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Brittney D. Worthen
12March2012
Philosophy 1000
Response Essay
Critique of Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument
Cosmological arguments take empirical observations about things that change or exist
and then infer that something must exist to cause those changes or things to exist. I will be
arguing against Aquinas’ premise that simply states that all things that change or exist must have
a first cause. I would argue that not all things that exist or change have to have a first cause to
exist or change.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, through empirical observation, recognized that change exists. He
made the statement that, “it is impossible for a thing that undergoes a change to cause that
change, or for something to change itself.” He stated that this series of changes cannot go back to
infinity and that there would have to be a first cause of change to create any following change.
He stated that, “whatever undergoes change must be changed by another thing.” He concluded
that a first cause of change which is not itself changed by anything would be called God.
(Aquinas, 2010) Of the five ways Aquinas uses to prove that God exists, this argument is his
second. In short, the argument is as follows:
P1. Change exists.
P2. All change must have a cause that is not itself.
P3. The series of changes/causes can’t go back to infinity.
P4. If there is no first cause, there cannot be effects/changes.
P5. But, from P1, we have observed that there are effects/changes.
C. So there must be a first cause of change, which is not itself changed by anything, e.g. “God.”
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I will use the assumed premise that if there is not first cause, there cannot be
effects/changes, to prove that Aquinas’ conclusion: God exists, to be unsound. When I first
decided to critique Aquinas’ argument it was because of the problem of infinite regress and the
idea that if everything that exists or changes has to have a first cause. If that were true, then why
wouldn’t God have to have a first cause? To be honest I didn’t feel that my argument would be
challenging enough, and it has probably been argued many times over. I wanted to learn
something about the universe I live in and truly argue against the existence of God. Being
someone that relies so much on my senses and not so much on my reason I felt that there has to
be something out there that someone has seen, hear, felt, etc., something that has come into
existence without a first cause, or without “God.” I realized then, that there would have to be
something in existence, that changes, that doesn’t have a first cause that changed it. If I could
find just one thing in this universe that exists just because it does, I could prove Aquinas’
argument unsound.
There are many people or philosophers just like Aquinas who have spent their lives
inferring, rationalizing and believing in the existence of god. There have also been an equal
amount of people, mostly physicists, who have spent their lives studying, testing, and examining
the reasons God doesn’t exist. Through the use of science and technology, physicists have found
that there are indeed things that exist and change without having a first cause for their existence.
These things are called quantum vacuum fluctuations or virtual particles. Physicists Hendrick
Casmir found one of several phenomena that provide convincing evidence for the reality of the
quantum vacuum – the equivalent in quantum mechanics of what, in classical physics, would be
described as empty space. (Darling) “These are particle-antiparticle pairs that come into
existence in otherwise empty space. These particles are so common that some physicists argue
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that if we think of empty space as nothing, then there is no such thing as nothing, because space
never is empty-it is always filled with virtual particles.” (Vuletic, 2011)
Of course these virtual particles are just tiny things that pop in and out of existence
without any cause or reason behind them. They seem to be almost insignificant when compared
to the existence of an entire universe and I understand that the idea of a quantum vacuum
fluctuation may be hard to comprehend, but the point is, they exist. And even more importantly,
nothing causes them to come into existence. Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist
at Arizona State University wrote in his book The Last Three Minutes, “Even though we can’t
see them, we know that these virtual particles are “really there” in empty space because they
leave a detectable trace of their activities. One effect of virtual photons, for example is to
produce a tiny shift in the energy levels of atoms. They also cause an equally tiny change in the
magnetic moment of electrons. These minute but significant alterations have been very
accurately measured using spectroscopic techniques.” (Davies, 1994)
I can see that a common response to this argument would be that these virtual particles
are still “caused.” To this response I could argue that virtual particles may have been caused, but
why do we assume that cause to be “God?” Couldn’t that cause just as easily be energy? If we
were then to call the cause of these particles energy, then could we not infer that the “first cause”
for everything in existence is energy, not “God?” Scientists have proven the existence of energy,
but I still have yet to see any proof of the existence of “God.”
I realize that the idea that the “first cause” could be energy rather than “God,” is quite a
bit off topic from where I started. But I feel that is a valid point to make. Why do those who
believe in the existence of a “God” infer that it is a being? I’m sure there are many more
arguments to both support and disprove the existence of “God”, but at this point in my education
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on the subject I can conclude that Aquinas’ premise that “if there is no first cause, there cannot
be any effects/changes with the scientific proof that there are particles in the universe that exist
and change without a cause.
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Bibliography
Aquinas, S. T. (2010). The Existence of God. In M. B. John Perry, Introduction to Philosophy 5th edition
(pp. 44-45). New York: Oxford University Press.
Darling, D. (n.d.). Casimir Effect. Retrieved from The Encyclopedia of Science:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/Casimir.html
Davies, P. (1994). The Last Three Minutes. New York: Basic Books.
Vuletic, M. I. (2011). Creation ex nihilo-without God. Retrieved from The Secular Web:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html