The first proof, based as it is on Aristotelian physics, is better recast as an argument from change. Any change is a movement of a thing from potentiality for that change to actuality. But nothing changes itself; therefore something else must change it by acting upon it. In other words, "nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality." (What about self-moving agents like humans? It seems that they can change themselves, e.g. by acquiring habits. Well, the will, by which we move ourselves and which is in act, is different from our habits, which are in potentiality. In this case, therefore, one, active, part of ourselves actuates another, passive one. Also, we are not here talking about changes in spatial location due to uniform motion, of course, which requires no cause in order to persist: an object will remain in motion relative to some inertial frame unless acted upon by some force, but about "forced" or caused changes.)

This can be phrased by using the terms of physics. A body at rest cannot accelerate on its own; some other body must strike it or in some other way act (e.g., by deforming the space around it) in order to cause a change in its velocity.

Now those things that actualize a change in something can also change. If so, then they require still other things to change them. (Why cannot things change each other? Suppose that A is actually hot and heats B which is potentially hot, whereas B is actually cold and cools A which is potentially cold. Cannot A change B, and B, A? Yes, but something must have brought A and B into their respective actualities in the first place.) Note that we may be dealing here either with causes that all act simultaneously like gears of a machine or successively like a Rube Goldberg contraption. In the first case all causes apart from the first are instrumental, and by themselves they can do nothing, even if there is an infinity of them. Thus, a car could not run without an engine even if it had an infinite number of gears or a company could not move forward without a CEO even if it had an infinity of middle managers. However, I can think of no example of such causes that terminate in God. The solar system, for example, is dynamically stable; God does not occupy himself by pushing things around; and so with Laplace we can say that we "have no need for that hypothesis."

In the second case we say that the universe was "wound up," such that all changes happen to it because of the initial push, and the being who wound it up is called God. Of course, it can be objected that the universe could have infinite age, and so the causes can stretch back infinitely into the past. Now if the kalam argument is true, to the effect that it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite (or to complete a task with an infinite number of steps or for an infinite number of seconds to elapse), then the conclusion is that universe "began" to exist and was therefore caused. [1] The Big Bang theory has similar theistic implications, but physical cosmology is so speculative as to make one wary of relying on it for any conclusions. But on at least some theories the universe would have died from "Big Freeze" or "Heat Death" even after a finite amount of time, let alone infinite amount (so it would not now exist in its "healthy" state). Even apart from these arguments a beginningless universe seems like a strange concept. "-infinity" is not a starting point for events in the universe; it is not a "point" of departure at all, not even one that is infinitely far away. Intuitively, there has to be a first cause.

This argument depends on the assumption that nothing in the universe is immune to change. So, even if there may be an unchanging thing somewhere out there, there are no unchangeable things in it. But, in fact, all of the universe is in perpetual flux. Even under absolute zero (which is probably impossible to reach in practice), there is some motion. There must therefore be a force outside the universe of matter, space, and time that itself cannot change yet is the ultimate source of change of all things in the universe, and that is God.

The second proof is from efficient causality. Notice that one of the three of God's proper effects is existence. He alone does not receive being from another. So if we suppose that there is no God, no Uncaused Cause, then there is no one to cause or sustain existence of things. (Created things need to be caused and sustained because they are contingent; they do not have to exist. Yet they do, and we have to ask what keeps them in being. And Aquinas' answer is: "God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works." (I, 8, 1) This is further elaborated in the third way below.) Now every object requires an array of concurrent causes in order to exist. Existence is like a gift from the cause to effect. And just like before, without the "first giver" of the gift even an infinite chain of receivers will not suffice. Indeed, suppose that A depends on B, C, and D for its continued existence, which, in turn, depend on still other things. No matter how long the series of causes of these dependent things is, there must at the end be some thing that is not caused by anything, and that is God.

One objection would run as follows: Can things perhaps keep each other in being mutually? No, because if A cannot sustain itself and needs B in order to preserve it, then how can it sustain B? (But wait: two sticks can support each other like this: /\. Might not our A and B, either? Again, no, because if each must cause the other, both must exist from the beginning independently of one another. Existence is prior to acts, hence A must exist prior to its act of bringing B into being, and the same goes for B.)

To summarize what we have got so far, the first proof establishes that God cannot change, the second that He is uncaused. These are distinct properties, as one may conceivably be unchangeable yet caused or uncaused yet changeable. Or, from a different point of view, the first proof deals with events, the second, with existence of things. Or even: the first, with accidental, the second with essential changes.

In the third proof Aquinas first shows that "if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence." Here he presupposes the past eternity of the world and reasons, as argued above, that given infinite time all possibilities would be realized, including the possibility of simultaneous non-existence of all contingent (perishable) things. (This is a mathematical law; for example, if you toss a coin an infinite number of times, then every finite sequence of heads and tails will end up being present in the series. So this argument depends on the universe's being finite.) It may be objected that even if all the things in the universe actually corrupted (generation = "coming into existence"; corruption = "going out of existence"), then their matter could still exist under different forms. But this presupposes that this matter as such is not perishable, only the things that are received in it are. Hence in that case matter will be one of the imperishable (necessary) things whose existence we are trying to establish in this proof. Now Aquinas assumes that the universe itself, composed as it is of contingent things, is also contingent and would therefore have ceased to exist at some point in the past. (Again, if this assumption is incorrect, then the universe is necessary.) But from nothing nothing comes. So nothing would exist now, which is not so.

What if the universe began to exist a finite amount of time ago? In that case, ontologically prior to the universe's coming into being, there must have been nothing in existence at all. But once again, from nothing nothing comes. Therefore, there must exist a necessary being (or beings), which cannot stop existing. Some things that are necessary are matter, angels, and human souls, because they have no inherent potentiality to cease to be. Further, these necessary or imperishable things are such either of themselves (absolutely) or derivatively, when their existence, though necessary, depends upon the existence of something else.

(Notice that by "necessary" we do not mean "existing in all possible worlds" but "not tending towards corruption." The universe and certain things in it have derived necessity, and God has absolute necessary in the second sense; the universe is not necessary in the first sense; whether God is necessary in the first sense is an open question (cf. Plantinga's ontological argument). The point is that "once there," the universe, etc. persist in being without any interest in corrupting.)

But why do we need "absolute" necessity when space/time, matter, angels, souls, etc. are naturally imperishable? Can't they have existed forever quite independently, on their own (leaving aside the kalam argument and the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe)? Indeed, the necessity of the universe and the things in it is essential to them. If space/time or matter or human souls could corrupt and disappear, then they would be very different from what they actually are – their essence would be altered. Aquinas simply says that the derived or caused necessity is not enough; therefore, since there cannot be an infinite series of things deriving their necessity each from its predecessor, we must "postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This," he adds, "all men speak of as God." But an obvious objection is: how does he know that the universe has not absolute necessity? Might not his God be the universe? Aquinas would most likely point out that this third argument builds upon the second one. We have established that there must be a first cause and that the universe is an effect of that cause. And one of the things that was caused in it is its necessity.

What have we gained with this proof? God is imperishable, but so what? The "so what" is that this argument plugs a gaping hole in the first proof. God may be unchangeable, but perhaps He can disappear in His entirety. His essence may be immutable, but who's to say that He can't altogether vanish without a trace? That would not damage His immutability. So by saying that God cannot cease to be we are forced to conclude that God is not only immutable but eternal (or, at least, everlasting), as well.

The fourth proof is from degrees of perfection. It is curious how Aquinas knows that man is not the measure of all things. Is it not possible that intelligence, power, love, being or goodness as such, and other perfections find their greatest manifestation in man? But surely, this is absurd. We can extend perfections to infinity, and nothing imperfect is the measure of anything. But why must there exist something perfect, who is the "plenitude of being"? Just because we can imagine it does not mean it exists. The reason is that creaturely being and perfections are caused in them, and "'more' and 'less' are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum." If so, then there must be something "best," a source and genuine standard of all our ontological perfections, and that is God. This is true even if our qualities do not directly derive from a being who is infinite in all perfections (and whose perfections are therefore underivative), but are rather given to us by a less than perfect being, for we cannot have an infinite chain of such givers.

Objecting to this, Richard Dawkins writes, "That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion."

Dawkins should know better. There is a difference between perfections of being as such and perfections of a being. The former are properties such as omniscience, omnipotence, love, eternity, etc. The latter may include things like, say, a penguin's health, length of life, and reproductive success. There are three distinctions here. First, neither of two types of perfection admits a maximum, though in a different way and for a different reason. Perfections of being, because, although omniscience, for example, may be defined as knowledge of all true propositions, the number of such propositions is infinite, e.g., "1 is a number," "2 is a number," etc. Perfections of a being, because our penguin can always have one more child, live one more year, or be a tiny bit more well-suited to its environment or resistant to disease. It follows that ontological perfections are actually infinite; non-ontological perfections are potentially infinite.

Second, "perfection" may mean the perfection of being, of nature, or of happiness. Socrates is better than a pig in the first sense, adult Socrates is better than infant Socrates in the second sense, and Socrates satisfied is better than Socrates dissatisfied in the third sense. And perfections of being are inseparable from it. "Being" and "goodness" are interchangeable, according to St. Thomas. Everything that exists is good to the extent that it exists, and evil is merely a privation of good. It is true that a pen, say, has no knowledge. But it must nonetheless possess some perfection, lest it just disappears. Perfections of any particular thing, on the other hand, are accidental to it. Again, it is true that some health is necessary for the penguin to be alive and therefore to remain a penguin, but that he possesses great health is not essential. In the first case, therefore, we equate perfection with the completeness of being; in the second, we equate it with something's being "really good" in some sense of "good." This equivocation, however, does not nullify but rather proves the difference. The term "perfection" cannot but mean different things when applied to being as opposed to a being. To belabor the point, "being" is perfection; "smelliness" is not.

Third, to quote one of my professors, "perfections appropriate to God don't admit of degrees at all. You can't be 'sort of omniscient' or 'sort of omnibenevolent.' You either are or you aren't, just as you can't 'sort of exist.' They are traits that, if you have them at all, you have them fully. So you could almost say that they 'go with' being, because both are all-or-nothing sorts of characteristics."

But is not God a being, as well? Yes, but He is both; in Him the abstract and the concrete coalesce. So the perfections of God as a being are the perfections of being itself, since God's essence is existence. To put it differently, in God the perfections of being, of nature, and of happiness are one and the same. And therefore all three are actually infinite, since we must take the greater of the actual and the potential infinity.

Thus, our "pre-eminently peerless stinker" is only a potentially infinite quality; it is accidental to the being that has it; and it admits of degrees. It is clear that it cannot exist. On the contrary, an essentially good actual infinite that is separated from any finite goodness by an unbridgeable gap can exist. (God's infinity is the infinity of neither magnitude nor multitude, neither of which can exist as established above, but that of "spiritual greatness" or completeness of being or power and suchlike.) The question is, does it? We see that there is no such thing as infinite stinkiness. While there is such a thing as "maximum heat" (E = mc˛), to use Aquinas's own example, it is not a separate entity such that heat is caused by it. Hence Aquinas's argument that, because other things are caused by some perfect archetype of them, so is being, does not work; he must prove that despite the fact that not all things are caused by such archetypes, being nevertheless is. The only way to do so is for him to say that not only does the perfection of being differ from the "perfection" of stinkiness, as we have outlined above, but that being is different from stinkiness (or fire). There are here four distinct claims.

1. That being is caused. This is proved by the previous three arguments.
   
   
2. That it is (efficiently) caused by something than which nothing greater exists (though not something than which nothing greater can be conceived – we are not dealing with the ontological argument here). This can be justified by the principle that causes are no less than their effects. The physical law of the conservation of energy is an example of this more general law. Since there cannot be an infinity of such causes, they must terminate in something greatest.
   
   
3. That that things's perfection or completeness of being is actually infinite. We have already established that such a thing is possible. Once we demonstrate "that which all men call God"'s pure actuality, we will be able to prove God's absolute perfection, as well, as Aquinas does in (I, 4) and to fill in the details of what "perfection" means.
   
   
4. That such an ontological actual infinite cannot be found in our universe. This seems self-evident, because of metaphysical evil.

Let's call the being which satisfies (1)-(4) "God."

But is not perfection an arbitrary value judgment? Who is to say that a human is more perfect than a crocodile and God, more perfect than a human? To that I will simply reply that judgments of the perfections of being are hard-wired, built into us. We recognize them quite naturally and immediately. Being is better than non-being, life is better than non-life, being able to sense or love is better than not being able to do these things, having rationality is better than not. As we move up the hierarchy of being we get into ever fuller and richer and indeed better way of existing.

The fifth proof is the argument from design. Aquinas's version is as follows: he asks, "What is the cause of the laws of nature?" Why is there necessity in the world? His answer is that any cause, even, say, gravitational attraction, in a way loves the effect and "wants" to see it happen. So even natural causes act toward an end. But "whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence... Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God." Gravity, in other words, is low-level love. And love, if it is to succeed in attaining the end that it seeks, must know how to do so. Gravity's "knowledge" of how to act, Aquinas says, is due to some transcendent intelligence guiding it. Same with the gravity's "power," which, too, is bestowed on it as a permanent gift by God.

A more modern design argument is this. We observe that things in the universe, particularly certain biological systems, and the universe itself exhibit internal organizations that could not have been brought into being by any means other than intelligent design. I have written on this subject before, and the evolution/design debate is my Master's thesis, which is why I will stop here.

How to show that these five properties (unmoved mover, uncaused cause, essential necessity, perfection, and the author of nature) all belong to one being rather than to five different gods? Might not the unmoved mover be different from the designer? This task Aquinas takes on in (I, 5), "The Unity of God." But why, having established that God is unmoved, does Aquinas offer a separate article on His immutability and likewise, that God is essentially necessary, an article on His simplicity, and so on? The answer is, I think, simply methodological. When we deal with God's existence we argue from the universe's incompleteness. Later on the first principle from which to derive His attributes is God's pure actuality.

What of Dawkins's criticism that "Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God; omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts."? The answer is that our exploration of God does not end with the attributes we have just discovered; it has only just begun. In later questions Aquinas examines God's power, knowledge, goodness, etc. Certain things, such as that God grants prayers cannot be known by reason and belong properly to faith. This is because, even though we have shown that the universe is incomplete, we do not know all the ways in which it is incomplete. That God grants prayers is due to the paucity of human power over and knowledge of the world, and it is not obvious that God must necessarily remedy that particular limitation.

Further, God must be outside of space, as well, because it seems impossible for an object to be in space yet not also in time. Hence God has no body which suggests that He is a some kind of intelligence, a mind. (This Aquinas proves in another way in I, 3, 1.) (God cannot be an (immaterial) abstract entity, because those are not causally efficacious.)

Finally, given again kalam's validity, God must be a person. For if the cause of the universe were a mere thing, without intelligence or will, then it would have caused the universe by necessity, because of its very nature. The cause would always have had the sufficient power to create the universe. And then the universe would be everlasting or co-eternal with its cause. Since it is not, according to kalam, and has a beginning, it had to have been created freely.

Thus, we have from this argument that God is a free intelligence existing in uncreated eternity. Pretty good for a seemingly innocuous beginning.

December 30, 2006