Arguing God from First Cause | Episode 112 | Closer To Truth

Does everything need a cause? Everything in the universe surely does. But what about the universe as a whole? And what about God - assuming God exists - does God need a cause? Featuring interviews with William Craig, Quentin Smith, Alister McGrath, David Shatz, Charles Harper, and Peter van Inwagen.

Season 1, Episode 12 - #CloserToTruth
Archive episode. First aired in 2008.

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[tomlee]

It's high time those God/gods show up and speak for themselves.

[iain]

"If God exists then it is a logical necessity for the universe to exist" is not logical. That would mean that the universe would be an intricate part of God, which is basically a position of defining what God can and can not be in order to support one's argument.

[irrelevant]

Why wasn't randomness mentioned in this video? If you believe in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics which supports true randomness, then the first cause argument is not a problem because the first cause would then be something which was random. Assuming that quantum randomness exists, why would "God" also need to exist? It doesn't. If quantum randomness exists, then that's just another part of science, not magic.

[timmarshall]

A very fascinating piece. I did not follow everything but I found it fascinating and illuminating. Love and peace. Tim

[fred]

Great topic. Thank you for going there!

[blijebij]

Everything within time needs a cause. Reality as a whole does not....but is based on principles.

[jamesbentonticer]

Thank you for including a cosmologist on this topic.

[RickMacDonald]

I think Quentin Smith's infinite regress countering the Cosmological Argument ends at the plank length.

[jamesgardner]

All a matter of FAITH.... Brother James

[andyscherer]

I don't get it: The Universe began to exist, therefore God. How does Craig get to God? How about saying we are still trying to understand causal relationships? There is no reason to add a God into this.

[Trisontraileryt]

Is cause not just a cause regardless of the nature of the causer. I find it very difficult to come to terms with what Quentin said about cause being different when we refer to God.

[heresa_notion_]

The story so far:

There exists an A such that A could not exist without A existing, a priori, to any point cited for A's existence. Therefore, A is eternal (i.e., infinitely encompassing all the past). Let A be God by definition.

There is an infinite regress in putting it this way, but it's not clear why the definition should fail just because of that. It's also interesting that neither theist nor atheist can consider themself an aAist. For theists, A is a trivial part of their doctrine, though they also want to add properties (like sentience) to whatever A is, which is not trivial. For atheists, such as quantum/classical physicists, the A affirmation is irrefutable for the same reason the conservation of matter and energy is irrefutable (i.e., a transition from nothing to mass/energy is fundamentally disallowed; so, there must have always been something, which is mass/energy, that could be causally transformed and conserved. Or do I have it wrong?). So theist and atheist differ only in the additional properties that an A could have from bare existence. Theists impute human-relatable properties and atheists impute physical properties. Both standpoints are "revelatory", but the theist standpoint is more chaotic, requiring an abrupt intervention/communication from God to get a standpoint stoodup. Science, on the other hand is more continuous. If the revelation were not a continuous one (i.e., eternally borne out), it's just not worth thinking about.

[tom-kzpb]

Imagining that "first cause" of the universe is a fully formed, sentient, intelligent super-being has got to be the ultimate antithesis of Occam's Razor. "God" would have to quite complex, as opposed to something much simpler, like laws of physics.

[orver]

There's no reason to assume that there was a first cause, or if there was, there's no reason to think it was gods and goddesses who were the first cause.

[brotherdave]

What would you change the name of the show to if you arrive at the truth?

[johnmonk]

Suppose we accept the notion that god exists. Then we are faced with another question: How on earth did god come into being? What made god, so to speak? And why stop there? What's god's god's god? And the iterations continue on endlessly until infinity. Until we ask ourselves whether there is any meaning to this line of questioning anymore? The simple fact is we just don't know or god simply doesn't exist at all because the simplest explanation may often be the truest. God, notion of god, or any reference to any supreme beings are simply products of human imaginations. Was and still is.

[tedetienne]

I’m still waiting for some philosopher to argue against the claim: “Nothing comes from nothing.” So many people accept this premise without question, even though we have so little experience with nothingness. It sounds reasonable, but I’d say it’s only intuitive; and humans have a bad track record applying our reasoning to things outside of common experience (relativity, quantum theory, etc.).

[cvsree]

'God is cause' implies that 'effect' is not God.

But, God is all inclusive. Our mind creates an illusion that we are separate from God.

[navneetnair]

Have you explored the Buddhist argument that something that is unchanging cannot be a cause and hence there cannot be an unchanging first cause

[smiikeli]

What I have never understood is: Why is the the first cause a being? Why has there to be a desire to create a excistense?