First Cause

We shall now move on the the Cosmological argument, more popularly known as the argument from First Cause. Other words associated with it is "Prime Mover", efficacy, and contingency. What all these means, however, is quite un-necessary for purpose of discussion.

The form by which this argument is popularly known is this: Everything has a Cause. For instance, if you ask what causes the light, it will be the sun, which is caused by the Hydrogen fusing to Helium, which came together by gravity... And so on. In other words, there is a direct reason for everything. The next step of the argument is that, there must be a beginning at this whole chain of cause - otherwise you will get an infinite regression. And the last step of this argument is that the First cause is God.

Now, there are flaws in this argument. I would however, like to say that I do not believe the flaw to lie in the second step (in other words, the step which rejects infinite regressions). It does not really make sense to me for there to have infinite time behind us. Afterall, how do we reach today if the past was an infinite length of time? Furthermore, science had always upheld the second law of thermodynamics, which is that Entropy (chaos) will always increase. The effect of this is that it gives the Universe a limited lifespan, because one day, the entire Universe will have maximum Chaos, and all will be even and cold... But if that is the future of the Universe, it will mean that there was a time in which the universe was singularly orderly (or at any rate, much more orderly than now). It cannot be infinitely orderly, because that is quite nonsensical (I mean, order is something that relates to things, not to infinities). In other words, there must had been a beginning. More modern discoveries also support this in the form of the Big Bang Theory, which also suggests that there was a beginning for the Universe, and for Time itself.

The more correct objection to this argument lies in the premise that everything has a cause behind it. But if that is the premise, surely that applies to God as well. Which leads to the question, who created God? And if that is the premise, it is a valid question. The other objection brought out is that, why is there a need to put God into the equation? Why can't the entire Universe itself be the First Cause, the Big Bang be the start of everything?

Which is why, the argument needs a little bit of modification. The premise used should had better been that everything is either Caused or Not Caused. This is valid because it is just a simple statement that means something like, everything must either be a square or not a square. It does not say much, but it is true. The second step would be that the entire Universe is a Caused object. This is derived from the idea that the entire universe is changing all the time. And change is a property of Caused objects (I mean, something that is not Caused won't be changing right?)

The next step is that caused objects can't cause itself (I agree with this for reasons stated above). And thus, the conclusion is that there must be an object that is Not Caused, and the popular name given to this is God.

Hmmm.. I do believe this to be a fairly workable argument. If there be any detraction it would perhaps be that the Universe is itself a Caused object. That might be open to arguments. The usual backing for this is the idea that "something" cannot come from "nothing", and the Universe, if it started from the big bang, could not had been from "nothing".

But there are limits to this argument. It does not tell us anything at all about the properties of this "First Cause", except that it is Un-caused, eternal, and unchanging. Not bad for a start, but seriously, not exactly a good place to end if you are looking for ultimate truth.

Of course, this argument cannot tell us conclusively that "God" does not exist. At the most, if this entire argument is found to be false, it just means that it cannot tell us anything about God.