With cosmological arguments, the issue is what needs a cause. According to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, whatever has a temporal beginning must have a cause of its existence. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0
If the principle you are using is the idea that whatever begins to exist needs a cause, then we don't need to ask who made God, since God by definition never began to exist in the first place.
In Aquinas's argument from contingency, whatever exists contingently needs a cause of its existence. Once again, God doesn't exist contingently, so, once again, God doesn't need a cause of his existence.
The idea that you can refute cosmological arguments by asking who made God, which is a popular idea, is one that ignores what these cosmological arguments actually say.
8 comments:
So, if you posit the eternal existence of a quantum foam from which our space-time continuum sprang, than that quantum foam needs no cause?
Victor, did you mean to type "who made God" rather then "why made God"?
One Brow,
But then you're still left with the even more fundamental question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
And since believers are (if they are honest) similarly stymied by the same question, the issue becomes "Which is the more plausible eternally existent, uncaused entity, God or the quantum foam?"
Starhopper,
I agree, even if we answer that question differently. Frankly, I'm not all that sure on "whatever has a temporal beginning must have a cause of its existence".
OB: In your experience, have you run across anything that began to exist but didn't have a cause of its existence?
Victor Reppert,
In the collective human experience, has anyone ever run across nothingness?
No, but why would this undermine the causal principle?
We ascertained our causal principles based on our understanding of our surroundings, and created models like "everything that begins to exist has a cause" to describe these surroundings. In situations where we have no experience and no observations, we have no reason to assume the same models apply.
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