An argument that made a non-believer think that God might exist

A reader who discovered VFR in October 2007 told me in March 2008 that two articles at VFR had made a particularly strong impression on him. One was my essay on race and intelligence, which, he said, gave him the feeling for the first time that it’s ok to talk about race and race differences. The other was a discussion on the Darwinian theory of evolution. He told me that he had always been a non-believer—had always dismissed the possibility of God out of hand. But when he read the below exchange, he started to think for the first time in his life that maybe there is a God.

In the exchange, D. Sanchez, a proponent of Darwinism, had criticized theists for positing infinite regress. I said to him that, to the contrary, “The hell of infinite regress is a typical product of materialist thought.” He replied:

“The hell of infinite regress is a typical product of materialist thought.” No. The infinite regress is what the theist leaves himself open to. You are saying that existence is not a self-sufficient explanation but is itself the “expression” of a transcendent realm. But what of this transcendent realm? You say it is the ultimate truth and needs no explanation. But why can’t the universe be its own explanation and ultimate truth, an axiom to use the language of philosophy?

I replied:

As for the question of infinite regress that Mr. Sanchez keeps returning to, if he and I were walking along and we came upon a marble statue of Zeus, and Mr. Sanchez said that the statue had created itself through a process of random change, and I said, no, this statue has been created by a sculptor, would I be starting or implying or making necessary an infinite regress? No. I’d simply be saying that this statue was self-evidently the work of a sculptor. I wouldn’t have to know anything in particular about the sculptor for that statement to be true. I wouldn’t have to know what his intentions were, or how he came to be inspired to make this statue, or what tools he used, or how he had come to be born, or what his parents were like, to know for an absolute fact that the statue had been made by a sculptor. End of subject. No infinite regress.

- end of initial entry -

Erich writes:

Your “sculptor” derives meaning from the only sculptors we know—finite, temporal beings whose existence requires a source. Therefore, only by an arbitrary fiat that stops the questioning process does the reasoning of your reply to D. Sanchez end the infinite regress. I think the classical approach to this, the Aristotelian Prime Mover, actually depends upon the logic of infinite regress in order to expose and refute that logic: an infinite chain of causation logically invests anything, and everything, in the chain with the power of universal causation, and therefore posits that the chain causes itself, a position that not only fails to avoid the formal structure of theistic causation which the proponents of that position think they are avoiding—but also suffers from the curiosity of absolute causation without a Causer, and the additional absurdity of an inanimate process of absolute causation producing innumerable intermediate causers many of whom reject any Causer of themselves. It could be that what D. Sanchez is objecting to is not so much the infinite regress of theism, but the logic of infinite regress of which theistic reason reminds him—for that logic would then provoke in the reasonably intelligent person the disturbing process that leads beyond the closed circle of the avoidance of ultimate questions. As Voegelin noted many times, the infinite regress is a tool or stimulus for philosophic meditation that would help the person rediscover transcendence as the only (albeit paradoxical) sense to the mystery of causation.

LA replies:

I don’t fully understand Erich’s comment and will have to read it again. But in reply to his initial point, there is no arbitrary fiat implied in my argument. I am obviously not saying that there is not much more that we could know and would like to know about the sculptor. I’m saying that we know for an absolute fact that a sculptor created that sculpture, and that nothing more is needed in order to know that absolute fact.

Kristor writes:

I meant at the time to respond to D. Sanchez’s assertion that theism opens the door to an infinite regress, but never got round to it. Theism does not open the door to an infinite regress.

D. Sanchez errs by treating God as a contingently existent being. If he were, then he would indeed stand in need of some explanation, some cause outside himself, and this would indeed open the door to the infinite regress. But this is precisely why God’s existence cannot be contingent. If we are going to think about God coherently, we have to think of him as existing necessarily. A necessary being exists at all times and in all places and in all situations; he is logically prior to any and every other possible thing. In the presence of such a being, therefore, an infinite regress is not really possible, for every process whatsoever, no matter how temporally extensive, will have him at its origin.

I’m not quite sure, but it seems to me that Erich is making this same mistake. If so, he and D. Sanchez are in good company: Bertrand Russell made it, too, in Why I am Not a Christian.

Alan Roebuck writes:

In response to the accusation “It is theism, not atheism, that leads to an infinite regress,” recall what I wrote in the VFR post you referenced:

There is a simple and direct answer to the following question posed by D. Sanchez:

“How do you answer the problem of the infinite regress? If God created the universe, then what or who created God? If your answer is that God is his own self-sufficient explanation then why can’t the universe be its own self-sufficient explanation? In which case why posit the existence of a God?”

It is logically necessary that there be some entity that is eternal, because, if nothing is eternal, then there would have been a “time ” (realm?) when nothing existed, not even space and time. That is, if nothing is eternal, then absolute nothingness must have somehow “created” everything that exists. Since this position is obviously false, atheists used to believe that the cosmos was eternal, and since there was no good scientific evidence against this proposition, they were at least somewhat justified in their belief.

But now that the science that Mr. Sanchez undoubtedly trusts as the highest authority has overwhelming evidence that the [physical] cosmos is not eternal, it necessarily follows that the Eternal One must be something non-physical. And since we have no evidence that God came into being at a finite time in the past, we are fully justified in regarding Him as eternal.

Thus the answer to Mr. Sanchez’s questions is: “Because logic and evidence point to the existence of God.”

Julien B. writes:

Some thoughts on the “infinite regress” thread:

Kristor says that the atheist’s regress argument can be refuted by characterizing God as a “necessary being,” “logically prior” to everything else. I suspect this argument comes down to saying that there’s no regress because God = the thing that doesn’t generate a regress. But that’s question begging.

A being “logically prior” to all other things has the following characteristic: for absolutely anything x that does or could exist, it is logically impossible that x exist without that being. Take an example: Is it logically possible that Hawaii exist without God? I suggest that we simply don’t know how to answer this question. To answer it we would need to imagine a universe, containing Hawaii but not God, and then look for a contradiction in that scenario. But what is a universe without God like? If we think we’re imagining such a universe, how do we know that we really are? How do we know we aren’t just imagining another universe that God might have created? These scenarios go far beyond anything we can do with our limited intelligence.

Of course, the theist can always just say that God equals whatever it may be that exists in every possible situation. But then the atheist can ask how we know that that entity in any way resembles the theistic God. Presumably the natural numbers or the laws of logic exist in every possible situation (in some sense of “exist”). But is that what the theist worships?

So either the theist claims that God, i.e., the theistic God, is logically prior to all things (“necessary”), or he claims merely that whatever is logically prior to all things equals God. But there’s no way we can evaluate the first claim, and the second leaves open the possibility that theism is false.

Maybe a better response is to say that, by the atheist’s own standards, explanations come to an end somewhere—e.g., at the Big Bang. But if that’s acceptable in materialist explanations, why not in other kinds as well? The theist merely claims that the explanation of all things has to go back one step further than the materialist account, for the kinds of reasons that Mr. Auster gave in his sculpture analogy.

Kristor writes:

Upon further study of Erich’s comment, I don’t believe he does make the error of treating God’s existence as contingent.

Patrick H. writes:

Thank you for reposting a very fine discussion. I must say that VFR has many threads like this one, densely argued and needing more than one read to even begin to catch the nuances of the arguments. Very nutritious fare for this hungry mind!

One of the difficulties in the discussion was touched on by Kristor when he mentioned that God is not a contingently existing being. Since we cannot “imagine” any other kind of being, we therefore cannot, even in principle, imagine God. This absolute constraint means that Julien B.’s perceptive comment that “To answer it [his question about Hawaii without God] we would need to imagine a universe, containing Hawaii but not God” is nonetheless rendered moot (as he points out) by our complete inability to imagine a universe with God or without him in the first place. No use of “logical possibility” that relies on our imagination (as in “x is logically possible if we can imagine x existing without contradiction”) can illuminate anything at all about God. The difference between an atheist and a theist is not that if they are challenged to say how many items are in a room with eighteen things in it, the atheist will say, “eighteen,” and the theist will say, “nineteen, the eighteen things I see plus God.” One of the ironies of being an even moderately sophisticated theist is that it makes a certain apophatic (“negative” theological) sense to say that God does NOT exist. Arguments from infinite regress run into this absolute constraint in a way that, in my opinion at least, renders the whole area a wilderness of logic traps.

Kristor writes:

There are two arguments here, which must be kept carefully distinct if we are not to go round and round in circles. One is the substantive argument over whether God exists. The other is the methodological argument over the proper definition of the term, “God.” My first comment in this thread addressed the latter argument.

If we think of God as a contingently existent being, we are not talking about him as theists have always done, or in such a way as to give us any traction on the problem of the infinite regress. If God exists contingently, then some other entity caused his existence, and because that entity caused him, it is prior to him, and greater than he. But this just means that the being we have been calling “God” isn’t really God at all. If the creator of this universe is contingent, then at best he is an angel. But what about the entity that caused the existence of the contingent angel we have been calling “God?” Is that being contingent, too—just an archangel, a seraph? Thus the regress begins. But this it can do only if the being we have been calling “God” is just another creature—is, i.e., not really God. And if the being we call “God” is not really God, well then, in discussing him we aren’t really confronting the question of theism at all. We might as well ask whether a Chevrolet solves the problem of the infinite regress.

It won’t do. Only a necessary being could put paid to the infinite regress, and that is just the sort of being that theists have always meant by “God.” Thus atheists who ask, “Well, who caused God?” are talking nonsense, as if they had asked the diameter of a square. If you are going to talk about God, you must first get clear that you are talking about a being that, if he exists, exists necessarily.

NB that I have said nothing about whether God actually exists. All I have said is that if he does exist, he must exist necessarily.

We move then to the substantive question whether there exists a necessarily existent being. If not, then by definition there can be no escape from the infinite causal regress, except by some merely conventional and in fact specious bound—the physicists call it a boundary condition. Now this sort of “Here be dragons” limitation on discourse is precisely what is not acceptable in the materialist “explanation” of the world. For if such a bound there actually be, then no explanation, and no causal series, can have any ultimate foundation; everything is then purely happenstantial, and nothing can be truly orderly. But this makes the whole of the apparent order of this world nothing more than a species of chaos, so that causation is illusory. And this completely vitiates the scientific and philosophical enterprises (not to mention the enterprise of running one’s life). Chaos is not susceptible to names, categories, distinctions; it is incompatible with actual being.

This option devours itself.

If on the other hand there does exist a necessary being, then there is a bound and foundation of all causation and all explanation, and it is, precisely, not arbitrary. The necessary is the opposite of the arbitrary. This may be seen if we try believing that 2 + 2 = 4 is only an arbitrary truth. It can’t be done. You can form the sentence, “2 + 2 does not equal 4,” but you can’t put it into practice in your behavior—which is another way of saying that you can’t possibly believe it (meaning that it must be false).

[If there does exist a necessary being], order is possible, so that explanation and understanding are possible, science and philosophy are sensible activities, and so forth.

This option agrees with our experience.

Julien says, “So either the theist claims that God, i.e., the theistic God, is logically prior to all things … or he claims merely that whatever is logically prior to all things equals God.” But the two arms of this disjunction are two different ways of saying the same thing. If A = B then B = A. Where’s the problem?

Theists don’t worship the laws of logic or the natural numbers, even though most theologians—and most mathematicians and logicians—have thought that the truths of math and logic are necessarily true. Since Plato, theists have figured that math and logic derive their necessary truth from the fact that they are eternal ideas of the eternal mind of God; they are coeternal with him, because they form a part of what he eternally knows and contemplates. But no careful theist confuses the ideas of God with their thinker. That would be idolatry.

LA replies:

I followed the first half of Kristor’s comment, about how God is by definition the being who puts an end to infinite regress, but I really don’t follow the second half. But I post it, as I have other such discussions, as there are clearly readers who are interested in and can follow purely abstract logic about such subjects as the existence of God far better than I can. I’ve never had any ability in such areas.

My own approach is much simpler. Just as we know with a direct intuition that the marble sculpture was created by a being who is not the sculture, we know, or rather we sense, with a direct intuition that the universe came out of something that is not the universe.

This is a useful analogy, not an absolute similarity. In the case of the existence of the sculptor, the knowledge is absolute, or as close to absolute as any human knowledge can be. In the case of the existence of God, it is a strong intuition and a strong logical inference, but it cannot be called absolute knowledge in the same sense that the existence of the sculptor is absolute knowledge.

Julien B. writes:

Kristor writes:

“Julien says, “So either the theist claims that God, i.e., the theistic God, is logically prior to all things … or he claims merely that whatever is logically prior to all things equals God.” But the two arms of this disjunction are two different ways of saying the same thing. If A = B then B = A. Where’s the problem?

The two arms are not equivalent. The first option is to say “The theistic God is (i.e., has the property of being) logically prior to all things,” and the second is to say “God = what is logically prior to all things (whatever that might be).” Only the second claim is an identity.

The problem was supposed to be that on the first option, we have no way of evaluating the claim that for any contingent thing X it is impossible for X to exist without God. (As in the Hawaii example.) But on the second option, while we can be confident that something is logically prior to all things (e.g., the numbers) we have no way of knowing that that entity is or contains anything like the God of theism. A theist shouldn’t identify God with that entity, since it may not be a person, may not be all powerful, etc.

What we want to talk about is a particular logically prior thing (the theistic God, and not the numbers or the laws of logic). But then we have the problem of the first option: we have no particular reason to think that that entity is logically prior to Hawaii (or whatever).

* * *

This discussion continues in a new thread, entitled, “A logical proof of God’s existence, personality, and goodness.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2008 01:36 PM | Send