Is God Necessary?

Introduction

            Is God necessary? This seems like a rather interesting question when one decides to actually ponder it. The main reason for this discourse is centered around the general question that many seekers (or would be debunkers) ask, then who created God? I do not plan to answer this question directly but rather want to present some analyses of certain things and let the reader come to the conclusion. This whole discussion centers around the idea of contingent and necessary beings. The ontological argument (i.e. the argument that says God is necessary, so God exists, and this is predicated on the idea that God is the greatest conceivable being) essentially reasons that God is necessary so, therefore, God exists. This is the general path that I intend to take as I move through the information.

Is God Necessary?

            Now, I want to preface this discussion with the fact that be it a naturalistic worldview or a theistic worldview (polytheist and pantheist included here) one will eventually come to the point of some kind of uncreated first cause. By this I mean to say that if one moves forward based on the assumption of a naturalistic framework there will be the inevitable conclusion that there is some aspect about the natural world that is uncaused (i.e. nothing brought this particular part into existence, it just is). The same is true for theism but the conclusion is that God or God’s or the ultimate reality is the uncaused beginning. But does this really work in all cases?

            What I am proposing here is a propositional argument about necessity and contingency. My argument goes something like this:

P1- Anything that begins to exist (as opposed to does not have a beginning), does so contingently

P2- The universe began to exist (can plug in anything that has a beginning)

C- Therefore, the universe exists contingently

Now, this is not some fancy way to trip someone up in a conversation but has a legitimate point to make. If something has a beginning, that things existence is predicated on the existence of something else, therefore it is contingent. This does not assume that contingent beings cannot bring into existence other contingent beings and does not suggest that once a contingent being does bring something into existence that thing becomes necessary (at least in the grand scheme of things). Rather, contingent beings do have the power to bring into existence other contingent beings and could, therefore, be considered necessary in the small sense for only that being that they brought into existence, but it does not extend beyond that particular being.

            When someone asks the question, who created God they are making the assumption that God is simply another contingent being. I think this assumption is rooted in humanities inability to fully grasp the idea that a quality of personhood does not necessarily include the aspect of contingency. Possibly this could be connected to the fact that we have not observed any being that has to exist necessarily (empiricism) and all beings that we are familiar with are of the contingent category. However, the point here is that when one is thinking back to the ultimate cause for the existence of everything that no matter the view you hold there is going to have to be something that is necessary (be it some part of the natural order or something that is outside of the natural order).

            With that said, I believe that most would accept the idea that the ultimately necessary thing would have to just exist and have done so forever or all of the time or to say it differently it would not have a beginning. The reason for suggesting this is if you do not recognize that the first necessary thing did not have a beginning then you fall into an infinite regress of things (i.e. one thing explains this, and this explains that and this goes on and on to an infinite number of explanatory things). This is a problem because this is illogical and does not give an ultimate answer because the answer is actually endlessly continuing on into infinity. So, what is one to do then?

            Let me work from the naturalistic angle. Since the universe has been shown to have had a beginning then it can be accepted that the universe is contingent. But prior to the existence of the universe, there was nothing because the big bang brought about all physical matter and time. Some will say that prior to the big bang there was a vacuum where particles existed but this is in fact not nothing and is actually something. Particles are part of the natural order of things thus prior to the big bang or the universe coming into existence these particles could not have existed. Let me say it this way since particles are contingent beings there would have to be something that would cause them to exist and the big bang is where all matter came into existence, therefore the big bang is what brought those particles into existence. So, those particles could not exist prior to the big bang because the thing that caused them to have existence has not happened yet. The view that there was some natural thing existing prior to all natural things existing just does not seem like a plausible view to hold. To remain consistent then we have to assume that prior to the big bang nothing (as far as the physical/ natural world) existed. This is exactly what I was trying to make clear since the universe had a beginning then it is contingent and thus has to owe its existence to something else. But this thing cannot be made up of physical or natural matter since we know that the universe gave birth to all physical things. What is the naturalistic framework to do here?

            From here the only way that I could see the naturalist going is that they could ultimately deny the existence of necessary or contingent things. I would caution against making such a drastic jump since if one is to deny the existence of anything necessary than they lose the value of truth and knowledge. For example, some philosophers say that numbers exist necessarily but if one is to deny that necessary things exist than numbers would not exist at least not in the way where they exist in each possible world. Something that is necessary would exist in every possible world. So, if numbers do not have to exist all the time then there would be a large disparity between the logical consistency of each possible world. They also lose their value and knowledge follows directly behind. Since nothing has the grounding of being necessary than nothing can be known to any reasonable degree since everything finds its grounding only in something that is contingent upon another thing. What you end up with is an infinite regress of things (one thing explains this, and this thing explains that and so on).

            How about the theist? The theist reasons that prior to the universe God is the one who existed at all points. God is the one necessary thing that has always existed. Nothing caused God since God’s existence is necessary thus, he would need to exist in each possible world. This view is actually quite strong since God is not part of the physical or natural order this gives that added advantage of already being outside of the thing everyone is trying to explain. Could everything exist without God or is God necessary? Based on how the only viable options for the reason everything exists is either some being that is outside of nature created nature or nature created itself the answer seems to be plainly obvious. One could deny that anything physical exists but I think there are a great number of difficulties with holding this view.

Conclusion

            I realize that I did not go in great depth on the theistic side of things but the point was to highlight this from a naturalistic point of view. Are there objections that can be levied against what I have proposed here? Of course, there can be objections to any and all positions it is simply a matter of the validity of those objections and how they seek to answer the original question. So, if a view is going to present an objection, they also need to submit a legitimate answer for the position they are objecting too. The reason this makes good sense is that you are showing the weaknesses of the original argument, but you are giving another option and if you do not give an option then you are leaving open the option that nothing can answer this or nihilism. If there is more clarification that is needed for this discourse or someone would want this conversation to develop further I would be happy to explain or add to this because I believe it is important to weigh all the pertinent evidence and hold as close to what the truth is as opposed to what makes us feel good.