Resolved: The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument is Sound - 4

Now, my opponent is correct to assume that I am not going to context premise 3. I also acknowledge that 4 logically follows from premises 1 - 3. I am therefore going to focus on premises 1 and 2 in my responses. So let's start at the beginning with premise 1: every existing thing has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. It seems to me that here my opponent spent a great deal of time justifying a statement that is trivially true by definition. For instance, if I were to claim that every living creature in the universe is either a pig or not a pig, then that would be obviously true by definition; since the term 'not a pig' covers everything that isn't a pig. In exactly the same way, the term 'explanation by necessity of its own nature' is sufficiently vague and broad to cover all existing things whose existence cannot be explained by an external cause. So there isn't really a flaw here - just a statement that is vacuously true. But I would make the following comments: 1. Notice that my opponent has not proved - and has not claimed to have proved - that the 'explanations' talked of in this premise are intended. By this I mean that he has not shown (or indeed argued) that the explanation is a result of some conscious mind that intends to bring the object into existence. For example, the explanation for the existence of the oak tree in my street is that it grew from an acorn through processes that can be explained by Biology. We have no reason to believe however that a mind consciously chose to create that oak tree. 2. Notice that partitioning all existing things into two categories does not necessarily imply that both those categories are non-empty. For instance, it would be trivially true to say that all living creatures are either unicorns or not unicorns; but this truthful claim does not prove the existence of unicorns. Similarly, premise 1 gives us no reason to believe that there actually are existing things who exist only due to the necessity of their own nature. So let's move on to premise 2, which is where my opponent's argument begins to collapse rather spectacularly. Notice what he has to prove here. First he has to prove that the universe itself is (to use his terminology) a contingent, and so, by definition, requiring an external cause. Then he has to prove that this external cause is actually God. So let's examine each of these claims in turn. Does my opponent successfully show that the universe is contingent? In my view, he does not. He simply notes that the universe could have developed in a different way, with planets in different positions and stars with different luminosities for instance. This is true, but it only demonstrates that the planets and stars within the universe are contingent, not that the universe itself is contingent. My opponent gives us no reason whatsoever to believe that the universe itself, the space in which everything exists, is not such that its explanation is the 'necessity of its own existence. ' Even if my opponent could successfully demonstrate that the universe requires an external cause however, he nevertheless runs into a far more serious problem - how does he know that this external cause is God? Or to be more specific, how does he know that this external cause is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God of the Bible? This is the fundamental problem with the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, and the related Kalam Cosmological argument. Both these arguments 'prove' the existence of an external cause that created the universe, and both arguments then go on to label this cause 'God' without any justification. However the truth is that these arguments tell us nothing at all about the nature of this external cause. They do not tell us whether or not this cause has a mind, they do not tell us whether or not this cause intended to create the universe, they do not tell us anything about this cause's personality and nature (if he/she/it does have a mind! ) In short, my opponent has no reason to believe that this external cause (if it exists) is the God of the Bible, as opposed to, for example, Allah, Zeus, Wotan, Apollo, Vishnu or the Great Cosmic Space Turtle. Furthermore, this argument does not even prove that this external cause is necessary (as opposed to contingent. ) How does my opponent know, for example, that this universe was not created as an offshoot of a far bigger universe by a race of highly evolved contingent beings, who in terms of science and technology are billions of years ahead of us. To this point my opponent might respond that he can apply the same argument to them and eventually generate a necessary 'first cause'. However, this misses the point. The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, as articulated by my opponent, is meant to show that this universe, the one that we live in, was created by 'God'. Even the possibility that the universe was in fact created by highly evolved contingent beings is enough to destroy the conclusion of this argument, and it is a possibility that the argument cannot disprove. For these reasons therefore, I claim that that the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument, far from being sound, has very weak foundations indeed that collapse under the slightest scrutiny; and I look forward to my opponent's response.