The Argument from Contingency says that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature, or in a cause outside of itself.[1]
We’re going to look at two popular challenges that have been raised by skeptics against this argument. But first, let’s quickly lay out some terms to help us better understand the concept of this argument. It’s fairly simple!
Philosophers J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig use arguments which suggest there are only two kinds of being in existence:
“necessary beings, which exist of their own nature and so have no external cause of their existence, and contingent beings, whose existence is accounted for by causal factors outside themselves.”[2]
We can easily imagine a universe without contingent things, that is to say, things that could fail to exist or could have been different. For example: planes, cars, computers, humans, trees, and planets are all things that could fail to exist, because at one point, they didn’t exist at all. Additionally, these are all things that could have been different sizes, colors, shapes, and so on.
Is everything contingent? Or are there some necessary things? That is to say, things that cannot fail to exist and have to be here. Philosophers Alexander Pruss and Josh Rasmussen define necessary things as,
“Something that exists no matter what possible situation obtains. Its non-existence at any time would be impossible in the strongest sense.”[3]
In other words, it would be impossible for this thing not to exist. It cannot come into being and it cannot cease to be. It never started to exist, nor will it ever stop existing. What could fit such a category?
Pruss and Rasmussen seek to demonstrate that there is a necessary thing which they understand to be capable of causation, i.e., anything that is at least partially responsible for some event.[4]
This necessary being would be the ultimate explanation for the existence of our universe. Based on the evidence, we have good reasons to believe that this necessary being is God which I’ll get to later.
Although the Argument from Contingency has been under attack by skeptics for centuries, it’s still alive and well today. Here is one way the argument can be presented:
- Every contingent thing has an explanation for the existence of that thing.
- Considering all the contingent things that exist, if there is an explanation of the existence of those things, then there is a necessary being.
- Therefore, a necessary being exists (i.e., God).[5]
Many skeptics over the years have denied that there must be a necessary and ultimate foundation for all reality. Let’s look at two popular objections which I think have been refuted by other philosophers.
Defeating the First Challenge
The first challenge we’ll look at was raised by the eighteenth-century, Scottish atheist philosopher David Hume. Hume claimed that an explanation of a whole can be made up of whatever explains each part.
So, he and others, have suggested that maybe there is an explanation of the universe as a whole which can be given entirely in terms of explanations of its parts, such as rocks, animals, stars, atoms, molecules, energy, fundamental particles, and so on, stretching back for all eternity.[6]
Therefore, the explanation of the universe (whole) can be found in the explanation of the things (parts) it’s made up of. This means God would not be the ultimate explanation for the contingent universe.
This idea attempts to refute premise 2 of the contingency argument which says: Considering all the contingent things that exist, if there is an explanation of the existence of those things, then there is a necessary being.
God is the necessary being that premise 2 references, but if the universe as a whole can be explained by explanations of its parts, then God is unnecessary and doesn’t need to be the ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe. So, we have a problem.
Pruss and Rasmussen point out that in some cases an explanation of a whole can be given solely by an explanation of its parts, however, this certainly cannot be the case in every scenario.[7] And it certainly cannot be the case with our universe.
Here’s a simple example of a whole that can be explained by its parts. Suppose you have a snake exhibit at the zoo, and it’s filled with snakes. The explanation of the existence of the snake exhibit (whole) is explained by the fact that each snake (parts) was brought to that exhibit. These individual explanations of the snakes combine to explain why all the snakes are at the exhibit; therefore, no further explanation is needed.
This seems to be a coherent explanation for why all the snakes are at the exhibit. However, let’s imagine that the existence of each snake is explained solely by the causal activities of another snake.
The first snake is just there by itself slithering around and having a good time. This snake somehow causes the next snake to arrive; the second snake causes the third snake to arrive; the third snake causes the fourth; the fourth causes the fifth, and so on and so forth.
If this is the case, then the chain of explanations is either circular or infinite. The existence of the snakes is explained solely by the activities of those same snakes, but we can rightly ask why those snakes exist.[8]
It seems that an explanation outside of the snakes is still required in order to adequately explain the existence of the snakes.
Pruss and Rasmussen take the idea further by imagining that there is a really big snake that has grown by an infinite number of stages of development, saying,
“The growth process has occurred as follows: the front half of the snake was caused by events within an adjacent quarter section of it, which in turn was caused by events within an adjacent eighth section, which in turn was caused by events within the preceding sixteenth section, and so on, so that each section was produced by events within an adjacent section half its size. In this scenario, each part of the snake was caused by events within another part, ad infinitum.”[9]
Even if this snake had been growing for all of eternity in the past, can we really believe that just because there is an explanation of how this snake grew, it somehow sufficiently explains why the snake exists in the first place? Why doesn’t a different snake exist or none at all?
Just because some part of the snake has a causal explanation does not mean it can explain the existence of the whole snake. Pruss and Rasmussen note,
“Each part of the snake has a cause in terms of another snake part, yet one might still wonder why those very snake parts all exist at all.”[10]
There must be an explanation outside of this contingent snake that explains its existence. Likewise, the contingent universe as a whole cannot be solely explained by its individually caused parts.
We may rightly ask as we did the snake: why does this universe exist in the first place, rather than a different one or none at all?
This means there must be a necessary thing out there that caused the non-necessary (contingent) stuff to exist.
Defeating the Second Challenge
Another objection that denies the reality of a necessary foundation, i.e., God, has been raised by a pair of atheist philosophers who believe that all non-fundamental contingent things have an explanation, while fundamental contingent things do not.[11]
This idea says that it’s possible that fundamental contingent things at their very core are basic elements that are inseparable because they lack parts and cannot be made up of anything more basic.[12]
In other words, because there is no pre-existing material to compose/assemble these fundamental contingent things like quarks (elementary particles that every material thing is made up of), then therefore these quarks do not require an explanation for their existence which refutes the contingency argument.
Recall, the contingency argument says that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature, or in a cause outside of itself.
Because these fundamental contingent things (quarks) do not have causes outside of themselves, then they do not have an explanation for their existence from a cause outside of itself, nor are they explained by a necessity of their own nature since they are contingent and not necessary. Therefore, their existence remains unexplained, and they defeat the contingency argument.
One reply that Pruss and Rasmussen give to overcome this objection by the atheists is to say that if fundamental non-composed contingent particles can exist without a cause, then we should wonder why these contingent things don’t spontaneously snap into existence all the time.[13]
Why aren’t we witnessing this stuff happen? Nobody has ever seen anything pop into existence from nothing unexplained and uncaused.[14] Every contingent thing must have an explanation or cause for its existence; therefore, the atheist’s objection here seems refuted.
Another reply they give to the objection says that regardless of how basic or fundamental these non-composed contingent things are, these elementary particles still cry out for an explanation for their existence.
Regardless of what this contingent thing is like, we would rightly wonder why it exists rather than not.
And if this thing exists the by necessity of its own nature, then that would mean it couldn’t fail to exist and that it must be here because it would be impossible for it not to be. But if it exists by necessity, then it would be a necessary thing and not a contingent thing.
If that’s the case, then it has an explanation for its existence, namely, that it exists by the necessity of its own nature. This reply also refutes the atheist’s objection.
Two Challenges Defeated
We have looked at two popular objections raised against the Argument from Contingency that have been defeated.
We may rightly ask why something exists rather than not, and we’ve never witnessed anything popping into existence out of nothing unexplained and uncaused.
Therefore, we have very good reasons to believe there is an Ultimate Foundation for all reality that exists by the necessity of its own nature. This necessary being is God, and the only reason our universe exists is because He exists.
God is the Ultimate Foundation of reality and the Uncaused First Cause that caused everything else into existence. Thanks for reading!
Blessings,
Andrew Drinkard
[1] See William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith 3rd ed (Crossway Publishing, Wheaton, IL), 2008, 106-111 for Craig’s treatment of this particular argument.
[2] J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 479.
[3] Alexander R. Pruss and Joshua L. Rasmussen, Necessary Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 1.
[4] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 2; they leave open the possibility for abstract objects like numbers, propositions, and properties to have causal powers, thereby making them, in their stipulated sense, to be a kind of concrete thing. However, because I don’t believe that abstract objects have causal powers, I am going to exclude that possibility from my article.
[5] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 34; they point out that by “concrete thing” they mean “something that possibly causes something.” In other words, it has causal powers and can produce an affect. I take this necessary being to be God based on the supporting arguments I give throughout this article.
[6] Hume raised several objections. Another one in which he asked why a material thing couldn’t be necessary or fail to exist. If something like matter or energy is necessary, then there wouldn’t need to be a transcendent cause of the universe. Pruss and Rasmussen point out that even if this were true, then this material foundation would be the “source of all power” and “the ultimate foundation of every possible configuration of consciousness.” Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 49. However, I don’t believe we have good reason to believe this is true based on the cosmological evidence we have which shows time, space and matter came into existence out of nothing. Additionally, Scripture reveals that God has existed alone at one point before all of creation, and God is not a material substance, rather, he is a spirit.
[7] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 49-50.
[8] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 49-51. They comment on an illustration about Eskimos, but I wanted to use snakes as a segue to their next illustration which involved the infinitely growing snake. Example also found in Rasmussen and Leon, Is God the Best Explanation of Things?, 18.
[9] Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 50-51.
[10] Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 51.
[11] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 63. This idea has been raised by Graham Oppy and the particular proposal given about non-fundamental and fundamental contingent things by Felipe Leon.
[12] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 63.
[13] See Pruss and Rasmussen, Necessary Existence, 63.
[14] See J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 2nd ed (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 480. Some skeptics have appealed to quantum physics to challenge the idea that something can come from “nothing.” They suggest that virtual particles at the sub-atomic level can randomly come into existence out of the quantum vacuum. However, Craig provides strong reasons for why this objection does not hold. First, he points out that several physicists do not believe that sub-atomic events are uncaused, but rather are deterministic. This means they have a cause and are not random. There are several different theories concerning the quantum realm, and some quantum physicists believe there is a cause behind this realm. So, if anyone brings this up to counter the first premise, simply point out that not all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree with their objection, and that other physicists believe these particles are not randomly coming into existence without a cause. Second, on the traditional, indeterministic interpretation, particles do not pop into existence out of literally “nothing;” rather, they are coming from the energy contained in the sub-atomic vacuum. This vacuum is a sea of violent fluctuating energy that is governed by our existing physical laws—it is far from nothing! See Moreland and Craig, (2017), 480.
