“Nothing Comes from nothing, nothing ever could.”
Most people accept this little nugget of wisdom from Frauline Maria and Captain Von Trapp. In our experience of the world, we never observe something coming from nothing. It would indeed be wonderful if I could conjure up a free new iphone out of nothing, or a nice frothy cappuccino to sip right now, but common sense tells us that just isn’t the way reality works. I have to work with something if I want to get something.
In the flourishing universities of the High Middle Ages, a brilliant monk named Thomas Aquinas argued that this principle – nothing comes from nothing – logically implies the existence of God. Aquinas argued that since we observe in the physical world that all things are caused by something else, there must be a great Something outside of the physical world that caused the universe. There had to be a super-natural Something so that we could get all these natural somethings.
However, when considering the possibility of God, people often lose their common sense. There are two significant ways in which some people dispute this principle. Firstly, a few attempt to argue that something cancome from nothing. Lawrence Krauss, for example, argues in his book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing that the universe did indeed come from nothing; however he changes the meaning of “nothing.” He defines nothingas the laws of physics combined with a vacuum of quantum fluctuations. In short, Krauss’ “nothing” is still a something ofempty space and quantum fluctuations. John Horgan at Scientific American calls Krauss a “bad philosopher”[1] and argues that “Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing.”[2] If you can predicate it with positive descriptors, that is, if you can describe it in a sentence, then it is a something. You have to start with something!
Secondly, some philosophers deny that we have to find a cause for something; The physical universe can be eternal and uncaused without having to depend upon a transcendent or divine source. Perhaps the great philosopher and “master of common sense,”[3] St. ThomasAquinas can help us discern the matter. Aquinas outlined five common sense arguments which provide strong logical support for the existence of God. He persuasively argued in several ways that an uncaused universe is logically absurd.
Let’s dive into Aquinas’ argument so we can see this more clearly. The set of arguments that Aquinas crafted according to this basic principle – that only a transcendent Something can cause material somethings – are called collectively the Cosmological Argument.He identifies five primary ways that this basic argument can be logically inferred from the natural world. Aquinas observes five different characteristics of things in the natural world and then outlines how each of these characteristics logically implies the existence of a supernatural God.
In the next post, I want to more closely examine the third of these five arguments, which is often the most difficult to grasp, but first, let’s look at a summary of the all five so we can see in each the basic structure of Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument.
- Motion: Things move.The natural world shows change and motion. Something had to start this chain of motion, and that something has to be itself outside of the chain of movement. This transcendent Something outside of the natural world is the “Unmoved Mover” or what, as Aquinas likes to say, “everyone understands to be God.”
- Causality: Things are caused.In addition to motion, the natural world also shows static causality. For example, the height of a 15-foot roof if caused by the building underneath the roof, even if nothing in the building is currently moving. Theoretically, the building could have been in that state forever and ever with no movement, but still the building beneath would be the cause of the roof height above. Likewise, something outside of the natural world has to be the “Uncaused Cause” in order to ultimately ground this chain of causality, i.e. the building has to stand on something too, and this too “is what everyone understands to be God.”
- Being: Things are contingent. All things in the natural world are contingent things, that is they don’t necessarily have to exist. If your computer didn’t exist, the fabric of reality wouldn’t implode. However, if everything is contingent, then why is the universe here at all? If no observable thing has to exist, then why does anything exist? Therefore, there must be a “Necessary Being,” which is what all men call God. We will look more closely at this argument in the second part of this post.
- Degree: Things exist in gradation. Things exist in states that are higher or lower, bigger or smaller, better or worse. However, for this to make any sense, each gradation must have a maximum or absolute. There must be something that is highest and best and greatest, a Most Perfect Being, or what all men would call God.
- Designed: Things display purpose. Finally, Aquinas observes that the physical world is bursting with purpose. Eyes are for seeing and vocal chords are for speaking and legs are for running. Aquinas argues that purpose requires intelligence, yet we observe things which lack intelligence themselves, such as an ecosystem, functioning according to purpose. Therefore, the purpose displayed in the unintelligent physical world will require a transcendent source of intelligence, or a great “Ordering Mind.” Aquinas concludes that this is, you got it, “what everyone understands to be God.”
The first two ways focus on more physical types of causality and are thus more intuitively clear. If we think of a series of dominos, it is relatively easy to grasp that some domino had to fall first and some “non-domino” had to push it. However, the third way is more abstract and therefore more difficult to grasp. In the next post we will break it down into simple pieces and rebuild a clear understanding from there. For now, let Aquinas assure you that the common sense intuition, “nothing comes from nothing” rests on strong philosophical ground; faith in God is abundantly reasonable.
[1]http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/ Is Lawrence Krauss a Physicist, or Just a Bad Philosopher? By John Horganon November 20, 2015
[2]Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/science-will-never-explain-why-theres-something-rather-than-nothing/ By John Horganon April 23, 2012
[3]Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa, 13.