I've been thinking more and more about the Cosmological Argument lately and I noticed there was a recent thread on it in this forum. That inspired me to write up a refutation of the argument, and I'm happy to present it here. This is a pretty long post, but I think it's no more than such an important subject deserves. I would like to hear your opinions--for and against--at the end.

The Cosmological Argument is one of the most widely known arguments for the creation of the Universe and, by clever extensions, for the existence of God. It has a prominent reputation in the history of monotheistic theology. It comes in many different versions and one could rightly question if there’s sense in calling it 'the' Cosmological Argument. For the sake of clarity we’ll insist on the traditional name, but we’re also going to expose some of its underlying forms and variations. Most modern philosophers view the Cosmological Argument with extreme skepticism; indeed, we live in the first period in the history of recorded philosophy where there is no widely accepted argument for the existence of supernatural entities, such as ghosts or God. That means nothing for the purposes of rigorous philosophy, of course, so we’re going to destroy the Cosmological Argument through the old-fashioned way: with sound reasoning.

Modern philosophers that have sharply criticized the Cosmological Argument include the likes of Hume and Russell, but really just about anyone with a skeptical worldview has taken a whack at it. My own refutation uses a synthesis of some of these previous ideas into something that I hope resembles a novel argument. I consider most previous refutations of the Cosmological Argument to be relatively weak, not because they’re necessarily wrong, but just because they’re missing a far more lethal attack that could be leveled against the foundations of the argument. And that attack is the following: the Cosmological Argument runs into a dilemma whenever it tries to come up with an ontologically sensible definition for its causal component (ie. ‘begins to exist’) for both premises. I’m calling this dilemma the Causal Dilemma, and we shall claim that its scope extends far beyond just the Cosmological Argument. In fact, the inherent ontological contradictions of the Cosmological Argument are so powerful that they easily outweigh the logical issues. And these contradictions are even apparent in the interpretations of the argument by its proponents, who bizarrely fail to acknowledge them. I’ve never been much impressed with philosophers who argued that the Cosmological Argument commits logical fallacies, such as equivocation or composition, largely because these supposed fallacies are very easy to remove. However, once removed, they expose far deeper scars. So instead of arguing that the Cosmological Argument is logically fallacious, I’m going to argue that it’s ontologically absurd. And then I’m going to argue something far beyond that: that this ontological absurdity is impossible to remove. The Cosmological Argument is condemned to be eternally absurd, regardless of how you try and patch it up. It will forever remain stuck with the Causal Dilemma. And just to drive home the point, I myself am going to try and rescue the Cosmological Argument.
Ok, let’s get to it. What is the Cosmological Argument? The most popular version among monotheistic philosophers nowadays seems to be the following syllogism (Version 1):

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The Universe began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

The conclusion follows logically from the premises, or at least so it seems. Theists typically identify the cause in the conclusion to be some sort of ‘transcendent’ cause that cannot be explained through naturalistic properties. Monotheists believe that cause is a personal God, akin to something like what’s described in the Bible. We’ll say more on this point later. For now I want to review some other versions of the argument, find out what’s essential to all of them, and settle on a comprehensive form. Previous versions of the Cosmological Argument have also featured the following variation (Version 2):

Premise 1: Everything that exists has a cause.
Premise 2: The Universe exists.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Universe has a cause.

Can you spot what’s ridiculous about this argument? It invites the following humorous counter-argument (Corollary 1):

Premise 1: Everything that exists has a cause.
Premise 2: God exists.
Conclusion: Therefore, God has a cause.

Ouch! Not what we intended. I mention this corollary of Version 2 to highlight an important point about the very first version: Version 1 has been artificially constructed that way (ie. by talking about beginning to exist instead of existing) to avoid having to come up with an explanation for the existence of God. Notice that in Version 1 the issue of God’s existence is a moot point; theists can argue that since God never began to exist, then God is not actually covered by the argument (ie. God’s existence requires no cause). This is the assumption of strict dichotomy; God is somehow fundamentally different from whatever it’s creating. The rules that apply to the latter don’t apply to the former.

An important feature of the first two versions is that they use the word ‘universe.’ Believe it or not, this seemingly innocuous term actually carries a lot of baggage, and we’re going to deconstruct it a bit. The major reason why theologians might want to use the word ‘universe’ is to identify the thing being caused in the conclusion with the observable universe open to scientific investigation. Physicists have shown by now that everything in the observable universe once existed in a very hot, dense, and tiny state. An inflationary event led to the rapid expansion of space and, eventually, to the stars and galaxies we see today. The Universe is believed to be almost 14 billion years old. Why am I going through the science lesson? I want to point out two things, one which is obvious and one which is critical. First the obvious: using the word ‘universe’ seems to lend empirical credence to the Cosmological Argument because scientists are now sure that our own universe came into existence at some point in time a long way back. Thus theologians can claim that their argument is both logically valid and empirically plausible. But they’re overlooking that critical thing: our observable universe might not be the only thing that exists in reality. What if there are multiple universes? What if there are other complicated dimensions? These are possibilities which need to be considered. If they’re true, then Version 1 is a harmless butterfly. In a cosmic ocean swimming with different universes, who cares if ours came into existence? So did a bazillion others. In that case, the theologian would presumably extend the scope of reality to include those other universes and dimensions, thus returning the problem to the search for the one, true, and fundamental cause behind all of reality. So the necessary implication behind the Cosmological Argument (any version of it) is that it’s trying to show not just that our universe began to exist, but that reality itself—however simple or complicated, whether it has one universe or five million—began to exist. If it had any other intent, then the Cosmological Argument would be incomplete: why would it attempt to show that just one part of reality came into being while leaving out the other parts? The beautiful thing about this reformulation of the argument is that it holds under all possibilities, from ours being the only universe that exists to the existence of other universes as well. It’s meant to cover all cases; that’s the point. Thus the most impartial, generalized form of the Cosmological Argument is the following (Version 3):

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: Reality began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, Reality had a cause.

Now we seem to face the daunting task of defining the word ‘reality.’ The wonderful thing is that, for the purposes of this argument, whatever definition of Reality we choose will not impact the ultimate conclusion. Consider some of the following definitions. Reality is the total sum of all existence excluding God. Or how about this: Reality is the negation of nothing, which means that reality is the opposite of the absence of anything (the latter being the definition of nothing). Another way of putting it: Reality is, at the very least, the existence of something. It doesn’t even matter if any of these definitions equivocate from one another; pick just one and carry it through to the rest of the argument. I will pick the last one, defining reality as the existence of, at the very least, something. To show absolute and consistent favoritism towards the Cosmological Argument (remember I said I would try to rescue it!), we will insist on a strict dichotomy between Reality and the monotheistic God. So when we say that Reality is the existence of at least something, that something cannot be God under our generous formulation of the problem. If God were included as part of the something of Reality, the Cosmological Argument would rapidly evaporate since Premise 2 would just read, ‘God began to exist.’ Thus Reality is the existence of at least something which is not God. The same dichotomy would be required for Version 1 (ie. the ‘Universe’ cannot include God).

At this point, we have a relatively clean and general version of the argument. What we need to do now is come up with the same, consistent definition for ‘begins to exist,’ otherwise the argument would suffer from an equivocation fallacy (using the same word or phrase in an argument to mean different things). And here’s where it all goes wrong for the Cosmological Argument. It makes the following fundamental and ontological mistake: it assumes that a consistent understanding of causality exists between the two premises, a supposition which is absolutely impossible in all cases and variations. For the remainder of the argument, we will stick to Aristotelian causality as our guide for causal emergence (ie. ‘beginning to exist’). We will also assume that the four Aristotelian causes are reducible to just two: the Efficient Cause and the Material Cause. There are good motivations for this simplification; for example, the Final Cause is just a gaudy, decorated version of the Material Cause. Even if you insist on using all four causes, it doesn’t change the ultimate conclusion. I should note something important: other conceptions of causality exist, but the dilemma faced by the Cosmological Argument is independent of whichever conception you adopt. We’ll consider some others beyond Aristotle in just a bit.

The two premises cannot be understood separately from one another, but I think Premise 2 is the most interesting starting point for the following simple reason: it forces you to adopt an exclusively efficient (transcendent) cause as the reason behind the emergence of Reality. If you tried to include a material cause as well, then you would be admitting that material things can pre-exist existence (ie. pre-existing material to Reality). That’s just non-sense, so you have to conclude that Reality only had an efficient cause. In other words, something willed or desired Reality into emerging. Some kind of agent or agency created Reality, under this supposition. Now try to apply the same understanding of causality to ‘begins to exist’ for Premise 1. You have to insist on this, otherwise the argument automatically equivocates. Premise 1 would now seem to suggest that everything that begins to exist only has an efficient cause. That means everything—everything you know in your life, from your family and friends to your computers and cell phones—came into existence as the result of an exclusively efficient cause. That means your very existence has no material explanation; it’s solely the result of will and agency. It’s very little different from saying that somebody waved a magic wand and there you were! Somebody waved a magic wand and that’s how your car came about, or your shoes, or your house, or whatever. If you’re really willing to believe all of that, I have a perpetual motion machine I’d like to sell you.

If we’d started at Premise 1, we would have been forced to conclude that causation includes both efficient and material causes. Why? That’s what we see in our daily lives. That’s the kind of causality we’re familiar with. We’re used to both material things and agents, where appropriate, coming together to cause the emergence and existence of other things. As philosophers typically put it, Michelangelo was the efficient cause for David and the marble he used was the material cause. David didn’t come out of thin air; it had to be sculpted out of something pre-existing (ie. the marble) and it required Michelangelo’s artistic talents. This is the version of causality all of us recognize in this universe, in this solar system, on our Earth. Now do the same thing as in the previous paragraph: apply this understanding of causality to Premise 2. It would seem to suggest that Reality had an efficient and a material cause. First, this violates the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Under this doctrine, God created Reality out of nothing. In other words, God was the only thing that preceded Reality (or the Universe). But more importantly, it again suggests that something pre-existing preceded the existence of at least something (Reality). It’s pure hogwash. There’s a fundamental conflict between the causal emergence we humans recognize and any kind of causal emergence that could explain the existence of all of Reality. That’s the essence of the Causal Dilemma.

So if you want to keep the Cosmological Argument logically valid, you have two basic options, both of which lead to ontological absurdities (hence the dilemma). One option is to provide an acceptable definition for causal emergence for Premise 1. Then you will recognize that whatever definition you came up with will lead to ridiculous consequences for Premise 2. The other option is to provide an acceptable definition for causal emergence for Premise 2. And again, you will recognize that whatever definition you pick will imply absurd consequences for Premise 1. Thus you’re stuck in a dilemma: you only have two options, and both of them don’t work. The dilemma is independent of how you structure the first two premises. Rather it rests on the following critical assumption: that Reality came into existence in the first place. If you’re willing to acknowledge that some kind of existence has always been the default state of Reality, then the whole argument goes away. Reality being eternal also neatly resolves the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ This question assumes that something was preceded by nothing (ie. the absence of anything). But if existence has always been the default state of Reality, then Reality is, in some sense, eternal. Thus the question is meaningless non-sense, akin to asking ‘What point on Earth is north of the North Pole?’ or ‘Which married bachelors like blue ties?’ If there’s always been at least something, then it could not have been preceded by the absence of anything. For monotheistic theologians, however, the idea that Reality is eternal is absolute anathema. It would undercut the case for the existence of God. Note that I myself am not taking a position on whether Reality is eternal or not; for the purposes of this argument, I’m agnostic on that question. The only thing I’m saying is that if you assume Reality came into existence, you will run into the Causal Dilemma—having to decide between a model of causality that works for nature as we know it and a model of causality that works only for the emergence of all Reality. And this is a universal problem for all intellectual fields, not just for theology. Even physicists would need to wrestle with the Causal Dilemma if they assumed that Reality came into existence. They would essentially need two different sets of physics: one to explain everything we see in this universe (ie. ‘our reality’) and another to explain how Reality itself even came into being. And these two sets can never be made compatible. Notice a very powerful corollary: if you make the simple assumption that Reality is eternal, you only need one set of physics to describe it. Thus unification theories are possible in a ‘reality’ where you don’t force Reality to come into existence! Also notice that I’m choosing my words very carefully. I’m well-aware that our own universe is not eternal. I’m aware that the Universe proper came into existence some 14 billion years ago. The Causal Dilemma still holds even for this latter case. If Reality is equivalent to just the Universe, then everything we’ve said reduces appropriately. Physicists would then need to come up with a theory explaining just the creation of this universe, which will still not be reconcilable with the physics that describes the universe itself. It’s perhaps no wonder that most recent attempts in theoretical physics try to explain something far broader than just the emergence of this universe. It’s a way of ensuring consistent results.

Are we doomed into the Causal Dilemma only if we adopt Aristotelian causality? Could the deployment of another causal model save the Cosmological Argument? We’ve already answered these questions with emphatic negatives, but let’s provide another example to highlight how the Causal Dilemma is inescapable. William Lane Craig, a Christian apologetic, once gave a definition for ‘begins to exist’ that was non-Aristotelian: An object x begins to exist if it comes into existence at some time t and at no later time t1. Can you spot how this runs into the dilemma? Leaving aside the wordplay between ‘begins to exist’ and ‘comes into existence’ (which are essentially the same thing), we see that this is a great definition for Premise 2. Reality came into existence at some particular point and then obviously did not come into existence again. If Reality came into existence, it only did so once by definition; that’s why this definition works. It was designed specifically with the emergence of Reality, or of the Universe, in mind. How about Premise 1? Here the radicalism of the definition is more apparent, since it implies that things can come into existence only once and then never again. Suppose you’ve built a Lego set. And then you disassemble it. Now reassemble it again; did the Lego set come into existence the second time you made it? According to Craig’s definition, no. Your precious Lego sets, which you’ve reassembled many times over, never came into existence after the first time. All those other times were figments of your imagination. You can see why this causal model is ridiculous for our universe: the same thing can, in fact, come into existence multiple times. There’s also another problem here: Craig’s definition doesn’t really say anything about the nature of the causation itself. It doesn’t address the how in the phrase, ‘begins to exist.’ How does something begin to exist? That’s an important question, for which the only simple reference in the context of this debate is Aristotelian causality. So then we’re right back to the objections explained above, even if you accept Craig’s definition as ontologically sensible.

There’s yet another major problem we haven’t addressed so far. Suppose for the sake of argument that we accept both the logical and ontological validity of the Cosmological Argument. In other words, we agree with the conclusion that the Universe had a cause. How does the conclusion that the Universe had a cause mean that the cause of the Universe is a personal and creator God? Theists typically argue the following: if the Universe had a natural or physical cause, then this cause would require an explanation in terms of other natural causes (ie. some justification). But once you explain that cause, then you have a new cause you still have to explain. And so on and so forth, with the process repeating infinitely. Thus, theists argue, you need a foundational cause which cannot be natural or physical in any sense, but must be somehow ‘transcendent’ and beyond ordinary laws of physics. This method of explanation relies on the philosophical theory of foundationalism, which says that your beliefs can be justified (‘founded on’) simpler beliefs that are canonical or foundational in some sense. That is to say, there are certain canonical beliefs which require no further justification; they are assumed to be true. Foundationalists claim that their theory successfully avoids the problems posed by Agrippa’s Trilemma, which states that the attempt to justify any belief will lead either to circular reasoning, an infinite regression, or to an arbitrary conclusion. So whether or not to believe that the Universe had a transcendent cause hinges on whether you think that foundationalism successfully addresses Agrippa’s Trilemma or merely ignores it altogether. If you think foundationalists merely ignore the trilemma without solving anything, then you could ask the same question about the transcendent cause as you could for any other cause: what is the justification for this transcendent cause to the Universe? Once that’s given, you have to give another justification to justify your original justification. Again, we’re left with an infinite regression or circular reasoning, at best. Theology faces the same epistemic problems as science. So just saying that the universe had some sort of special and transcendent cause doesn’t solve anything either. In fact, precisely because the nature and identity of this cause is purported to be so radically different from the causes we’re familiar with, the invocation of a transcendent cause just screams for more questions and explanations. Can transcendent causes also have transcendent causes? Because they’re not like ordinary causes, can they stretch back infinitely in time? Is it even meaningful to ask these questions, even in a metaphysical sense (obviously there’s no way of testing them scientifically)? To say that the Universe had a transcendent cause is to basically say nothing about what actually caused the creation of the Universe.

But it gets even worse than this for theists. In acknowledging that there’s a transcendent cause for Reality, there’s a de facto admission that whatever process got Reality started is not the same process that keeps it going, by virtue of the fact that our world is teeming with empirically verifiable material causes. Thus to say that the ‘Universe began to exist’ is tantamount to saying that the ‘Universe began to exist through a transcendent cause.’ But surely this conception of causality can’t be applied for Premise 1, for that would be like saying that ‘Everything that begins to exist has a transcendent cause!’ We know the last statement is empirically false, if not totally ridiculous outright. And as an additional point: if you’re going to assume that foundationalism is true, that helps naturalism as well. Because now naturalists can claim that there’s a foundational, natural principle to all of existence which is not dependent on other natural principles. You can call this the First Principle, if you will. If you assume foundationalism, then this principle does not need justification. If you don’t assume foundationalism, you run into Agrippa’s Trilemma in all cases. And again, it’s doubtful as to whether foundationalism even resolves Agrippa’s Trilemma; we could just have to live with the fact that we will never be able to justify any belief with absolute certainty.

Let’s recap what we’ve found. The big idea is this: as long as you insist that Reality came into existence, you have to live with the Causal Dilemma. There’s nothing you can do about it. Any effort that attempts to model causality simultaneously for this universe and for the emergence of Reality will fail. Thus the two premises of the Cosmological Argument can never be ontologically sensible simultaneously, and so the Cosmological Argument should be rejected as unsound.