An Uncaused First Cause
A read asked me to explain the argument against infinite regress. I pass it along in case my other readers find it of interest.
The First Cause argument is not all that complex, and it can be put in simple words. It might help if I use examples.
The question is about cause and effect. A cause (let us say a cue ball) has an effect (cue ball strikes the eight ball, and the eight ball falls into the side pocket).
In life, whenever we see an effect (an eight ball in the side pocket) we know there must be a cause (a cue ball) even if we were not looking when the cue ball struck. Eight balls just do not start rolling on their own.
Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing happens for no reason.
Now, if each effect has a cause, then what caused the cue ball to roll? It might have been struck by another ball, and that ball by a ball before it, and so on in an endless row of balls, or the cue ball was struck by a cue stick.
Perhaps a row of dominoes is a better example, because billiard balls usually do not have long lines of one ball striking the next striking the next.
Or picture a line of railroad cars: Each car is being pulled by the car in front of it.
Now, suppose you walked up to billiard game in the middle, and you saw the eight ball rolling but did not see what set it in motion.
Or suppose you saw a line of dominoes toppling one after another, but where not looking when the first domino fell.
Or suppose you walked up to a railroad crossing with tall buildings blocking your view to either side, so you see one rail car after another in a line all being pulled.
This is the situation you and I are in when it comes to seeing the cosmos in motion around us. We see stars and planets moving and orbiting in the sky, but did not see what started it.
Logically, there are only two possibilities in each case: in the billiard game, either (1) someone struck the cue ball with a cue stick and set the shot in motion, or (2) an endless series of balls, one after another after another, has been rolling on an infinite cloth with no beginning.
In the domino case, either (1) there was a first domino that was pushed over by a finger, and set the line of toppling dominoes in motion, or else (2) the line of dominoes is has no beginning, and the row is infinitely long and has been falling for all eternity.
In the train car case, either (1) there in an engine at the front of the line of traincars which is pulling the whole train, but it is itself not being pulled by a car ahead of it or (2) the line of cars is infinitely long, and has no beginning, and has been in motion for all of time.
Likewise, the same case applied to the cosmos. The two possibilities are (1) either the stars and planets and all the motions of energy and matter in creation were set in motion by something (or someone) outside of nature or (2) the cosmos has no beginning, and the chain of cause and effect regresses backward in time infinitely.
Let us look at possibility (2). This is called “infinite regress”
Infinite is a word that causes endless confusion. All it means is that there is no boundary, no stopping point, or, in this case, no starting point.
We call the number line infinite not because any real human being in real history ever counted all the numbers that exist and discovered that there were an infinite number of them: no, that is nonsense.
What we mean is that there is a rule of mathematics that says that for any given number, no matter how big, you can always add one and get a bigger number. There is no end point to the process of adding.
So if every cause has a cause before it, there is no beginning point. The problem is that if the line (of balls, of dominoes, of traincars, or whatever) has no beginning point, then it was always in motion.
But in that case, why is the traincar going thirty miles an hour and not sixty? Why thirty miles an hour and not zero? Why is the line of cars moving at all?
More to the point, each car is pulling the weight of all the cars behind it, and being pulled by the momentum of all the cars ahead, but if there is no engine and no caboose, those numbers of cars are infinite. But it would take an infinite amount of energy to set an infinite number of traincars into motion.
There is always a tiny amount of friction when a billiard ball rolls across the cloth, so each ball striking another has to have slightly more energy than the ball it strikes. Likewise with dominoes falling. A tiny amount of energy is lost to air resistance.
This means that the ball one hundred balls before the current ball we see moving was moving faster and striking harder; and one thousand before now was faster and harder still, and a million, and a billion, and a trillion, and so on.
But nowhere in real life do we see billiard balls moving across parsec-wide billiard tables at a quadrillion times the speed of light, striking the next billiard ball with sufficient kinetic energy to ignite a supernova.
So it simply cannot be that every traincar is pulled by a traincar and none are pulled by an engine. It cannot be that every billiard ball is struck by another billiard ball, and never is the cue ball hit by the cue stick. It cannot be that all dominoes are toppled over by other dominoes, and that there is no first domino set in motion by a fingertip.
By the same logic, the Big Bang that started the universe cannot itself have been started by an earlier and larger and bigger bang, and that one in turn by an earlier and that by an earlier yet, for the same reason you cannot have a billiard game without a cue ball, or a train without an engine.
The stars and planets, and everything in nature, had to be set in motion by something or someone outside of nature.
All the motion in the universe is what we call “contingent” which is a fancy word that means it depends on an earlier cause. The caboose moves thirty miles an hour because the engine is moving thirty miles an hour.
The first cause of anything inside creation leads to another line of causes: the pool cue moved because the pool player moved it. The train engine moves because the engineer fired up the engine. The line of dominoes fell because a little girl with too much time on her hands set a line of dominoes all across the nursery floor for hours and hours and tipped over the first one just to see them all fall.
But in the case of the universe, all the chains of cause and effect reach back to the moment of creation. There is finally a cause which itself cannot have a prior cause, because, frankly, there is no prior. Logic forces the conclusion that the first cause causes motion but does not move and is not moved.
All other things are contingent, that is, depend on another cause, but the first cause must be non-contingent, that is, necessary.
Now, at this point, it is natural to object that if nothing comes from nothing, and if nothing happens for no reason, then any proposed first cause must have a prior cause. This would be true if the first cause were itself an effect contingent on a prior cause.
But if the first cause is necessary and not contingent, it does not “come from nothing” because it does not come into being. It has no beginning. Likewise, it does not “happen for no reason” because it does not “happen” at all.
In other words, the first cause is the way it is because it has to be the way it has to be.
It cannot be made to do anything it does, which means, the first cause has to be something that makes decisions voluntarily.
In other words, the first cause uses its willpower, makes decrees, speaks words.
Obviously, nothing made of compounds of matter and therefore subject to time, decay, and entropy can have this property. The first cause is therefore something akin to the laws of mathematics or the laws of morality, logic, truth, and beauty. It is simple and pure. It is eternal and spiritual.
It has to be a person, or something more like a person than anything we can picture. The universe was made because the maker wanted it made.
If the first cause is necessary and not contingent, it, or, rather, he, can suffer neither want nor lack. The first cause causes actions but does not act, if by act we mean move from a potential to an actual. The decrees issued by this being cannot therefore be a reaction to a felt want, a need, a lack. he lacks for nothing.
Therefore the actions set in motion by him can only be motivated by a superabundance of love, or something more like love than anything we can picture, because only love calls for more love even when it it fully satisfied. Only joy enjoys making more joy, even when joy is full.
The first cause has no potentiality; he is all actuality. He is “is-ness”, the thing that makes being “being” and that makes existence exist. He might even call himself “I AM WHO AM” when describing this property.
Our eyes testify that the universe is well made, a work of art, indeed sublime: so the creator must be a creature of sufficient wisdom, benevolence, and power to create all things and put them in order: and this all men know to be God.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
