Below is a very basic philosophical case for the Christian worldview. It tracks the main line of reasoning I use (though developed in much more detail) in my book,
Why Christianity is True.
God Exists: The First Cause
There must be an Ultimate Reality, a Supreme Being that is
the ground of all being. This Being must
be self-existent – that is, it must not have derived its existence from any
other source. This must be so because an
unending chain of causality is absurd.
There are two sorts of being one might have – contingent being
and self-existent being.
Contingent being is being that has characteristics that require us to
say it is derived from a logically prior source. Self-existent being is being that is not
derived from any logically prior source, but is itself an ultimate foundation
of being. All contingent beings must be
traced ultimately to self-existent being.
Every contingent being must be traced back to a logically prior source,
so if all being is contingent, then all being must be derived from a logically
prior source, which means that we will have an infinite chain of causes with no
beginning, and this is logically absurd because it would mean that we have no
ultimate explanation for anything. To
use a picturesque analogy, imagine a stack of books. We want to say that the book on the top of
the stack is held up by the book underneath it.
But what is holding up that book?
The book underneath it. But what
is holding up that book? What if
we imagine that the book stack is infinite, and that every book in the stack is
being held up by a book underneath it?
The problem with this is that none of the books are able to explain how
the whole stack is held up, because none of the books have the power to hold up
anything themselves. So we end up with
no explanation, no accounting for why the stack of books is held up. Here's another picture: Imagine a group of people standing in a
line. Bob, one of the persons in the line,
borrows a marker from Steve, the person in front of him in line. He thanks Steve for the marker, but Steve replies
that, actually, he borrowed the marker from a person in front of him in
the line, Dave. Dave says that he, too,
has borrowed the marker from another person in front of him, Sarah. Sarah tells Bob that, in fact, the line of
people is infinite, and that all the people in the line are marker-borrowers,
none of them are marker owners. They've
all, down to the last person, borrowed the marker from the person in front of
them. The problem with this, of course,
is that if they are all marker-borrowers, there is no explanation, no
accounting, for how anyone has a marker at all.
Similarly, if we say that all reality is contingent – derived from a
logically prior source – we end up with no explanation, no accounting, for
reality at all. We end up with everything
coming ultimately from nothing, which is logically absurd, for nothing can come
from nothing. Therefore, there must be a
First Cause, a self-existent being at the back of all reality, the ultimate
ground and cause of all being, which is a being-owner and not a being-borrower.
But why can't we get something from nothing? Because nothing, being nothing, does nothing
and can produce nothing, by definition.
But isn't the very idea of a First Cause, a self-existent
being, itself an example of something coming from nothing? No, because the First Cause doesn't get its
being from nothing. It doesn't get its
being from something, either. It doesn't
get its being at all; it simply has its being. That's the very idea of a self-existent First
Cause. It is to say that the very
foundation of all things is a foundational being from which all else is
derived. There is nothing illogical
about this idea in the way that there is something illogical about the idea of
an infinite regress of being or of being coming from nothing. In fact, as we’ve seen, not only is the idea
of a self-existent First Cause not illogical, it is required by logic
because all alternatives are illogical.
(“But how do we know that reality is logical?”, someone might
ask. We know this because logic
is essential to the definition of being.
Logic is ultimately nothing other than the “law of
non-contradiction” - that is, the idea that “A is not non-A,” or “Whatever is,
it is what it is and isn't what it isn't.”
But this is clearly a part of the very idea of being, for, by
definition, being excludes non-being, and any positive
characteristic of being – like “redness” – excludes its opposite – like
“non-redness”. To talk about being
that doesn't exclude non-being, or to talk about some positive
characteristic as if it doesn't exclude its opposite, is just meaningless
gibberish. “But how do you know your
concepts and definitions apply to reality as it really is?”, someone might then
ask. Well, we must remember that when we
are using words, we cannot forget the meanings of the words we are using. Our words have definitions, and these
definitions express particular concepts.
Reality itself is a concept.
You cannot get beyond concepts while you are still using words with
definitions. Our words reflect our
concepts, and our concepts are nothing other than our formulations of our
observations of reality. Therefore, to
analyze a concept and to find that something is incompatible with it is to find
out something about reality itself. If
you want to talk about a reality beyond the concept of reality, a
being beyond the concept of being, you will quickly find, if you
pay attention, that you are speaking meaningless gibberish. To talk about a reality beyond the concept
of reality is simply to try to talk about a part of reality that doesn't
fit within the very definition of “reality.”
But to say that something doesn't fit into the definition of “reality”
is just to say that it is not real – that it is not a part of
reality. So to talk about the way things
really are beyond all definitions is just to use words without meaning,
to speak nonsense. So when we observe our
words and our concepts to imply something or to exclude something – like being
excludes non-being or red excludes non-red – we are
learning something about reality itself.
From this we know that knowledge of reality can be gained not only from
the direct observation of objects by our senses, but also by logical reflection
on the concepts that we derive from reality.)
The space-time world we live in cannot be Ultimate Reality,
because it has the marks of contingency – that is, again, the marks of being
derived from a logically prior source as opposed to being
self-existent. One of those marks is time. Our universe comes to us in a temporal
sequence, moment by moment. It consists
of a past flowing into a present flowing into a future. Time is essential to our universe, because it
is evident that all the characteristics of the world around us necessarily
imply a past narrative; we cannot make sense of them without such a
narrative. Time is a contingent property
because every moment in time begins, and since it begins, it must derive
its existence from that which came before it.
It cannot be a First Cause, because it has come into being and thus has
received being which it previously didn't have.
Therefore, the space-time universe cannot be the First Cause, the
Ultimate Reality. To imagine the
space-time universe as the Ultimate Reality, we would have to imagine that its
time-series is infinite – that is, we would have to imagine that every moment
in history has been brought into being and is therefore explained by a previous
moment in history, for otherwise we would have a first moment coming from
nothing (which we know is absurd). To
say that the time-series of our universe is infinite would be to say that the
past is infinite, that it's always been going on and had no beginning, no first
moment. But this is absurd. It is absurd because it provides no ultimate
explanation for being, as we saw earlier.
It is also absurd because if the past was infinite, it would have taken,
literally, an infinite amount of time for the universe to reach this
present moment. But this is absurd, for,
by definition, one cannot traverse (get through) an infinite amount of
time. If I began to count to infinity
right now, when would I finish? Never,
because you cannot ever complete an infinite series by the addition of one
piece at a time. So if the past was
infinite, we could never have arrived at this present moment. And yet here we are.
If the space-time universe cannot be the Ultimate Reality,
the First Cause, because time is a part of its nature (among other
reasons, such as those discussed below), then we know that the true First Cause
must be outside of time. That is, temporal
experience must not be a part of its nature. It must be timeless.
God Exists: Single
and Simple
The First Cause—the ultimate, self-existent reality—must be single
and simple. That is, there must
be only one First Cause, and it must be without parts or pieces. Why?
There are a number of ways of showing why this must be the case.
If there were multiple First Causes, each of them would be
completely independent from each other, since none of them could be derived
from any of the others (being First Causes). Nor could any of them be derived from
anything else (again, being First Causes). But if they were completely independent,
there would be no explanation for how they all fit together as parts of a
larger whole. If there were multiple
First Causes, they would exist in a larger context, a larger fabric, which
would include all of them. But none of
them, and indeed none of the pieces of that fabric, could explain the fabric as
a whole and the mutual inter-dependence of the parts as they make up the larger
whole. We can illustrate the problem
here partly by an analogy: Imagine you
walked throughout the world picking up random puzzle pieces and putting them in
a bag. When you got home, you put all
the pieces together and were surprised to find they all fit together to make a
coherent picture. This is, of course,
absurd, for, since all the pieces were independent of each other, there is no
explanation for the larger pattern they are all a part of. Similarly, if Ultimate Reality consisted of
multiple beings or multiple parts, there would be no explanation for the
coherence and inter-dependence of the whole.
In fact, it would be even worse than the situation with the puzzle
pieces, because at least the puzzle pieces, by being parts of the same world,
are similar to each other in that they are all made of matter, all share the
same laws of logic and physics, all are made by humans to fit into some puzzle,
etc. But the multiple beings or parts of
Ultimate Reality would literally have nothing in common, for they would
be completely independent.
Anytime you have pieces making up a larger whole, those
pieces are essentially defined at least in part by their relationship to the
rest of the whole. Their part-of-a-larger-whole-ness
is an aspect of their essential definition.
But beings who are supposed to be completely independent of each
other, all being First Causes, could not at the same time be defined
essentially by their relationship to each other, as inter-connected parts of
a larger whole, for this would make them dependent on each other and the
larger whole for their very essence and definition. So, Ultimate Reality must be single
and simple.
To put this another way:
When we have an entity made up of multiple parts, what we really have
are multiple entities connected to each other – in fact, an
infinite number of them, as divisible objects are infinitely divisible (see below). None of the entities present can explain or
account for the other entities present or for the fabric that connects them
together and makes them parts of a coherent whole. Since a divisible entity is nothing other than a collection
of parts, the only way to explain the fabric, the whole, in which these parts exist is to trace the parts back
to a more ultimate reality from which the parts are all derived.
(Think of individual pages in an animator's book. The pages altogether, flipped through quickly, create an animated story, but none of the
individual pages themselves explain or account for the overall story. To explain this, we must trace all the
individual pages back to a single source – in this case, the mind of the narrator who has the
story in mind and creates the pages based on this idea.) But if we
say that a divisible object with multiple parts is the ultimate reality,
the First Cause, we cannot explain its parts by tracing them back to a
more ultimate reality, and so we are left with no way to account for the whole in which the parts
exist. Nothing in the divisible entity
itself explains that whole, and since it is not derived from any
more ultimate unifying source, nothing explains the whole.
Another argument: When
you have a reality made up of multiple parts, those parts exist in different
places from each other, and so you have a fabric of reality that is extended
and has dimension – in other words, it has length, height, width,
etc. Such a reality is also divisible –
that is, it is made up of parts that can be distinguished from each other. But it turns out that an extended, divisible
reality can only exist within a limited viewpoint. Picture a tree. It is an extended reality with parts. It has a top, a bottom, a left side, a right
side. It has multiple leaves in
different places, etc. In order to have
an object like that, the parts must be in different places relative to a grid,
an X-Y axis. (Draw a picture of a tree,
and then draw an X-Y axis on the picture to have a visual version of what I am
talking about.) But, if you consider it,
you will see that the central point on such an X-Y axis is actually the
center-point in the perspective of the one viewing the tree. If you try to remove the perspective of the
one viewing, you lose the grid; and when you lose the grid, you lose the tree,
for the tree as an extended, divisible object with parts can exist only on such
a grid. Its very nature implies such a
grid. So the very essence of an extended,
divisible object like a tree is necessarily bound up with the viewpoint of a
perceiver. Remove the perceiver, and you
remove the thing perceived. And the
viewpoint must be that of a limited perceiver – that is, a perceiver
whose viewpoint is limited to one particular vantage point in the midst of a
potentially infinite number of other vantage points. The perceiver has to be looking from one
particular location among other possible locations, so that the different parts
of the tree are in different places relative to the specific location of the
perceiver. If we imagine an unlimited
perceiver – one whose viewpoint is not limited to a particular location, but
whose view would include the whole of reality from all vantage points, such a
viewpoint would have no grid, for there would be no specific location relative
to which different parts of the perceived objects could be in different places
on the grid. In such an unlimited
viewpoint, all of reality would appear as a single, undivided whole. A limited viewpoint can only be derived (by
adding limitation) from an unlimited viewpoint (just as a part can only be
derived from a whole—without a whole, the concept of a part has no
meaning), and so our conclusion, then, must be that extended, divisible reality
must be derived from a more ultimate state of reality that is single and
simple.
Related to the previous argument, we can also observe that
there are certain paradoxes – certain logical anomalies – in reality which can
only be solved if we recognize that space-time, extended, divisible reality is
derived from a more ultimate, single, simple reality. These paradoxes have to do with places where
we run into the idea of infinity.
For example, consider a table.
How divisible is the table? I'm
not asking how practically divisible the table is – that is, how much
one could use tools to actually physically divide it – but I am asking how theoretically
divisible it is – that is, if we distinguish all its parts, how many parts does
it ultimately have? I can divide the
table in half and get two parts. I can
divide both of those parts again and get four parts. I can divide those parts again and get eight
parts. And so on. There is no theoretical stopping point. Every time I divide the parts, I end up with parts
that can be further divided. So we have
to say that the table is infinitely divisible, which would imply that it
is made up ultimately of an infinite number of parts or pieces that are
infinitely small. But there is a
problem here, because an infinitely small piece of matter would have no size,
would take up no space, and thus, no matter how many of such parts we have, we
will not be able to make a table that has a particular size and which takes up
space. So it would seem that the table must
be infinitely divisible, and it would seem at the same time that the table cannot
be infinitely divisible. We have a
logical problem to solve. The only way
to solve it is to recognize that the table, as an extended object, only exists
relative to a limited perceiver (as discussed in the previous paragraph). If we recognize that, we can say that the
table is potentially infinitely divisible because there is no
theoretical stopping point for division, but at the same time we can say that
the table is only actually finitely divided, because no limited (finite)
perceiver actually ever perceives an infinite number of divisions. The infinite potential divisibility is thus
never infinitely actualized. There is no
logical problem with a potential infinite, but only with an actual
infinite, and so our logical paradox is solved.
Apart from recognizing that the extended, divisible table is derived
from a more ultimate, single, simple reality, we are stuck with unsolvable
logical absurdity.
God Exists:
Consciousness
The single, simple First Cause must be a conscious being,
because consciousness is irreducible – that is, it cannot be derived from
non-consciousness. The irreducibility of
consciousness is evident upon observation.
If we imagine ourselves to start out with material that is something
other than consciousness, we cannot produce consciousness from such
material. To do so, we would have to get
something from nothing. The law of causality
(“You cannot get something from nothing”) implies that everything that comes
from something else must be explainable in terms of the ingredients it came
from and the interactions between those ingredients. But if we have nothing but bits of
non-conscious matter, able to engage in non-conscious activity by means of
non-conscious energy, we will never be able to produce consciousness from such
ingredients no matter what we do with them.
We can put them together in ever-so-complicated patterns. We can add more and more pieces. We can move them about and bump them into
each other. But all we will ever have,
logically, is simply larger or more complicated constructions of non-conscious
matter. (To make an analogy, if all we have are red legos, no matter how we arrange them, put them together, no matter how many we add or how complicated the structures or formations we make from them, whatever we end up with will only be red. It will not be green, because the color green cannot be derived from or explained by our available ingredients.) Therefore, consciousness cannot
be derived from non-consciousness. If
consciousness ever arises (as it obviously has, since all we ever actually
directly perceive are the impressions upon our own consciousnesses), it must be
traced back to a conscious source.
Therefore, the First Cause, the ultimate origin and source of all
things, must be a conscious being.
We have now proved that all of reality must be derived from a
single, simple, conscious First Cause.
As St. Thomas Aquinas would say at this point, “and this all men call
God.” Therefore, God exists.
God Exists: Some
Logical Consequences
If God exists, certain things logically follow. If God exists, there will be a Trinity. This is because God, being conscious and
perceiving everything, will have a perfect image (that is, a perfect idea, for
God is beyond space and time and so has no physical, dimensional image) of
himself. By having a perfect image of
himself, he will become both subject and object, viewer and viewed, perceiver
and perceived, lover and beloved (for God, being the fullness of all being,
must be the fullness of all goodness, and so must be infinitely beautiful and
beloved of himself). God's
self-reflexive act of producing an image of himself causes the Divine Essence
to exist in two distinct subsistences – that is, there will be two
distinct manifestations of the one, single, simple Divine Being. There will be one Supreme Being, and that
Supreme Being will exist in two subsistences that have a relationship with each
other. And their relationship will
produce yet a third subsistence of the same Divine Being, for between the
perceiver and the perceived there is the act of perception; between the lover
and the beloved there is the act of loving.
There is the communication of the Divine Essence from the image-producer
to the image. And this Divine Being in
act who connects the other two subsistences, being himself yet another
manifestation of the Divine Being, will possess that Divine Essence just as
fully as the other two. So we have one
Divine Being existing in three subsistences.
Each subsistence is distinct from the others in terms of his relation to
the others, but there is no division in the one Divine Being. The subsistences are distinct by their
relationship to each other in virtue of God's self-reflexive act of viewing and
loving himself, not by virtue of being pieces or percentages of the Divine
Being (which, being single and simple, can have no pieces). Each subsistence is a full manifestation of
the entire single Divine Being, so each subsistence is fully God. God is a Tri-Unity.
If God exists, then there is an objective moral law. Morality is about goodness and badness. It is about values and the priorities of
values. If God exists, then there is a
supreme viewpoint that defines what reality is really, ultimately like. Whatever that viewpoint finds pleasant or
desirable will be objectively good.
Whatever that viewpoint finds unpleasant or undesirable will be objectively
evil.
The Divine Being must love himself supremely, for he is the
fullness of Being. He cannot be
dissatisfied with himself, because then he would have to have an image of how
he would like things to be distinct from (and not derived from or an aspect of)
how they actually are, and this would imply duality and divisibility in the
Divine viewpoint, which is impossible.
Since God loves himself fully, he must hate that which is the opposite
or absence of himself, which would be non-being. (Non-being is the implied notional opposite
of Being, and thus an aspect of the awareness the Supreme Being has of
himself involves the awareness of the idea of this notional opposite.) The space-time universe is derived from,
created by, the Divine Being. It differs
from the Divine Being in that it is limited.
God possesses in himself the fullness of reality, but the space-time
universe is nothing in comparison, for each being in it is only a point in a
potentially infinite (but actually finite – see earlier discussion) grid. Thus, finite, limited reality is a
manifestation of Being that is infinitely inferior in being (and thus in value)
to God. Inasmuch as Being is manifested
in the space-time universe, it is lovely to God, for he loves the image of
himself. But insofar as our finite
reality is a manifestation of lack and limitation, it is different from the
Divine Being and manifests characteristics that are hateful to God. While God is infinitely (completely, fully)
satisfying, the space-time universe is ultimately unsatisfying. While God is infinitely (completely, fully)
powerful, the space-time universe is weak.
While God is infinitely good, the space-time universe has fallen into
evil. Misery is both a natural and a
moral consequence of evil. The natural
consequence of the loss of God is the loss of happiness, and the very idea of
that which is hateful being rewarded with happiness is itself hateful to a
Being who loves goodness and therefore could never be willed by that
Being. There is no hope for the
space-time universe and the beings in it to ultimately avoid evil and misery
and to attain ultimately to goodness and happiness unless they derive these
things from God, the only one who ultimately owns them.
So the space-time universe and the beings within it, without
God's help, will end up in total evil and misery in a condition hateful to
God. But God does not only contrast in
his fullness with space-time reality in its emptiness; he is also the filler
of all. He fills non-being with
being. If God is to save space-time
creatures and fill them with himself, he must take upon himself their emptiness
– their limitations, their evil, their misery.
He must absorb all of this into himself, face it, and endure it. And then he must overcome it all, destroying
the emptiness by enduring it and filling it up with his own fullness. To use an analogy, imagine a pitcher full of
water filling an empty cup. The pitcher
must take on the emptiness of the cup in order to fill the cup up with
water. After it does this, the pitcher
has less water in it than it had before, corresponding to the lack of water the
cup had previously. And this is where
the analogy breaks down, for when God takes upon himself our emptiness and
fills us with his fullness, he loses nothing ultimately. His fullness is so full, and our emptiness so
small in comparison, that he can absorb it without ultimate harm or loss, while
we gain his fullness. While he must endure
our emptiness, absorb it into himself, and overcome it, his victory, unlike the
pitcher's, is complete.
Christianity is the
True Religion
The reason Christianity is the true religion is because, of
all the philosophies and religions existing in the world, it is the only one
which gets reality fundamentally right.
All others fail by fundamental error or at least by fundamental
incompleteness.
Christianity teaches that there is one God, absolute, single,
and simple. It teaches that this God
exists in a Trinity of three subsistences (Persons), each of whom bear the
whole of the Divine Being and who are distinct only in terms of their
relationships to each other. The Father
begets the Son, who is the fullness of his Being and his perfect Image. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the
Trinity who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the manifestation of the love
and the relationship between the Father and the Son. Christianity teaches that God created the
space-time universe, which has being but which is not divine and is infinitely
inferior to God. The creation has fallen
into decay and emptiness. Humankind has
fallen into a state of moral evil (sin) by rebellion against God, and God's
objective moral law decrees destruction and misery for humans due to sin. But God has provided salvation for humanity
by doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. The Second Person of the Trinity – God the
Son – has taken upon himself our limitations by acquiring a human nature. God has become man while remaining fully
God. That human is Jesus Christ. Christ took upon himself the sins and
miseries of the world. He suffered, died,
and was buried, thus absorbing into himself all our weaknesses, lacks,
sinfulness, and misery. On the third day
he rose again from the dead, the conqueror of sin, death, and hell, and has
ascended to the Father. Through his
death and his resurrection, he has attained eternal salvation for the human
race, and all those who trust in him to the end are redeemed and filled with
the fullness of God. God sends to them
his Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, who fills them with the
Divine Life and makes them adopted children of God, sharing by grace in the
Sonship of the Son, purified and made holy and beautiful to God, and destined
to enjoy the fullness of the life of God forever in the Beatific Vision.
If all this sounds familiar, it should, for it is the very
nature of reality we proved in our previous arguments. Christianity gets all this right. All other religions fail to do so (although
they often have a good deal of truth mixed in).
Some worldviews, like Atheism, deny the existence of God and thus fall
into absurdity from the very beginning.
Others, like Agnosticism, fail by failing to realize
all that can indeed be known, as we have shown by our arguments above. Other religions, like paganism, Jainism, and
Shinto, deny or fail to teach an ultimate, single, simple reality, and so fail
in the same way Atheism does. Other
religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism, teach an Ultimate, single
Reality, but they fail to clarify whether that Supreme Being is fully
conscious. They fail to point out his
Trinitarian nature. They treat the world
as an illusion, as almost a day-dream of the Divine Being rather than a
conscious creation. They hold that what
goes on down here is ultimately unimportant, and that our salvation lies in
simply learning to ignore and forget about this world and focus instead on
union with the Ultimate Reality. They
fail to recognize that our salvation can only come from God's help and grace,
as he actively takes upon himself our emptiness and our sin and fills us with
his fullness and goodness. The way to
salvation is not by ignoring this fallen, empty reality but by God's dealing
with that reality and confronting it with his fullness. The pitcher does not fill the cup simply by
trying to convince the cup to forget that it is a cup and to focus on the
importance of the pitcher, but by taking on the emptiness of the cup and
filling the cup with its fullness.
Religions like Judaism and Islam believe in a fully conscious, single,
simple Creator God, and in this they do well.
But they fail to recognize his Trinitarian nature. And they fail to recognize the full implications
of our emptiness and sin. They tell us
to save ourselves by obedience to God, but they fail to recognize that we
cannot be saved unless God unites himself with us, takes upon himself our
limitations and failures, conquers these, and thus breaks the barrier and fills
us with his Divine life and righteousness.
In the world, there are many philosophies and many
religions. Some claim to have been
invented or discovered by humans, others to have been revealed by God or the
gods or some form of Ultimate Reality.
But among all of these, Christianity stands unique as the only one to
provide the key that unlocks for us the true nature of reality, to reveal
reality to us in all its crucial aspects.
Thus, Christianity's claim to be the true divine revelation stands
vindicated, as it is clear that God has associated the revelation of himself
inseparably with the Christian religion.
In Christ, God has reached out to the human race and brought to us the
knowledge of himself, the knowledge of ourselves, and the way of salvation.
For why Catholicism more specifically is true, see
here.
Published on the feast of St. Camillus de Lellis.
ADDENDUM 8/6/20: See
here for a more intuitive case for Christianity.
ADDENDUM 2/5/23: In my Apologetics class, I make use of another layout of the basic argument for God and for Christianity in the form of a series of points I want to emphasize in class. I have pasted it below. "George" refers to my Catholic role-play character, George Stewart. (I role-play different characters with different worldviews in class as a way of aiding engagement in the arguments.)
1. Rationalism, as George defines the word, refers to the position that holds that knowledge is gained not only through the senses and direct internal reflection, but also through the logical analysis of concepts.
2. George holds that philosophical arguments (by which he means non-empirical arguments rooted in the logical analysis of concepts) can give us true knowledge of objective reality. Our experience of the world provides the basis for our concepts or ideas (for example, our experience with cats in the world provides the foundation for our concept of a “cat”). These concepts/ideas have certain essential characteristics that give them definite meaning (for example, the concept of a “cat” necessarily involves things like “walks on four legs,” “gives birth to live young,” “is a mammal,” etc.). So we can gain knowledge about cats by examining the essential characteristics involved in the concept of “cat.” We can even have universal knowledge beyond the limits of our empirical experience. For example, if it is essential to the definition of a “cat” that it be a mammal, then we know that wherever cats exist, even if they exist in distant galaxies beyond the reach of our empirical investigation, they will be mammals. It is even easier to see the validity of this method of knowing when we are dealing with very simple concepts with clearer essences. For example, by definition, a “triangle” has three sides. If something doesn’t have three sides, then by definition it is not a triangle. Therefore, we can know that wherever triangles exist, even if they are beyond the reach of our empirical experience, they will certainly have three sides.
3. There are two fundamental categories of “being.” In other words, there are two basic kinds of beings that can exist. (And by “being” here we mean not just living things but “all things that exist.”) The two basic kinds of beings are “contingent” beings and “self-existent” beings. A contingent being is a being that depends on something else for its existence. It gets its existence from something outside of itself. (For example, I am a contingent being because I got my existence from my parents.) A “self-existent” being is a being that does not depend on anything else for its existence. It simply has its existence; it doesn’t get its existence from anything outside of itself. The classical theistic concept of God is an example of a self-existent being, since God did not get his existence from anything else and is not dependent on anything else for his existence. His existence is simply a rock-bottom foundational reality, not dependent on any deeper level of reality from which it comes.
4. George holds that all beings cannot be contingent because then there would be no ultimate explanation for anything. If everything that exists is dependent on something else for its existence, then there is no final source for existence, so we have all things ultimately coming from nothing at all. Picture a circle of people with a marker. They are all passing the marker back and forth to each other. None of them is the owner of the marker; they’ve all borrowed the marker from each other. If this circle of people were all that existed, there would be no explanation for where the marker came from. If they are all marker-borrowers, there is no one from whom the marker was originally borrowed, and so the marker has come from nothing ultimately. If you imagine an infinitely long row of marker-borrowers, each person in the row borrowing the marker from the person on his left side, this still will not solve the problem, because there would still be no marker-owner from which the marker was originally borrowed. A marker-borrower cannot ultimately explain where the marker came from. Similarly, a contingent being cannot explain where being came from. A reality full of nothing but contingent beings would be a world with no ultimate explanation for where existence came from. There must be a self-existent being who is an owner and not a borrower of being in order to avoid being coming from nothing.
5. George holds that we cannot get something from nothing because “nothing,” by definition, has nothing to give and can do nothing. For example, if you ask me where I got my marker, and I say, “from nothing,” this will not provide an adequate explanation for where my marker came from, for nothing, being nothing, cannot produce a marker or give one to me.
6. George calls the self-existent being that is the ultimate foundation and explanation for all that exists the “First Cause” because it itself is the cause or source of everything else but is not itself caused by or derived from anything else. He holds that the First Cause must be timeless–or be outside of time, or not have time as a part of its experience–because time is a contingent property. That is, to be in time is to be a contingent being. If you are in time, you have a past history, and so every moment of your existence has come into being and has to be explained by whatever existed before it in the timeline. So your existence is made up of a series of moments which are all contingent. A being like that must be traced back ultimately to a being which is outside of time and so could be self-existent.
7. George argues that the First Cause must be single and simple–that is, that there can only be one First Cause and that it cannot be divisible into parts–because if something has parts, those parts are pieces of a larger reality and have to be explained by whatever is the source of that larger reality. Imagine a puzzle. A puzzle is made up of pieces. None of the individual pieces explain the other pieces or the larger puzzle they are all a part of, nor do they even explain themselves as pieces of the larger whole. In order to explain the puzzle, we have to refer back to the puzzle-maker–the one who designed the puzzle and created the pieces. Only the puzzle-maker can explain the larger whole that all the pieces are parts of. So the highest reality from which all things come cannot have parts; it must be single and simple. Anything that is divisible into parts will have to be traced back to a more ultimate single and simple reality that can explain its parts and the unity of those parts.
Related to this, George points out that all pieces of a larger whole are defined in relation to each other. A puzzle-piece, for example, cannot be understood without reference to the other pieces of the puzzle and to the puzzle as a whole. “Being part of a larger puzzle” is part of the definition of a puzzle-piece. But a First Cause, by definition, cannot be defined in reference to anything else outside of itself, because, being a self-existent being and not contingent, it is not dependent on anything outside of itself. It does not get its existence from anything else, and so, being completely self-sufficient, it would be defined only in relation to itself and not to anything else.
Another argument George makes is that whenever you have multiple objects, or an object made up of multiple parts, those parts are all in different places only relative to some observer, some particular point of view. For example, I look out on the classroom and see multiple desks. Those desks are in different places relative to where I am standing and looking out from. My viewpoint creates a grid on which the desks are in different places. If you remove the particular viewpoint from which things are being observed, you lose the grid and so lose the reality of multiple things existing in extended space. This means that multiplicity and divisibility exist only in connection to limited, particular points of view. If we imagine reality as it exists outside of a limited point of view–from the perspective of an unlimited point of view, a point of view which would see all reality in a complete view–there would be no multiplicity or divisibility, but only one single and simple essence, for there would be no limited or particular vantage-point from which some things would be more distant than others, some more to the left or to the right, etc. Therefore, ultimate reality–or the First Cause–is single and simple, and all multiple and divisible reality is limited and contingent, derived from a more ultimate and unlimited state of reality.
8. George argues that the First Cause would have to be a conscious being–that is, a being which has 1st-person experience–because consciousness cannot be derived from non-consciousness. If you start out with non-conscious stuff, or mind-independent matter (MIM), no matter what you do with that stuff–put it together into complex patterns, cause the pieces of it to interact with each other and affect each other, etc.--it will never be anything more than arrangements of MIM. You cannot get something in the product that is not explainable in terms of the ingredients and the relationships between the ingredients, for that is to get something from nothing. If all we have starting out is MIM and non-conscious MIM interactions, then no matter how large or complex we make those interactions, they will not become something fundamentally different from what was there before. Just as if I start out with red marbles, no matter what I do with them–build large and complex structures out of them, cause them to bump into each other or move each other around in complex ways, etc.--I will never end up with anything other than red marbles receiving and causing red-marble-type effects. So, since consciousness exists in this world, the First Cause, from which this world comes, must itself possess consciousness and be a conscious being.
George also argues that the very concept of a “material object” or a “physical object” is derived ultimately from consciousness. Physical characteristics–texture, color, taste, size, position, length, shape, etc.--are nothing other than experiences had in the 1st-person conscious experience of beings. If you remove everything from the concept of a material object–say, a chair–that exists only by means of being experienced by a mind, you will remove every characteristic of the chair altogether and have nothing left. So consciousness is the fundamental reality, and physical objects and effects are simply modes of conscious experience. Therefore, the First Cause, which is the ultimate reality and the source of all other reality, must be a conscious being. At this point in his argument, George feels that the First Cause can be called God.
9. If God exists, there will be an objective moral law–that is, an objective standard defining “good” and “bad.” This is because God’s viewpoint defines and is identical to objective reality, for he is the source and ultimate context of all reality. By contrast, our subjective viewpoint is distinct from and can be in conflict with objective reality. (We call that “being wrong.”) Therefore, whatever God views as “good” will be good objectively, and whatever God views as “bad” will be bad objectively.
10. God must be omnibenevolent–that is, he must love the happiness of beings in general and hate the suffering of beings in general–because he, being all-knowing and experiencing all things in reality, would have an absolute foundation for empathy. It is not possible to delight in the suffering of any being if one experiences the pain of that being, nor is it possible to be indifferent to the happiness of any being if one experiences that happiness.
11. God is infinitely more valuable than his creation. This is because he is the Supreme Being, the one who is identical to objective and ultimate reality. We are infinitesimal beings by comparison, our experience and viewpoint being a mere point in a universe that extends out from us with potential infinity in all directions, with a potentially infinite number of other possible particular vantage points. Although we exist in our own sphere, we are nothing in comparison to God, and all we have is derived from him as well. Since God’s being is the complete and sufficient source of happiness, and we are nothing in comparison to him and without him, he is infinitely more important than we are. We have value in our own sphere, and we can be greatly valuable to God insofar as our existence contributes to his plans and purposes, but we are valueness in comparison to God and without God. (Note: In salvation through Christ, we are raised up and given a value infinitely above our natural worth, for we are made partakers of the infinitely-valuable divine life itself.)
12. “Moral evil” is evil of the will, as opposed to “natural evil,” which is something bad outside of a will. If I hate what I should love and love what I should hate and so choose something of lesser value over something of greater value–for example, I choose the value of eating a cheeseburger over the value of respecting human life–this is an example of moral evil. If a tornado knocks down a house, this is an example of natural evil, for no evil will is involved. Since all value comes from God and is defined in relation to his objective moral law, all moral evil is ultimately against God. An act of moral evil is ultimately an act of rejecting God and choosing to put our happiness in something else. We choose to treat ourselves as if we are God and thus the definer of good and evil and so attempt to oust God from his place, going our own way instead of God’s way. Since God is the Supreme Good–the source of all happiness and so a being of complete or unlimited value–to reject him is to commit an act which deserves and attains the consequence of complete and utter misery. So moral evil, in its nature, tends towards misery.
(Note: We can distinguish between what Catholic theologians call “mortal” and “venial” sin. Mortal sin is an act like that described above. It is an act of the will which involves a rejection of God as the Supreme Good. Venial sin is also a kind of rejection of God, but it is one that does not come up to a full and definitive act of the will. It is a kind of limited inconsistency within a person who still chooses God as their Supreme Good. I still choose God overall, but there are smaller pockets or areas of inconsistency in my life where I am not living consistently with what supreme love to God should imply. For an analogy, think of getting an infection. By its nature, all infection tends towards death. Some infection actually causes death because it affects the vital organs of life, while other infection does not actually cause death because it does not affect vital organs. Similarly, all sin involves a kind of rejection of God and so tends towards misery, but some [“mortal sin”] leads to complete misery because it involves the will’s fundamental rejection of God, while other sin [“venial sin”] does not lead to complete misery because it is a limited or partial inconsistency in the will rather than a fundamental rejection of God.)
The fact that moral evil leads to misery is bad news for us because all goodness comes from God. We have no goodness of our own and can only receive it as a gift from God, for we are completely contingent and dependent upon God. Without his sharing his own goodness with us, we are doomed to fall into moral evil (even “mortal sin”) and suffer the infinite consequences. And we can see the reality of this fact empirically all around us as we look at all the moral evils that are committed by us and by others in this world.
13. Only God can save us from ultimate misery and bring us to ultimate happiness. This is because, as we saw above in #12, God is the source of all goodness and therefore all happiness, and without him there is no goodness or happiness. If we contingent beings are to receive happiness, therefore, it can only be by means of God uniting himself to us, absorbing onto himself our limitations and our evil and misery and filling us with his divine life, goodness, and happiness.
14. George’s fundamental argument for Christianity is that it is the only worldview which gives us a complete and accurate picture of the fundamental nature of reality. All other worldviews–whether they claim to be some kind of supernatural revelation or simply human philosophies–fail either by fundamental inaccuracy or at least by fundamental incompleteness. Only Christianity gives us a reality where there exists one God, a Trinity, who is the Creator of all other beings and the source of an objective moral law. Only Christianity teaches that all happiness comes from God, that we are made for God and to be happy in God, but that, left to ourselves, we have fallen into a condition of sin and misery, and that we are doomed to complete misery (hell) unless God saves us. He has done so by means of God the Son–the Second Person of the Trinity–coming into this world and taking upon himself a human nature in addition to his divine nature. Absorbing our limitations, he also absorbed our sins and sufferings upon himself, dying on the cross. But, being divine, he was able to overcome sin and death. He rose from the dead on the third day, becoming the source of eternal salvation as he fills us with his own divine life, goodness, and happiness. Since Christianity, which claims to be a revelation from God, is the only worldview existing in the world which gets reality fundamentally right, the world is clearly set up in such a way as to associate Christianity with God’s fundamental revelation of himself and his truth to us. Since God is ultimate reality and knows and loves himself supremely, and therefore he created the world as an extension of the manifestation and enjoyment of his own perfections, the world which comes from him will reflect his actual nature and not be designed to exhibit that which is false. But if Christianity is not a revelation from God, then the world has been set up in such a way as to associate the revelation of God and his fundamental truth with falsehood, which is something God would not do, and so we can be sure that we are warranted to accept Christianity as an authentic divine revelation and therefore as true.
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