In our search for God, we do not simply follow chains of causations to find God at the end of them. God is not the first cause in a chain of physical causation, (or a train of consequences). We would never hope to find an architect in the brickwork of his building, or an artist beneath the layers of his painting, or an author in his book, so least of all would we find God in a chain of causes.

At the same time, chains of consequences explain no more than consequents and their antecedents, they do not explain the reality of either. Nothing can be the “efficient” cause of itself; for if so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. I did not put myself together and then jump into myself, neither did the Universe.

This is the central premise of St Thomas’ proofs for God’s existence, which is that existence is not a given. The whole theatre of chains of events, of trains of consequences, what we call “Universe”,  must somehow be upheld and made to subsist. This is why St Thomas calls his ontological proof the proof from “Necessary Being”. Apart from his “Necessary Being” proof, St. Thomas considers other “proofs” like movement, goodness, and also the “goal directedness”. Everything in the Universe must be explained by that which is other than it, and therefore that which is neither a cause nor effect, but rather the reason “causes and effects” exist at all. This is the introduction to ontology: the study of existence itself, or reality. Only then are we really asking the question: “Who is God?”

Many hundred years after the Bible had been written and after much prayerful reflection and gradual progress of theology, the answer to this was found to be present in the words of the Bible itself, in the verse in Exodus “I AM WHO AM”: God’s seeming assertion that He is indeed existence, which is corroborated by Jesus many hundreds of years later, “I am.” (Jn 8:58) The full Exodus verse reads “God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Ex3:14).

I think the most spectacular summary of the proofs of God’s existence is given by Ed Feser in one single summarising paragraph. But all other forms of proofs, I would strongly assert, flow from the ontological proof, since it is Being and Existence that is first in every intellectual order: we must assume existence before we can presume anything else, or any other argument. I don’t discuss here the other proofs in detail, but Feser’s “5 Proofs…” is great for it, as it Gilson’s CTA:

“five arguments for the existence of God…can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-Platonic proof begins with the fact that the things of our experience are composed of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or non-composite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers, and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself. The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only He in an absolutely necessary being (Five Proofs for the Existence of God, p169)

We cannot by means of Inductive reasoning (reasoning based on observations of “creation”, as in the scientific method) disprove the existence of God, since that which is disproved through physical means is physical. But by the same measure, neither also can we prove God’s existence through inductive reasoning. Just as one cannot possibly deny the existence of language in any human language, so also can one not deny existence except by denying the existence of that denial. This is stunning, all the force of St Thomas’ five proofs are based on this form of argumentation seen in a sense from different aspects of this same premise. Put simply, there is no logical way for that-which-is, to prove that there is not that-by-which-it-is. Philosophy that has not found God, has simply not taken into account existence itself, merely dealing with existents and their mutual interactions, what we might call the modern usage of the term “science”.

Can God be Non-Personal?

You question was regarding whether God were not a personal being. Whether this thing that were out there were actually just a thing.

The problem with that is that we know that there are things out there, so that’s not even up for debate. The question is whether that thing could be responsible for everything. In order for this to be the case nothing should the greater than this “thing”, because then it could not be responsible for that which were greater than it. That means that if what the thing is responsible for is conscious persons, then it itself should at the very least be a person, either that or else it should transcend all our understanding of what a person.

Some are possibly drawn to this position because of the problem of evil and suffering, probably reasoning that if God were personal then he would intervene and stop evil. The problem of evil is a separate issue. But the impersonal God position is at worst incoherent and at best irrevelant. No one needs worry about “things out there” anymore than we worry about science, under the remit of which things fall anyway.

Proof from Causality

Aquinas (and other scholastics like Scotus) distinguish between at least two distinct types of causal series: per se (or “hierarchical”) and per accidens which I don’t actually find useful here. In ontology, this form of the hierarchy if not viewed correctly can itself be misleading, because both examples are temporal. However when we talk about God causing us to be “actualized”, we are speaking not of temporality, rather of existence as opposed to non existence. God causes us, you and me to be a concrete reality, rather than just have the potential to be real, like a concept of something that does not exist. So we are, as Feser states, not speaking of something that has caused us in the past, but rather “here and now”:

“even if a given series of changes has no beginning in time, even if the universe or series of universes extends forever into the past, that would be irrelevant to the argument. For the argument is rather that for things to exist here and now, and at any moment at which they exist, they must be here and now sustained in existence by God.” (38, 5PoG)

The Proof from Composition

Feser marks this a “Neo-Platonic” form of a proof for God. We experience that things that are composed of parts are put together by other things, they do not put themselves together. Further, Feser points out that while some of those prior factors can be per accidens, things also require to be held together in the here and now so there is certainly a hierarchical per se sense in the causation of composition. Even in the realm of physics, we hold that the elementary particles of nature are made to combine by the physical forces or the so-called “force particles” of the Standard Model. Particles do not just “join themselves” together. We do not have, in the manner of Escher’s Hands drawing, a scientific case of particles picking themselves up by their own bootstraps. The very first particles in the early Universe following the Big Bang were brought together by the internuclear and the gravitational forces, and this is why we have Physics today (not the journal). So the argument from composition is simply that something needs to be the explanation of stuff being put together that was not itself put together, ending the infinite regress and avoiding absurdity in this manner. Parts of things do not “join up” without third-party intervention. I do not see anything in science that can refute this position. Even if reason and causality is denied in some interpretations of Quantum Physics, I cannot see how this argument can be refuted. Its in the Feynman diagrams themselves- force particles must be exchanged for any recombination to occur – stuff needs to happen else other stuff will not.

The Augustinian Proof- Universals

This is the incredible observation that there are some things known to us that are intangible and yet must be real, like mathematics itself, propositions themselves, knowledge and concepts, and words themselves. Philosophers have long wrestled with these and there are too many arguments to get into here.

Thomas Aquinas- the argument from existence itself

Quite apart from the question of whether things are joined together, or that they exist intangibly, or that they are caused is the fact that they exist at all. Of these causation comes closest, but even causation in its scientific usage is explanatory not of existence, rather it it explanatory of events, why a physical state follows from prior states. We also cannot seem to intellectually merge the fact that an explanation requires to be a necessary entity, however for it to be God, it must be.

Uniting the 5 Ways:

It is because physics does not supply that explanation which is why it must be God, if we hold to explanations (that is, if we hold to PSR). Physics provides neither a per se nor a per accidens cause as that explanation, hence we propose God per se. Physics is unable to shed light upon the property of existing, hence we take this as a metaphysical property. Physics does not also tell us that anything has the property of existing necessarily, and therefore the arguments from necessary existence and existence itself are going to be very similar. To say per se is not very different from saying necessary in any case, they’re both in the manner of stating that it just happens to be the case (or the unfortunate term “brute fact” might be used). One could even possibly argue that existence, necessity and explanation are equivalent linguistic devices. saying “I am” can be equivalent to “I explain” or “I necessitate”, from which we get “I am a man”, “I explain man”, and “I necessitate man”. We do none of the three perfectly and yet, those terms point in their imperfection to their own perfection beyond us. Semitic languages do not even employ the “to be” merely using “I, man” (ani ha-adam in Hebrew or enta rajul in Arabic).

Or instead of “why is there something rather than nothing?” to which the answer would be “because Existence (God)” we could ask “why is there reason rather than not?” and the answer would be “because Wisdom (God)” or (and this might be a bit clunky) “Why is there causality?” we answer “Because Necessity (God)” or we could combine them into “why is our existence necessary?” (“why” itself is “explanations” here). God must be all of the three: Necessary, Existence, and Reasonable. I think “actual” gets easily absorbed under those headings, same as “truth” and even “Goodness” which seem to be derived notions in a sense. We could add “simplicity”, however this seems unnecessary at this stage.

We do not really know the fabric of reality, we call reality “existence”, but that just a synonym rather than explanatory. We could just as much state that the fabric of reality is reason, and that reality is necessity, and necessarily reasonable.

The objection to PSR

the Typical objection to PSR (the principle that all things have an explanation) is the objection “So what caused God?”. That objection is self-defeating because it assumes PSR “caused”. So the discussion would go:

Typical atheist question: “So what caused God!?”
Theist: “Nothing”
Atheist: “Ha! But Everything needs a cause!”
Theist: “You said it. Therefore God”

The other objection is from Infinities. It is a challenge to the premise that we cannot have an infinite chain of causation because real infinities do not exist, that is, things can have antecedent causes ad infinitum. We can reply by showing that it is extremely unlikely that real infinities exist, for one, we have not found one, so that assertion is not even empirically true. The only hope of a real infinity is the Universe itself, that is, the hope that the Universe does not actually have a boundary. Were that the case I’m unsure how any calculations in astrophysics could hold true. For example, calculation for the expansion rate of the Universe requires an estimate of its mass (I don’t claim any expertise in this issue). Metaphysically, for the Universe to be infinite, it must exhaust reality. That is to say that there is not “outside the box” perspective to the Universe. That would shut out any possibility for theism. No matter how fast you go and at whatever speed, you would have barely began.

Why do we require PSR?

If not for PSR, as Feser states in his book, we could not trust our senses. As a simple example- if you looked out your window and saw a cow grazing upon the grass, you could not know if there were really a cow grazing on the grass outside your window or not. Because you could not know that the visual impulses in your brain were caused by an actual cow. We assume that our sensory perceptions are caused by objects in the real world as their explanations. One ends up with a universal skepticism and discussing anything at all becomes pointless, apart from empirical data and possibly politics.

Universals: Quantum and Mind- Independent Reality

The very intrepid Inspector Jenkins who goes to the mall one day and asks the shop assistant:

“Can I buy green?”

“A green what, sorry?” The lady shop-assistant asks, a little perplexed at this unusual request. She’s in her mid-40s, with her hair tied firmly back in a bun and is wearing the shop’s green visor.

“I don’t want a “green what”. Just a “green”, thank you”, replies the intrepid inspector enigmatically.

“Well you have it”

“What do you mean? My cart’s empty!”

“It’s in your brain. Your occipital nerve cells see green depending upon the length of the light wave that reaches them, don’t they? And light waves don’t carry colour. The only characteristics of a light wave are wave-length and amplitude. Nothing outside your brain is green, outside there’s only wave-lengths.”

“Are you saying then that if every brain on the Earth were switched off, nothing would be green?”

“Exactly. And nothing would also be blue, purple or pink. And nothing would also be bright and nothing dark. Light does not make things bright or dark, our brains do. Light energises, because it is energy, it happens to carry those energies in differing wave-lengths. The first sea-algae that harnessed the energy of light through the chlorophyllin-like molecule it evolved could see nothing, neither light nor dark. They simply harnessed energy.”

“Would that then apply to all of reality?”

“No, perhaps only to universal concepts and categories of reality in the manner in which we sense them”

“Would there be anything were we not conscious of it?”

“Things, and the consciousness of them are simultaneous. The question- “what would there be were we not conscious?” is not necessarily a valid question when asked scientifically, nor can it be answered scientifically. It is a bit like the question “what was there before time?”According to Quantum mechanics, things aren’t, except that we are conscious of them. What a thing is, is what we know them to be. What we observe is identical to what we do observe. In this sense Kant’s theory that we cannot know things does not qiotehold up in the light of quantum.”

“What about when we were not?”

“If nothing is conscious of a thing suspended in time and space, one can’t really say. It’s the “observer problem” that one encounters in quantum mechanics”

“What’s that?”

“Well just what we said. If a thing is not observed consciously, is it really  a thing at all? You may have heard of Schrodinger’s cat? Quantum seems to indicate that until a thing is observed consciously, it only exists as a probability wave (s).”

“Wow that’s really difficult. Haven’t we proved that the Universe existed for a few billion years before anyone was consciously observing it”

“Perhaps only as a probability wave, sir”

“are we saying that there is no such thing as a “Mind-independent reality”?

“That’s a great question. Independent of the mind the only reality that can be said to be, is a state of probability. That is not to say that it is not a mind-independent reality, only that it is probabilistic. It is still real. Are we more real than it?Perhaps we’re not, and both are merely different modes of reality. But mind that both these are “physical realities” and both are featured in the current state of scientific research and theorising.”

“So I wake up this morning, I say to myself “let’s go buy green today”, and you’re saying I cannot get it?”

“You have got it. When you see it, you’ve got it”

“Ah, great. That saves me having to buy it off the shelf, thank you for that. And what about triangular, round, beauty, have I got those too?”

“Yes you do!”

“But then hasn’t everybody got them?”

“Yes, they do.”

“What about justice, goodness, kindness, virtue, love?”

“Yep. Them too. You don’t find them on shelves, do you.”

“No, you’re right. Neither does one very often find them in courts of justice either if I say so myself.”, the inspector replied, looking thoughtfully at some tulips in the flower section. Then after a brief thought he looks up and asks again,

“Waitaminnute! How do I know that someone else hasn’t got a better copy of “green” that I do? I want the best! Even with respect to “love”, justice”, “virtue” must mean the same thing in everyone, else it is not really virtue or justice, for the characteristic of justice, for example is that it treats everyone fairly. But how can everyone be treated fairly if what is fair is different, for then they will be treated differently. Does everyone have the same exact of “justice in their brain, and if so how come?”

“Well its not necessary that everyone has “the same copy of justice” in their brain is it? For people have a variety of frames of reference. However all these variations would be expected to have at least a figment of that perfect copy. What I mean is that the perfect copy of justice does not reside in any person, not necessarily in any person at all. Just like one cannot really say what is the perfect “green”. It might well have variations dependent upon brain structure.”

“So if a perfect copy of something like “justice” is not in anyone then where is it?”

“That the puzzle of “universals”. Plato tried to address it”

“And what did he think?”

“He said that the ideas of those things exist in a realm that is outside physical reality. He proposed things like the “cave” analogy, and the “dividing line””

“Didn’t those things just evolve into people’s brains simultaneously?”

“Evolve from what? The process by which things have, say “weight” for example, is independent of any process by which it evolves. Things have weight independently of evolution, don’t they? For it was not weight that evolved in the Theory of Natural Selection. So were it true that universals evolved then it would require that the laws of physics too evolved from nothing. In that case you would be right, Universals simply “evolved”, and gradually gained prominence, rather than existing as pre-eminently perfect.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Personally I would have trouble with it. If something is evolving, it seems unlikely that it would ever reach something called “perfect”. That’s the problem with the consequent. The antecedent is problematic too, we have no hard reason to believe that laws of physicas can indeed evolve from nothingness, nor that anything else can.”

“So you don’t believe in Evolution”

“If reality is observer-dependent, and if it were true that evolution were responsible for the development of human consciousness, then physical reality itself evolved biologically. That is absurd, because biology only emerged in a physical world, and the theory of Evolution must presuppose a physical world, not create it!”

“So our consciousness, could not be a purely evolved phenomenon?”

“It seems that there is such a thing as a realm of consciousness, in which we have certain universal ideas, and are conscious because of these universal ideas. Consciousness seems to be a mysterious and unique interplay between these universal ideas. We simply cannot explain those entities from any perspective within physical reality, whether biological or physical.”

“So tell me again, what did Plato think was the origin of universals? That would help me to find “green” today, which is really all I set out to do, wasn’t it”.

“But what if justice was on deal?”, the shop assistant asked with a twinkle in her eye, rather than the usual dry look with which deals and insurance are touted in stores.

“I’d have it too!” beamed the very intrepid inspector with no hesitation at all.

“Plato places their origin, outside all of physical reality altogether.”

“And is that a complete solution?”

“No because in that outside reality you still have the same problem: you have to explain it. Plato could not. Aquinas did. He places all these “ideas” in the Mind of God”

“Isn’t that just shunting the problem again?”

“No, because Aquinas offers an ontological explanation. You might have to actually buy that newspaper if you want me to go into that”, she snapped with a motherly sternness.

Infinities- Can actual Infinities exist, and the Kalam argument

Peter Kreeft’s footnote on Summa 333: The number series or spacetime- you can always add more…. Only God is an actual infinite, or a complete infinite. Infinity in matter is only potentiall (as in the human intellect).

Unity and Infinity

Religious persons will almost universally state “God is infinite”. But what is really meant by this? What does it really mean for a human being to state “a thing is one”, when we know that all things can be broken up into infinite sub-particles, and what does is mean say a thing is “infinite” when we do not know a single infinite thing? Mathematical infinites present various tantalising conundrums, and speculation into the nature of infinities has spawned geniuses like Georg Cantor and Srinivasa Ramanujan. The field of “Set theory”, a mysterious and murky field dealing with infinities tread by only a few, that is said to underlie the very foundation of all mathematics, and the fall of which could spell the fall of all mathematics. I want to try in this section to demystify our perception of infinites and make the reader realise how we are surrounded by them, at least the mathematical versions.

Now one might make the honest mistake of presuming that an infinity is an infinity of “things”. This is not true, because it is physics that deals with things and physics cannot deal with infinite things. Science has not discovered an infinite thing for physicists to scrutinise. It is mathematics that deals with infinities, and mathematics does not deal with things, it deals with numbers. Mathematics is a tool that deals with entities called “numbers”. Numbers are best defined as a device humans use to count (the number of) things. Any effort to define what a “number” is beyond this ends up being tautological: “a number is how many numbers of something there are…”, and so on. Numbers themselves have no material existence. “Infinities” is best defined as a set of counting numbers in which “the exercise of counting” does not end. An infinity then becomes an undefinable quantity of an undefinable thing.

The Kalaam Argument- Do Real Infinities Exist?

The Kalaam argument is based upon the premise that real infinities do not exist in nature. In modern times the philosopher William Lane Craig has argued this using examples of paradoxical conclusions that can be arrived at from infinities as have been described in various examples like the Hilbert Hotel and Grim Reaper paradox and others. I have described below why I believe that these paradoxes do not work. But that does not mean that real infinities do exist. I call my first argument the “where is it?” argument against the existence of real infinities. It goes like this, its quite simple: Were a real infinity to exist, it should be here. It should obviously fill up all of space, so it should occupy the space between yourself and the computer screen or the book (hopefully one day God willing) that you are reading this on. A real infinity must be a spatial infinity since all real things are spatio-temporal and I’m not then getting how a spatial infinity does fill all of space. In order to refute this one would have to specify what a non-spatial real infinity is, and what it’s reality was, since I assert that it must be a spatial reality.

Does a mathematical infinity exist? It’s quite easy for the “concept” of an infinity to exist, one merely needs set up a condition in which the exercise of counting does not stop. So “do not stop counting” is an example of an infinite mathematical command, or “begin counting alternate numbers and do not stop”. Equally one could say: “begin dividing p and so not stop”. The exercise of counting the divisions seems to yield a different version of infinity, though one that is still yielded in the counting. In this version the number itself is infinitely counted. For example I give you the number “1”, and ask you to count the number of numbers you can fit into that one. This is division, is represented by “1/0” or generically by “x/0”, and what is being counted is the number of times that a “0” can fit into a number “1” (or any number). Physically one can try this at home, by trying to count the number of times one can “fit clothes that occupy no space into a suitcase”. You’re still counting infinitely, but in this case, your infinite set is enclosed in a single number (or suitcase/handbag). This we can call the first type of infinity. It is the same as the infinity represented by the set [1,2,3,…], as one counts the number of clothes. The financial markets can be seen as a similar open ended infinity, as the value of the markets is entirely arbitrary, what is value, why does value increase, is it because the value of the earth is increasing, and what is the value that the Earth can increase to? Seen this way a capitalistic financial market, and perhaps even more so with the advent of the new virtual money, can be seen as an infinite set. One might also grab the nearest thing and try to count the number of times one can divide it into littler pieces, like diving a loaf of bread among an unlimited number of guests. In the way that the distance between two objects is infinitely divisible into smaller distances, though the total distance remains the same, as does the single loaf.

Fractions are a slightly different type of infinity because they are “accuracy infinities” or infinities of infinite accuracy. pi has an infinite number of decimal places although its value never exceeds 3.14. Neither does the distance between those two points increase nor does the value of pi. If you had 22 mangoes and served them into seven plates because you had seven guests, your guests could also wait for an infinity till you increased the accuracy of your division to the absolute best of your ability. And never stopped trying. You still only have 22 mangoes and your guests still only get the same amount of food. Or try to measure your height with increasing accuracy by taking a large number of measurements and trying to average them out. You can take as many readings as you want thereby increasing your accuracy, but never increasing your height, in fact you might decrease it from the initial readings.

But what this brings to the fore is that in some way there are two types of infinities, one in which numbers are multiplied, and another in which they are divided. The former seems to “go somewhere”, while the latter, it is hard to know just what is being accomplished. It also brings to light the fact that a number can be infinitely divided. This would seem to have a physical correlate, however perhaps it would be wrong to state this for matter cannot be divided beyond the so-called Plank length according to the current understanding of theoretical physics.

Thus an infinity gives the impression of a constantly increasing magnitude of numbers. However that magnitude only starts to extend when we actually start counting those numbers. Therefore we never actually see or experience the infinity, rather only the finite quantity of numbers that we are able to count. The ridiculous exercise, in any case does not lead to the generation of any infinities no matter how long the hapless graduate student sticks to the task (even were they to send him back in time a few times like Marvin the Paranoid Android). All the produce of such a research programme would be finite numbers.

St Augustine in his Confessions gives probably the best illustration of why God cannot be a mathematical infinity: In a mathematical (or physical) infinity, or an infinite set, it is possible to enclose a part of that set. That part then, is not infinite anymore.) There is much debate on the issue of whether an actual infinity can or cannot exist in reality, ie can a physical reality exist.

Certain absurdities that arise in real infinities have been pointed out, most famously by the great mathematician Hilbert, but then another great mathematician Cantor also shows that one can, under certain conditions perform operations upon infinities mathematically without being absurd. Lets have the quickest possible look at a couple of these “absurdities” and why I do not think they are as absurd as they sound:

Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox does not re…eeeeally work

In Hilbert’s Hotel example, every room in an infinite hotel is already taken up by a guest. Hilbert states that if a new guest arrives, then the manager simply shifts each guest up one room and the new guest is thereby accommodated in room 1. So the hotel is both full and not full and therefore this is an absurdity. This never impressed me because it seems to me that firstly the fact that there’s an empty room at the end of infinity that the last guest can be shifted into seems to defeat the initial premise, and secondly, at any time there is one guest outside their room, going on to infinite time, as the guests keep on moving up. And so the point of accommodating all the guests is never really served. Put another way, the so-called paradox purports to show that a hotel which is full can be further filled if it were infinite, thus giving rise to a paradox. But if an infinite number of rooms can exist than so can an infinite number of guests. There is not reason to presume that those rooms are not all then filled and a further guest can indeed not be admitted, because you have defined your infinity as an infinite fulness. By the initial definition there is nowhere to admit a new guest. A new guest is not part of the initial set, the initial set is a set of full rooms, so this is not a case of infinity + 1 =infinity. You cannot add a tomato to an infinite set of mangoes and end up with no more than infinite mangoes by any rule. Any additional guest would need to arrive and build his own room in the hotel, only then can he be part of the infinite set.

Grim Reaper Paradox

The other case is the Grim Reaper Paradox. For me this does not work either because you will actually meet the first Grim Reaper at the Planck time, beyond which time cannot be divided.