must be independent of both (a) ones belief in the conclusion and also (b) ones reason to believe the conclusion.[10]. But even this wild speculation doesn't answer the question of why that is so, why all possibilities exist and why there are only specific possibilities that can exist (our world - yes; a world where the symmetries of nature are different - no, not according to modern quantum cosmology). The conclusion is hardly relevant to religion. Only one kind of cause is known: physical cause. 3. Perhaps the universe is contingent, but the cosmos (or multiverse, if it exists) is not contingent. It should be noted, however, that science does not currently provide us with good answers to the above questions. The Big Bang Theory has a lot of scientific evidence in its favor. Given that abstract objects are causally impotent, it, therefore, follows that an unembodied mind is the cause of the universe beginning. If the cause is responsible for spaces existence, it cannot be inside of space. Supernatural, that which transcends the natural. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion (1077-78); a later famous version is given by Ren Descartes. They were sometimes called the Hounds of the Lord. The argument must be logically valid. Craigs argument not only exploits deceptive wordplay, but it also incorporates fallacious logic. Also, what we mean by "universe" is unclear. Perhaps premise 2 of this argument is false. *Objection: Does God Have An Explanation Of His Existence? There is no infinite regress of necessary objects causing other necessary objects. This is an unsupported premise. Is there Absolute Truth? The theologian William Lane Craig presents a version of Wilhelm Leibnizs contingency argument as follows:[5]+. If an object can be non-existent and tends to be corrupted, each object sometimes does not exist. The arguments premises are: 1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence (either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause). Premise 2 says, If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. Note that Craig has substituted the term God for immaterial cause. When challenged on the legitimacy of this substitution, Craig shrugs that these two terms are equivalent. As youd expect, people unschooled in physics are more apt to find Kreefts book-borrower analogy persuasive. Okay, well maybe quarks arent necessarily existent. Now, we dont have to call this cause God if that makes the atheist feel uncomfortable. While a house may have been created, it was built out of pre-existing matter. Consider how it is fine-tuned to grow into a red giant . Potentiality is only moved by actuality. So, Craigs argument to support premise 2 rings hollow. What about premise 2? According to premise 3, existence is what's known as a great-making property or, as the matter is sometimes put, a perfection. Something exists. An informal fallacy, in contrast, cant be detected by examining the structure of the argument. 3: The Universe Exists. This inquiry does not yield certain knowledge, but only opinion. Craig engages in precisely this sort of wordplay. In academic literature, several philosophers of religion such as Joshua Rasmussen and T. Ryan Byerly have argued for the inference from (4) to (5). 2.1 Contingency and transiency does not imply the past non-existence of everything 2.2 Assumption that an infinite regress cannot happen 2.3 Natural processes are not ruled out 2.4 No specific God is supported by the argument 2.5 Proof by logic 2.6 Objects may spontaneously come into existence 3 Variant: The universe is contingent A lot of people conflate the argument from contingency with the so-called "cosmological" argument (a.k.a. Christian's only believe in Christianity because they were born in a Christian culture. It is actually quite easy to refute the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and here is how it is done: P1. Some objects are not contingent. SCENARIO 1: THE SIMS. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2022 Religion Refuted. 1. Certain things that don't have knowledge (natural bodies) work for an end. After all, thats what phenomenon transcendent to nature is. This argument is phrased in an attempt to express Aquinas's point, originally written in latin, in modern language. Obviously not. The "virtual people" in The Sims are entirely fictional. Extrapolating outside the relevant domain is an error well-understood by statisticians studying phenomena within the natural realm. This argument is appealing because it pretends to wholly dismiss people's reasoning capabilities based on their environmental influences in childhood. Arguments for God's Existence from Contingency. No specific God is supported by the argument and the attributes of God cannot be inferred. It something cannot possibly not exist, then it could not have had a beginning to its existence. The universe or some physical process might have the property of necessarily existing. What lies prior to that remains a mystery. In the scholastic era, St. Thomas Aquinas formulated the argument fromcontingency, followingAristotlein claiming thatthere must be something to explain why the Universe exists. Nothing exists for no reason. *This Premise Is Self-Evident We all intuitively know that whatever exists has some sort of explanation as to why it exists. Critics understandably accuse Craig of committing the informal fallacy known as equivocating.[7]+. Therefore, the explanation of the existence of the universe is God (from 2 and 4). Ghazali formulates his argument very simply: "Every being which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning.". But this is not true in general because existence and non-existence is not random. Nothing which has come to exist can be the cause of its own existence. It may be worthwhile to dwell, however, on refuting one possible attempt at explanation, which is that of Creation. These are. The success of debunking arguments could in turn contribute to the debate between theism and metaphysical naturalism. Why isnt there just nothing? So, for example, we might reason: If all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. This engagement with the audience is constrained by time. Of course, if someone wanted to resort to some crazy idea like solipsism (the view that you are the only thing that exists, and the entire universe and everything you experience are projections of your own mind), that doesnt get you out of this premise. Aquinas points out that individual objects come into existence and decay out of existence, implicitly saying they tend to not remain in existence. Critics of this argument frequently object to this premise by saying that if everything that exists must have an explanation for why it exists, then God must have an explanation for His existence. Leibniz argument doesnt depend on proving that the universe had a beginning. Right? The study of contingency and relativism as it pertains to rhetoric draws frompoststructuralist and postfoundationalist theories. Why does anything at all exist? Thus, the dichotomy posed in (A1) between existing due to their nature or due to an external cause is a false one - things exist as they do due to both their nature and the nature of other things, due to the nature of Nature. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. The argument from contingency is an attempt to establish the existence of a fundamental, logically necessary cause of the universe. This again raises the question of contingency because that which is deemed necessary or impossible depends almost entirely ontimeandperspective. In this case, one could just say that YOU are the universe. Therefore it cannot count as the cause of the material realm. But if A is contingent then something must have created A. Ah, but if A is God then nothing created A. This is therefore an argument from ignorance. Yet Craig commits himself to a far more extravagant conjecture and thereby makes a far more egregious mistake by saying that premise 1 supports the speculation that the cosmos has an immaterial cause. The Argument from Contingency Copleston: Well, for clarity's sake, I'll divide the argument into distinct stages. there is no contingency), it does not follow that everything taken together has an explanation to it. Required fields are marked *. For every difference in our world there must correspond a difference in the lower, underlying reality (if there is one). This follows logically from premises 1 and 3. Just because observable objects within the universe are contingent, this does not show that the universe itself is contingent (this claim would commit the fallacy of composition). If this is so there must be first cause and the Cosmological argument provides one. Every being that exists is either contingent or necessary (Certain concepts are necessary) This is what we talk about above. ImmaterialThe causes non-spatiality entails immateriality. Existence of finite beings prove that infinite beings exists, Argument from admired religious scientists, https://religions.wiki/index.php?title=Argument_from_contingency&oldid=43339, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. The rule against equivocation prohibits speakers from tricking listeners by surreptitiously switching between alternate meanings of a word that has multiple meanings. Otherwise, all deductive arguments would be fallacious. The proper mode of working in this realm is deliberation that relies on reasonable judgment. If nothing existed in the past, nothing contingent would exist now. It may sound as though efficient cause is simply another name for material cause. Contingent things require a reason for their existence, Therefore the universe has a reason for its existence, The reason for the existence of the universe is God. This is also known as the Glendower problem. From (1) These objects may exist or may not exist, i.e. Now, if we make God an exception to premise 1, the skeptic would rightly accuse us of special pleading. Premise 1: Everything That Exists Has An Explanation Of Its Existence (Either In The Necessity Of Its Own Nature Or In An External Cause). A2 is simply incorrect, as we can imagine a wide assortment of possible explanations. This page was last edited on 10 June 2020, at 17:04. Definition 2 emphasizes the inevitability of the entity given the presence of its cause. Argument from Contingency. . We all know that God is taken by most people in Craigs audience to be a conscious being, whereas immaterial cause, to the extent that it has meaning, doesnt imply any such thing. Above is a portion of the large scale structure of the universe. Aquinass argument from contingency allows for the possibility of a Universe that has no beginning in time. The truth of this premise is overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with even a small shred of sanity. In a sense, the argument is based on the tendency of objects not to exist. Consider how our sun is fine-tuned to give a considerable percentage of us cancer. Thus, for Scott, what should be debated is a matter of rhetoric, as individuals make meaning through language and determine what constitutes truth, and therefore, what is beyond question and debate. Everything which has come to exist has been caused to come to exist. Here's the flaw. Craig denies equivocating between material and immaterial causes, saying that he meant efficient causes all along. And therefore cannot be a material, spatial, or temporal type of thing. Either way, youd never take seriously the notion that the ball just existed there with no explanation for why it existed or how it came to be there. Answer (1 of 7): > Q: How can we debunk the argument from contingency for the existence of God? This inevitably produces unforeseen consequences. The arguments conclusion is therefore contained in one of its premises. But to avoid getting out of breath, I prefer to label this explanation God. In this section we'll treat the "universe" as signifying not the Cosmos as a whole, but rather merely a part of a greater existence. [7] This means that our description of our reality is a true description of the underlying reality, albeit possibly a distorted description of only parts of it. But that does not seem to be a satisfactory answer to why the universe exists in this cyclical form to begin with - could it not have been otherwise? Firstly, we can't be sure that the universe is contingent. In Islamic theology, the argument of contingency (udth) is of special importance in that it is called the "special way" of the theologians. Just as the builder of your house could not have existed inside your house, so the cause could not have existed inside of space. Craig himself, in defense of premise 1, provides examples only of material causes, never of immaterial causes. The Contingency Argument For Gods Existence. William Lane Craig uses a different tactic by making it a premise (which is unsupported or based on circular reasoning): This argument assumes that the cause of the universe is still in existence. In contrast, Craigs conclusion (immaterial causation exists) is directly encompassed by the term efficient cause. Premise 1 flat-out stipulates his conclusion. [5] Craig often says his premises as more probably true than false, and that, this being so, we should embrace his conclusion. . Pure logic proofs cannot say anything about matters of fact. 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