It's been a few years since I've last posted. I'm going to stray away from the Aristotelean/Thomistic metaphysical themes of my last posts and go back to some basics. The aim for these future posts is to create some easy to read arguments and defenses of the Christian faith - for myself because it's good for me to brush up on topics I've put on the shelf for a long time and also to provide the reader that may be unfamiliar with the topics to have something that's fairly easy to follow.
That said, I want to begin with what I find to be the stronger arguments for God's existence. I will put forth a straightforward argument in a syllogistic format (so, premises that reach a conclusion) and defend each premise, then follow it up with responses to some common objections. Let's begin with the Argument from Contingency:
The argument begins by asking a simple question: why is there something rather than nothing? We are not asking how did the universe form, or when did it begin - but more fundamentally - why does anything exist at all? It's easy to just say things exist and that’s just the way it is. But when we think a little harder, there didn’t have to be a universe. There didn’t have to be space, time, matter, energy, or laws of physics. There didn’t have to be anything at all. And yet, here we are.
The argument from contingency doesn’t just attempt to answer what caused the universe. It attempts to answer why contingent things - things that could have not existed - exist at all.
The argument runs like this:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence - either in the necessity of its own nature, or in some external cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.
4. The explanation of the universe cannot itself be contingent.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is something that exists necessarily.
An argument is only as good as it's premises, so let's look at each premise individually:
Premise 1: Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence
Before diving in, we need to make an important distinction. We need to distinguish between things that exist contingently versus things that exist necessarily. Think of the word 'contingent' akin to dependent. For the most part, everything we experience in our natural world is contingent, i.e., it depends on something else to exist. The plant in your home depends on you watering it, the soil that provides it nutrition, etc. You, yourself, depend on your parents in order to exist. If your parents did not exist, you would not exist. Science itself attempts to explain why the natural world is the way that it is - how did life come to be, how did stars, planets, the solar systems form. If something exists due to something external to itself, it's contingent.
Now lets look at what it means to be necessary. For the purpose of this post, let's distinguish between metaphysical necessity and natural necessity. To start with the latter, you depend on your parents to exist and therefore your parents are necessary for your existence. That does not mean, however, that your parents are necessary in their nature. They also depend on something in order for them to exist, mainly, their parents. And on and on it goes.
Metaphysical necessity, in contrast, basically means there is no possible circumstance in which it could have failed to exist. Regardless of the way the world is, what events could have happened but did not, it's existence would obtain in every possible world. There is nothing external to itself that is giving it existence or accounting for its existence.
Now let's turn to Premise 1. This premise holds most of the weight in the entire argument, and in philosophy it's known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). Strip away the jargon though and the idea is fairly intuitive. Things don’t just pop into existence for no reason. If you walked in to your living room and found it completely destroyed and someone said, “it just happened, no explanation” that would be the last answer you’d accept. You’d want to know why it happened, how it happened, and who, if anyone, did it. The demand for explanation is baked into how we think about reality.
The PSR simply formalizes that intuition: every contingent thing that exists has an explanation for its existence. While a strong claim, let's consider what you have to believe to deny it. You have to believe that some things just exist, full stop, no reason, no cause, no explanation - not because we haven’t found the explanation yet, but because there fundamentally is no explanation and there couldn’t be one. That's not a simple 'we don't know', that's a deep metaphysical claim that, at the very foundation, there is no explanation and could not, in principle, be one. This metaphysical claim is what's called a brute fact.
However, the denial of the PSR would make science impossible since our entire scientific enterprise is built around searching for explanations. The moment you allow “it just exists, no reason” as a legitimate stopping point, you’ve reached intellectual bedrock. If the universe can be a brute fact, why can’t anything else be? Why do any explaining at all?
The PSR is also self-undermining to deny. To say “some things have no explanation” is itself a claim that demands an explanation - why those things and not others? Who decides which facts get to be brute? The denial of the PSR relies on the PSR to even get off the ground.
Premise 2: The universe exists
No argument needed here. What are you, a solipsist?
Premise 3: Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence
This just follows from premises one and two. If everything that exists has an explanation, and the universe exists, then the universe has an explanation. The only escape is to go back and attack premise one - which, as we’ve seen, comes with some metaphysical baggage most don't want to carry.
Premise 4: The explanation cannot itself be contingent
This is probably the more controversial premise, and the one that gets the most pushback. But suppose, if you will, you grant that the universe needs an explanation, and then someone says “Fine, some other contingent thing caused it.” Maybe a prior universe, a multiverse, some quantum vacuum fluctuation, what have you. The problem is immediate: now that thing needs an explanation too. You’ve just moved the question back a step without actually answering it. And if the explanation of that thing is yet another contingent thing, you’re off on an infinite regress - an endless chain of things, each one borrowing its existence from something else, with the whole chain dangling in midair and nothing actually holding it up.
To be sure, let's think of it another way. Say you want to borrow an Ipad, so you ask your friend who says “I’ll lend it to you once I borrow it from my friend,” who says the same thing, on and on forever. No one in that chain actually has the Ipad. The borrowing can’t happen. Eventually, the buck has to stop with someone owning the Ipad. An infinite regress of contingent things is the same problem - nobody in the chain actually has the existence to pass along. At some point, the explanation has to bottom out in something that doesn’t need an explanation - something that carries its own existence necessarily, that couldn’t not exist. Otherwise you don’t have an explanation, you just defer the explanation to something that also needs an explanation.
To drive the point home, let's say the universe explains itself. Maybe the whole is explained by its parts. However, this also doesn't work. The universe is the totality of all contingent things - things that didn’t have to exist. And what you get when you add up a collection of things that didn’t have to exist is… a collection of things that didn’t have to exist. One doesn't squeeze necessity out of contingency by piling more contingency on top of it. The question isn’t answered, it’s just restated at a grander scale.
In fact, the explanation cannot be something physical at all. All physicality is contingent. It could have a different mass, velocity, color, behave differently, etc. Additionally, there is nothing logically incoherent about matter not existing at all. The Big Bang shows that at some point in the past, the universe began, meaning, at some point, there was no universe and then there was.
Premise 5: Therefore, the explanation is a something that exists necessarily.
Since Premise 4 established that the explanation of the universe cannot be a contingent explanation, the only other option is an explanation that is necessary. It has also been established that anything of made of matter cannot, in principle, be necessary. The only option we are then left with is something that exists necessarily and immaterially. When we look closely, it seems we are stuck with only two possible options that fit this description: abstract objects or minds.
Let's turn first to abstract objects: numbers, mathematical truths, logical laws - exist necessarily. Two plus two couldn't equal five. The law of non-contradiction couldn’t be false. To be sure, regardless of the millions of different ways the universe could have been, two plus two would always equal four. The law of non-contradiction would always be true. However, abstract objects and laws of logic don’t cause anything. The number four has never made a single thing happen in the history of the universe. Mathematical structures don't produce any sort of reality, they just exist abstractly out there in the ether. So whatever the necessary thing is, it’s not a Platonic abstraction. As such, we need an option that is immaterial, necessary, and causally efficacious, leaving the next option:
Minds. Mind's are characterized by their capacity to act. Will, intention, and agency are the hallmarks of a mind - and these are irreducibly causal notions. This is the only candidate that satisfies the conditions of being both immaterial and necessary while also being causally efficacious.
Additionally, the only way to account for why a necessary cause produced a contingent effect - a particular universe, at a particular moment, with particular features - is if the cause has will. The ability to freely choose to act or not act, to create this rather than that, without being mechanically compelled to do so. What you’re then left with is a being that exists necessarily, is not itself part of the physical universe, is not a mere abstraction, and acts by free will rather than mechanical necessity.
Now that the premises have been defended, let's look at some common objections:
Objection 1: “Well then what caused God?”
This is, by far, the most common objection and also, by far, the least sophisticated. The objection assumes God is the same kind of thing as the universe - a contingent thing that needs an external explanation. But that’s precisely what the argument denies. The necessary being at the end of the argument isn’t just another item in the inventory of things that happen to exist. We've already shown that that kind of explanation doesn't work for various reasons. The mind deduced by the premises in the argument conclude a being whose non-existence is impossible - one that exists by the necessity of its own nature. It doesn’t borrow its existence from anything else, because it couldn’t not exist in the first place.
The question, essentially, is a category mistake. Think of it like asking “what’s north of the North Pole?” or "What does the color blue smell like?" The question sounds coherent until you realize it’s asking for something the concept doesn’t leave room for. Asking what caused a necessarily existing being is the same kind of mistake - it applies a category that simply doesn’t fit. The argument was never that everything needs an external cause. It was that everything contingent does. If we place God among the chain of other contingent explanations we would still need to look for something necessary that explains the chain in the first place, and then that would be God.
Objection 2: “Maybe the universe itself is the necessary being”
This one is slightly more sophisticated than the last. Why drag in God at all? Maybe the universe just is the necessary being - the thing that exists at the bottom of the explanatory chain, requiring no further explanation. Some physicists discuss something like this when they talk about the universe being “self-contained” or having no boundary conditions that require outside explanation. If the universe necessarily exists, the whole argument is dead in the water before it even gets going.
The problem is that calling the universe necessary doesn’t make it so, and everything we know about the universe screams contingency. A necessary being is one that couldn’t possibly have been otherwise. But the universe obviously could have been otherwise. It could have had different physical constants - and not just slightly different, but radically different. The fine-tuning literature alone documents dozens of parameters that could have taken vastly different values. It could have had different laws of physics, different initial conditions, or simply not existed at all. When you look at the universe, you’re looking at something that wears its contingency on its sleeve.
Objection 3: “Maybe some underlying law of nature, or abstract principle, is the necessary being”
This objection was briefly discussed in my defense of Premise 5. While also similar to the second objection, instead of saying the universe itself is necessary, they point to something more fundamental - the laws of physics, quantum mechanics, mathematical structures, logical principles, or some bedrock feature of reality that exists necessarily and from which everything else follows.
This objection has some merit because mathematical and logical truths do seem to be necessary. Two plus two couldn't equal five. The laws of logic couldn’t be otherwise. But as I previously discussed: abstract objects, necessary as they are, don’t do anything. They have no causal power whatsoever. Mathematical truths don’t reach out and instantiate physical reality.
A law of nature, in the abstract sense, is just a description of how things behave - it’s not an agent that makes things happen. We see a pattern in the natural world and then attach a law that describes that pattern. To say “the laws of physics caused the universe” is like saying “the rules of chess caused the game". The rules don’t cause anything - they describe what happens when players are already in play.
So this objection ends up giving us something necessary but causally inert - which is precisely what the argument from contingency needs to explain away, not explain with.
Objection 4: “An infinite regress of contingent causes is a perfectly fine explanation”
This one is often stated, but fails from multiple angles. Maybe the universe doesn’t explain itself, and maybe abstract objects can’t cause things. But who says the chain of explanations has to end anywhere? Maybe it just goes back forever - an infinite series of contingent causes, each one explained by the prior one, with no first cause required. Infinite regresses are mathematically coherent, after all. Why does the buck have to stop somewhere?
However, the point of an explanation is to account for why something exists rather than not. An infinite chain of contingent things - each one borrowing its existence from the one before it - never actually provides that. Every member of the chain is the kind of thing that might have existed. The whole chain is therefore the kind of thing that might have existed. And an infinite collection of things-that-might-not-have-existed doesn’t magically become something-that-had-to-exist just by being infinite. You’ve explained each individual link by pointing to the one behind it, but you haven’t explained why there’s a chain at all in the first place.
But there’s another problem with infinite regresses that's more concrete. Infinite regresses are perfectly coherent in mathematics. The set of all negative integers is infinite, for example, and there’s nothing contradictory about it. But mathematics describes abstract, timeless structures. Physical reality is different. For an infinite regress of past causes to actually obtain, an infinite number of real events would have to have actually occurred before we arrived at the present moment. And here’s the problem: you can’t traverse an infinite series. If the past is infinite, you could never reach now - because no matter how far forward you count from an infinite past, you’re still infinitely far from the present. The fact that you’re reading this sentence means the present exists. Which means the past cannot be infinite. A beginningless series of physical causes isn’t just philosophically unsatisfying - it’s the kind of thing that sounds coherent in the abstract but falls apart the moment you ask whether it could actually happen.
Objection 5: “The universe could just be a brute fact - some things have no explanation”
Also mentioned earlier, let's forget infinite regresses and necessary universes - some philosophers just bite the bullet and say the universe exists for no reason whatsoever. It’s a brute fact. It’s just there. No explanation, no cause, no reason. The demand for an explanation of the universe as a whole is simply a demand that can’t be met - and doesn’t need to be.
However, most people don’t realize what they’re actually signing up for to accept this view. To say the universe is a brute fact isn’t just to say “we don’t know the explanation yet.” It’s to say there is no explanation, there couldn't be one, and that’s just how reality is. This is a rather sweeping and dogmatic claim that has consequences that go well beyond cosmology.
The entire foundation of science rests on the assumption that things have explanations - that the universe is rationally intelligible and that asking “why?” is always a legitimate move. The moment you allow brute facts as a stopping point, you’ve given that up. Why does the universe follow regular laws? Brute fact. Why does anything at all exist? Brute fact. Why are the constants of physics what they are? Brute fact. At some point “brute fact” stops being a philosophical position and starts being a magic wand you wave at questions you don’t want to answer. If we permit even one brute fact, we've lost grounds for demanding explanations of anything. To be sure, any criterion we use to demarcate what's considered worthy of being a brute fact and what isn't would itself need an explanation and thus move the goal post indefinitely.
Additionally, there’s something self-defeating about it. To say “some things just exist with no explanation” is itself a claim about the fundamental structure of reality - a claim that, per the PSR, demands an explanation. Why is reality the kind of place where brute facts are possible? If the answer is “that’s just how it is” - well, now you’re using the PSR to justify denying the PSR. The position tends to shoot itself in the foot.
The argument from contingency doesn’t just gesture vaguely at a “first cause” and call it a day. It follows the question of existence to its logical end and finds, waiting there, a being that is necessary, immaterial, and personal - one whose non-existence is simply impossible and whose will is the only coherent explanation for why a contingent universe exists rather than nothing. Every attempt to deny one of the premises - brute facts, infinite regresses, self-explaining universes, causally inert abstractions - either relies on the very rationality it’s trying to undermine, or fails to do the explanatory work required.
However, it's worth being clear about what the argument establishes and what it doesn't. The argument concludes that there exists a necessary, immaterial, and personal being whose will accounts for why anything exists at all. While not nothing, it is also not everything the typical Christian would like it to prove. The argument does not show that this being is the God of Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, or any God in particular. It also doesn't show whether this being has revealed himself to humanity or issued any moral commands, or takes any interest in human affairs whatsoever. For all we know, this being could be entirely indifferent to everything that happens in the universe. A different type of argument will be needed to show that kind of being exists.
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