Tuesday, November 6, 2018
NO BRUTE FACTS -- The Principle of Sufficient Reason
You are hiking in a remote wilderness, miles from the nearest building or even cell phone tower. You come upon a clearing and see a crystal sphere hovering over you and emitting colorful light pulses in some seeming order: red, blue, green and the pattern repeats. Should there be an explanation for this odd phenomenon or is it acceptable to shrug our shoulders and mutter "Stuff happens"? Can we extrapolate from this case to a general principle of the universe? If so, can we prove that God (or a reasonable facsimile) exists?
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David Hume birthed the thought of the Cosmological Argument. With this, it influences people to have the first thought of every supernatural occurrence be, “Stuff happens?” But the greater philosophical meaning behind this is The Principal of Sufficient Reason, which states that everything has a cause or reason for its existence. Being the first premise in an argument, Hume then was able to build the rest of the Cosmological argument and lead towards proving that God exists. Because the argument is starting with PSR, it can continue to argue that there is an infinite chain of sorts that is one cause by another and another and so on. Or, there can be an ultimate being or thing that has created something. This is controversial in itself because it is providing two examples that makes the PSR make sense. Premise 3 then states that the infinite chain cannot exist because to start the infinite chain there must be some being or thing that created or started it. And finally, something can come from nothing, so God exists. Through these philosophical and somewhat logical premises, Hume came to the conclusion that it is, in fact, perfectly normal to look at a crazy phenomenon, of some supernatural being, and saying, “Stuff happens?” This odd comfort with something that is so strange is what the existence of God depends on. In my opinion the modern day sample of a reaction would be “Aliens!” or simply just scream and run away. But, Hume perfectly crafted an argument based off of The Principal of Sufficient Reason to make sense of gods existence, with a lil’ twist in the middle.
ReplyDeleteThe Principle of Sufficient Reason is a strong enough argument to prove there was some necessary external cause for the universe’s existence, but not that this thing is God. When anything happens there is a cause for its end result. If I were hiking in the wilderness and a flying saucer suddenly appeared, I would think that this flying saucer had an origin that I would be intrigued to investigate, and not that it appeared out of nowhere. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, so there must be a logical explanation that explains where the flying saucer came from. This means that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true. From there it is entirely logical to ask where the matter within the flying saucer came from, and this is something that science cannot currently explain. The scientific explanation of the Universe’s existence is the big bang, but there are no highly probable scientific theories as to why there is anything instead of nothing in the first place. One explanation is that there are an infinite regression of causes, but that explanation cannot possibly be true given that our universe has a point of origin that is finite in time. An infinite regression of causes cannot happen in 13.8 billion years. One possible explanation is that there was a thing which actualizes its own existence while simultaneously actualizing the existence of other things. This would seem to violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but the idea behind this thing is that it is the cause its own existence—it is its own origin. From this argument we have that there is one origin, since one could ask how there could possibly be multiple origins to the universe which cause their own existence. This thing, however, does not have to be God. The only argument that makes this thing close to God is that this being would have to be all-powerful in order to cause its own existence. Despite this, there is no reason why this being would have to be all knowing, all good, or a being. Instead of a being, this cause for the universe’s existence could just be some essence or law that governs the laws of nature. The cosmological is not sufficient enough to prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian God.
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