The Uncaused Cause

In this post, we continue the series about the arguments for the existence of God. In the post ‘Who is God’ we searched in the Bible for some essential qualities of God.

Let’s assume you come home, and find the house flooded. When you came out everything was normal, now the water has flooded the whole floor. You go to the bathroom and realize you left the faucet running and the sink plugged. Flooding your house is an effect. The open faucet is the cause.

Let’s take another example: you enter the house in the evening and use the switch: the light bulb turns on. The use of the button is the cause, the turning on of the light is the effect.

We can consider more complicated situations where an effect has multiple causes, or a cause produces multiple effects. But the concept is that every effect must have at least one cause.

The effect represents the ‘what’; while the cause represents the ‘why’. Each cause can be further investigated. Why does the light bulb turn on and off if we use the switch? Because the electrical circuit closes and the current passes through the light bulb, causing it to turn on.

Children often play this game: they ask why something, and, after the parent answers, they ask ‘why’ again.

Why does the light bulb turn on with electricity? Because electrons pass through the filament, producing electromagnetic waves. If we continue the ‘why game’, at some point we have to stop because the answer becomes more and more complex, or we don’t know.

Reasonably it is impossible for every cause to have another cause, so as to go back to infinity. Infinity is a mathematical concept, which we cannot apply to reality. For example, let’s think about dividing a cake into two slices. We take one half and divide it in two again. If we continue this process, we get a slice so small that it can’t even be considered a slice. We practically can’t even cut it as we would like, we only dirty the knife. But let’s take a hypothetical laser knife and be able to cut a slice so small that it contains only one atom. Should we take this atom and put it in a particle accelerator? There comes a point where physical reality limits us, with respect to the concept of infinity.

Everything has a cause. If we consider anything, it has a cause. The cause of this thing is in turn an effect of another cause. We therefore have two possibilities: 1 we can go on in an infinite cycle of cause and effect, or, 2 there is a cause that caused everything, but it has no cause.

In case 1, we have seen that the concept of infinity does not apply to physical reality. Everything has a physical limit. For this reason, we can reasonably exclude this case.

In case 2, we have an uncaused cause. That is something that is the cause of itself. We can rule out that physical reality has always been as it is. This is proved by the laws of thermodynamics.

I take a container with boiling water at about 100 degrees, I take another container with the same amount of water in the form of ice at 0 degrees. I put them together in a third container. I wait for the ice to melt, and measure the water temperature. It’s about 50 degrees. The temperature in the container room is 20 degrees. I wait a few hours. I measure the temperature of the water. It’s about 20 degrees. The water takes room temperature. I build a house, I do it in a workmanlike manner and I forget about it. My posterity finds that house after 500 years. The house is a pile of rubble. I take 1000 marbles and drop them on the floor. The marbles scatter all over the floor.

These experiences show us the laws of thermodynamics. Over time, the order becomes chaos, chaos is uniformity. If physical reality had always existed, it would be uniform chaos. Life could not exist under these conditions. And furthermore, a cause that has no cause, must be constant, i.e. it cannot change over time. But of course, we see things changing every day. For this reason, physical reality has a beginning, that is, it was caused by an uncaused cause.

So we have to rule out the possibility that the cause of everything is something that belongs to physical reality. So we begin to ask ourselves: what are the characteristics of the cause of everything?

First, we said that this does not belong to physical reality. We are looking for something real, but which belongs to another reality, other than the physical one. Intangible things such as concepts exist in our minds. For example the concept of number. Numbers are not a physical thing, although they can be represented in it. There is therefore another reality in addition to the physical one, which is the world of concepts and ideas. The transcendent reality. The cause of everything, therefore, belongs to the transcendent reality. But the Bible tells us that God is spirit.

We have said that the cause of everything does not change over time and is eternal. As it was yesterday, it is today and so it will be tomorrow. So it was also ‘before’ the creation of physical reality. But the Bible tells us that God is eternal and does not change.

We know the cause of everything is spiritual or transcendent, and we know that this kind of reality is found in the human mind. We also know that what makes us different from animals as human beings is the capacity for abstract ideas. The ability to think conceptually makes us persons. To be transcendent, the cause must be personal. But the Bible tells us that God is three distinct persons and one God at the same time.

If we think about the amount of energy contained in the entire universe, we can accept the suggestion that the uncaused cause is omnipotent. Bible says that God is almighty.

Therefore, we can conclude, that the best explanation for creation is the Lord, as the Bible states.