From Something to God

One can work their way into a cosmological argument fairly easily, just by running through a series of rudimentary thought experiments.

One can work their way into a cosmological argument fairly easily, just by running through a series of rudimentary thought experiments. Take the idea that something exists¹—this seems undeniable. I won’t argue for it.

Can the fact that something exists be explained? If by explanation we mean an “outside” explanation, then obviously not: outside of something is nothing. Put differently, to account for the fact that something exists, we would have to appeal to nothing—and nothing can’t cause anything! So, the fact that something exists cannot be hetero-explained (i.e., explained by something else).

Now, consider the idea that God exists. If God exists, can His existence be explained by something else? Again, clearly not. If God denotes anything, it’s a being that is ontologically fundamental, inherently uncausable, and unpreventable—Supreme. So, if God exists, He can’t be explained by something outside Himself, since that would be a contradiction in terms.

Next, consider this: everything has an (outside) explanation. But we’ve just shown that can’t be true—at least not when it comes to the fact that something exists. Nor can it be true if God exists.

So, let’s try again: all contingent things (i.e. things that are possibly non-existent) have an outside explanation. This is more promising—in fact, I think it is definitely true— but it can only be true if either the fact that something exists isn’t contingent, or the fact that God exists isn’t contingent—or both.

Think about it this way: obviously, most things we encounter are contingent. However, if God exists, He can’t be explained by something outside Himself. So, if all contingent things have an external explanation, then God cannot be contingent; He must be necessary. But we’ve also said it’s necessary that something exists (otherwise, our principle about explaining contingent things breaks down, and I don’t think it does). And yet, we want to know why. It’s not enough to just say it’s necessary for some contingent things to exist. That goes against the very nature of contingency, it seems to me. But even if that were the case, we’d still want to know why. Mere appeals to necessity aren’t always satisfying, because necessity by itself doesn’t always stop the need for an explanation. Often, necessity worsens rather than reduces the mystery. For example, if you asked why a particular turtle existed and I said it was necessary for that turtle to exist, you wouldn’t feel like I’ve really given you a satisfactory answer—you’d likely think I just made the mystery worse!

God, however, provides a more principled and satisfying answer—provided we conceive of God not as a cartoonish bearded man in the sky, but as a certain kind of theoretical entity: Something exists because there is a fundamental layer of reality—one that is inherently uncausable, unpreventable, and necessarily existent. Moreover, we can infer that whatever this being is, it must lack certain contingency-implying attributes, like those we find in contingent things such as turtles (e.g., arbitrary limits, mutability, metaphysical composition, etc.). This is super reasonable, I think: IF we’re forced to posit something necessary, we should expect it to be fundamentally unlike contingent things. It makes sense to strip away ALL the characteristics that limit the intelligibility of contingent beings—the same characteristics that disqualify them from being self-sufficient or self-accounting—otherwise, we’re left with brute facts, which I find unacceptable (because catastrophic).

But this is only the beginning. Important questions remain: Does God entirely lack an explanation? Is there nothing that accounts for God’s necessarily foundational existence?

Here’s where I suggest that not every explanation must be external. In other words, not all explanations need to be outside explanations, or hetero-explanations; some things can be self-explanatory. For example, it is self-explanatory why there are no married bachelors, because the very idea of a married bachelor is inherently absurd—it’s a contradiction in terms. Thus, there is no need for a hetero-explanation for the absence of married bachelors.

Now, while God is unconditioned—dependent on nothing outside Himself—that isn’t itself the attribute of divinity; rather, it flows from it. So just appealing to God’s unconditionality isn’t totally satisfying. We still want to know what accounts for that. What accounts for God? Of course, I think we should say God is somehow self-accounting or self-explained.²

There are two ways to defend this. First, there’s the principled “mysterian” approach, possibly following Aquinas’s distinction between propositions per se nota (self-evident in themselves) and nota quoad nos (self-evident only to those who fully understand them). We can understand that God is self-accounting—He’s the only kind of being that could be self-accounting because, through apophatic theology, He lacks all contingency-implying attributes. In other words, there must be a self-accounting reality, and only a specific kind of entity—one that lacks all contingency-implying features—could fill that role. By stripping away those features, we end up with something very much like God: immaterial, immutable, ontologically simple, non-multipliable, and causally responsible for everything else in reality (I explain this process in more detail in my book).

This is why God is a far better candidate for being a necessary reality than, say, a turtle—or even a law of nature (which is particularly silly, as natural laws are parasitic upon concrete things; after all, natural laws are just abstractions that describe the behavior of physical entities). Turtles, for instance, have contingency-implying attributes and are bounded in their intelligibility. So, while we may not fully grasp what it is about God’s attributes—or His essence itself, given God's simplicity—that grants Him this unconditionality, we can recognize enough about what does not apply to God (but does to everything else) to leave Him as a highly plausible candidate for being the ultimate explanation stopper. If that’s as far as we can go, I’d be mostly satisfied.

But I think we can go further. By thinking along (modified) Anselmian lines—not to prove that God exists, but to explore what must be true if God exists—we can show that God’s absolute, unbounded perfection as an ontologically simple being (whose essence is identical to His existence) provides for both His unconditioned nature and His self-accounting status. That said, I want to tread carefully here because I don’t think mere appeals to perfection are enough: We need a prior metaphysical framework to do the heavy lifting (Watch out: Pat’s about to bring in some “controversial metaphysics” again; someone call the philosophy police!)

As you might have guessed, this is where I’m inclined to look toward perennial philosophy—particularly Aquinas—and his rich, or “thick,” conception of existence. Why? Simply because, within Aquinas’s ontology, we can derive a robust understanding of unbounded or absolute perfection (versus merely relative perfection). This perfection is grounded in the fact that God’s essence is identical to His existence. I believe this insight—perhaps this insight alone, when grasped within Aquinas’s metaphysical framework—helps us understand, in a principled way, not only why God is self-accounting but also why He is the only kind of being that could be self-accounting.

Of course, this is just a sketch, with many details and nuances of the God debate omitted (for more on that, see my book!). Nevertheless, it’s a sketch that I believe points in the right direction and should resonate with those who share my intuition—the conviction that reality is ultimately, fully intelligible; that there really is an adequate answer to every coherent question that can be asked (even if we aren’t currently in a position to grasp them).

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1. As in the fact that anything at all exists rather than nothing; though one could motivate the same result by appealing to the “totality of reality” or “the complete collection of everything real”, as neither of these could have an outside explanation either.

2. Obviously, this implies that not all explanations are causal, since I take it that something being self-caused is absurd.