BERTRAND RUSSELL AGAINST THE FIRST CAUSE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Bertrand Russell, the author of Why I am not a Christian, had been regarded as the most brilliant mathematician of his day.

·       [The First Cause argument for the existence of God] maintains that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God…If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument…There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause. https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/whynot.html

There are many problems with Russell’s argument. Even as he had stated, “everything we see in this world has a cause” leaves God out of this assessment. In fact, the argument from the First Cause posits that something or Someone must be eternal and uncaused, and without the uncaused (doesn’t require a prior cause), there can never be a rational explanation for anything. Why not? Because cause “C” requires a prior cause “B,” and “B” requires an “A,” and this goes on infinitely – a logical impossibility.

Russell even acknowledged that there is a need for something to be eternal and uncaused, and so he suggested that it could easily be the universe. However, this suggestion violates both science and reason. Now science acknowledges that the time-space-matter universe had a beginning.

Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, Nobel laureate in physics, had initially believed in the “Steady State Theory,” which maintained that the universe had always existed. Consequently, the question, “Who created it,” became unnecessary. However, as the evidence accumulated against it, Penzias admitted:

·       “The Steady State theory turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. The easiest way to fit the observations with the least number of parameters was one in which the universe was created out of nothing, in an instant, and continues to expand.” https://crossexamined.org/god-and-the-astronomers/

Robert Jastrow was the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a professor at Columbia University, and the director emeritus of the Mt. Wilson Observatory.  Jastrow observed:

·       When a scientist writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters. My views on this question are close to those of Darwin, who wrote, "My theology is a simple muddle. I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I see no evidence of beneficent design in the details." (God and the Astronomers (1978), Ch. 1: In the Beginning)

Yet, he does see scientific evidence for the existence of God.  In one interview, after strongly asserting his agnosticism, Jastrow admitted:

·       …that scientific evidence (including Hubble’s discoveries) pointed quite clearly to the existence of a supernatural Creator. Yet, the materialistic philosophy he had long embraced rebelled at such a conclusion. He ended with an admission I’ll never forget: “I’m in a completely hopeless bind.” https://thejohn1010project.com/blog/2018/05/17/god-and-the-astronomer/

Why the bind? Jastrow remains committed to a naturalistic world view but sees the evidence pointing to ID. In God and the Astronomers, Jastrow also acknowledged that naturalism had failed to account for the evidence:

·       At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (116; p. 107 in 1992 edition)

This seems to rule out the possibility that the universe or any part of it could serve as our first cause. However, I think that the logical evidence against an always-existing-universe is even more dismissive. If the universe is eternal, it means that an infinite number of years would have needed to be fulfilled to ever arrive in the now, the present, and this is a logical impossibility. Therefore, whatever is eternal (the first cause) must lie outside of the time-space-matter package. He must transcend time, and this is exactly the portrait that the Bible presents of the Creator God.

As a last resort, Russell concluded, “The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.” Perhaps there is a reality beyond our feeble imagination and even our logic. However, we live, believe, and make our decisions based upon the very limited knowledge that we do have. We have nothing else. To be responsible with our limited knowledge, experience, and science, we are coerced to conclude  that the phenomena of this world does have a beginning and a cause.