Metaphysics - Ch. 6 (B)

(Originally written July 31, 2006 in Book 6)

Metaphysics - Peter van Inwagen

Ch. 6 (continued)

The first cause argument is a cosmological argument. But the First Cause Argument begs the question 'why does the first being exist?' by answering 'because it always has existed.'

One cosmological argument for why things exists without appealing to the principle of sufficient reason goes as follows:

An independent being is one who relies on nothing outside of itself for its existence.
A dependent being is one who relies on things outside of itself for its existence.
There can be no independent and contingent being(s). "It is a necessary truth that if there are any beings that in no way, or in any degree depend for their existence on things outside themselves, then those beings are necessary... for every being that exists, there must be at least a partial explanation for the fact of its existence and if a being was truly independent then there could only be one explanation of any sort for its existence: that its non-existence was impossible" (van Inwagen, 111).

This argument suffers because one of its premises is that the world is an individual thing. Both theists and atheists will want to reject this premise (but for different reasons).

Through any argument thus far we have proved the existence of a necessary being, but van Inwagen claims that if there is no necessary being then there can be no answer to the question, Why is there anything at all?

Metaphysics has not or is unable to produce a logical answer for why there is anything at all because it has failed to produce the argument proving the existence of a necessary being.

Some scientists claim that the whole of metaphysics has failed to produce an answer, since has succeeded with the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang theory states that there used to be less space than there is now; that is, space is continually spreading out. If we trace it backwards approximately 10-15 thousand million years we would reach the mathematical origin of the universe: the singularity. Some scientists accept this, but most have an anti-religious bent. Others reject this, partly because they have a belief in God.

Alan Sandage, "the father of modern astronomy" states that, "science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why there is something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science" (van Inwagen, 115).

The scientific answer is hopelessly flawed. It labels 'nothingness' as an object with he property of instability. Nothingness is not an object and cannot therefore possess properties. Instability is a purely temporal property so even if nothingness were an object it would be an object outside of time and could not possess any temporal properties like instability.

Even the science of quantum field theory there exists a "quantum vacuum", But, a vacuum is not nothing; it is something (the lowest energy state of the quantum field).

"Nothingness is unstable" is merely an linguistic slogan. It is really "the quantum vacuum is unstable". But the quantum vacuum is merely a modification of the quantum field and the quantum field is most definitely something and not nothing.

Science has not succeeded in answering the question why is there anything instead of nothing. They have merely caused confusion through word games of substituting 'nothing' or 'nothingness' for 'vacuum'