Every Effect Must Have a Cause

5th, Defending faith

Law of Causality

We are here again today to study four principles of knowledge that are crucial for any sound defense of Christianity. Principles that are constantly under attack by those who deny the existence of God and even those who do say there is a God but want him in there own image.

We have taken on and isolated four non-negotiable principles that are:
1. necessary to all human knowledge,
2. assumed by all people
3. assumed also, in the texts of the 66 books of the bible.

The four are of the greatest necessity: 1. the Law of non-contradiction, 2. the law of causality, 3. the basic reliability of sense perception and 4. the analogical use of language.

Last time we looked at LNC and found that all denials of it are forced and temporary. We cannot, on a day to day basis, survive without it. Something that at the same time that -- is and isn’t -- is impossible in the same place and in the same relationship.

The Law of Causality (LC) was used in a formidable way throughout all of history of western theoretical thought. Which was used to argue for the existence of God by reasoning by the appearance of this world and back to the “original cause.” An adequate and sufficient cause that would explain this world and all of this universe. So thinkers throughout this long period, reasoned from a causal base, back to God as the originator of the ‘first causes.’ When you go back to Aristotle, he says that God is the ‘first cause because all things, thereafter, require a cause.’

Every effect must have a cause

Since the 18th century considerable skepticism has grown against the Law of cause and effect or LC. If you have read Bertrand Russell’s book “Why I am not a Christian” he gives his own personal testimony to his pilgrimage with respect to theism. As a boy growing up he was deeply impressed with the argument for the existence of God that was based upon the need for a “first cause.” Which is based upon the Law of Causality. And so as a young boy he embraced the idea of the existence of God. Until he read and essay by John Stuart Mill who raised this basic objection against causal thinking. Mill said it this way, “everything requires a cause, then, manifestly, God would require a cause. And so whoever caused God would require a cause.” You, in his mind, cannot reason back to God on the basis of the principle that everything must have a cause. Now, then, when Bertrand Russell read this essay at 17. He said it was an epiphany for him and he realized that the law of cause and effect would not lead you to the conclusion of a first cause but would lead you on a endless regress that would get you, in the final analysis, not to God but to nowhere. So he, therefore, denied the utility of arguing for the existence of God on this basis of this law of causality.

Let me respond to this very briefly, and simply. Mill was a brilliantly and classically trained thinker. But he made a fundamental and foundational error in his thinking with respect to causality. The error was the error of definition. He assumed that the definition of LC was that “everything must have a cause.” And if this were true -- that reasoning back to the very beginning was a cause -- Mill’s thinking would be valid. Let’s put it in simple terms. The example of “two little boys” and they were sitting around and the one boy said, “where did the trees come from?” His friend said, “God mad the trees.” Where did flowers come from? Well, God made the flowers. Okay, he says, where did you come from? God made me. Then he says, Who mad God? His partner said, God made himself. This, seems, so profound. But, no no no no no, God can’t make himself.

The point is we don’t have to have an antecedent cause for God. He is an “uncaused cause.” You don’t have to provide a cause for an eternal being. The problem here is with the definition. Rather than Mills explanation; the definition stated properly, says, “every effect must have a antecedent cause.” If Mills had been working with that definition of causality he would have never got himself into the mess he did. He would not have lead Russell into the same morass of confusion. ( An asides, Russell maintained this till the day he died. That error of thinking. Everything must have a cause then an effect, is wrong. But every effect must have a cause. If we can find something that does not have an effect, something that has the power of being - within itself - is from eternity. That kind of thing would not be an effect. When we define the character of God we say the God is a self-existent eternal being who is independent, underived, non-contingent, and un-caused. If so then, not an effect. Only things that are made are effects.

What is a formal truth?

“Every effect must have a cause“…Is a statement that we say is formally true. What is a formal truth? That which is analytically true. (Oops, he just made it more abstract.) It is that which is true by definition. If you analyze, in this sentence, the words and their relationship to each other, you will see that the whole of the statement is true and by definition, has to be true.

An example would be, a bachelor is a unmarried man. You have the subject which is bachelor. Next in the sentence you say something about the bachelor to describe him. You predicate something about the bachelor. What do you find out about the bachelor that you didn’t already know in the subject? The answer is, in an analytic statement you don’t learn anything else about the bachelor given in the predicate that was stated in the subject. A triangle has three sides. It is true by definition.

What is an effect? Something that was made, produced, happened - or - something that was caused. By definition an effect has a cause by something else.

What is a cause? What does a cause do? It makes an effect. Something cannot both be an effect and a cause at the same time in the same relationship. In this most rudimentary of understandings it is an extension of the law of non-contradiction.

This formal truth or principle doesn’t teach anything directly about reality. It doesn’t say that outside somewhere there aren’t other things that are uncaused. But hypothetically we can say that in all the things outside of us, the planes-birds-trees-cars are effects. Then we know for sure that they have causes.

If something is an effect
It must have a cause

If you can prove that something is an effect then you can establish it had some kind of antecedent cause.

Sproul wrote a book a few years back and there was a written criticism from a philosopher that came back and it detailed one substantive criticism. Sproul will not allow for an uncaused effect. So Sproul wrote him a nice letter back. He said your right I won’t allow for it. I thought this stance was a virtue and not a vice? So he asked him if he could give an example, anywhere in the universe, of where there is an uncaused effect. He didn’t write him back with the answer, as of yet.

Next time I will deal with David Hume’s classic analysis against causality.

That is just one reason for all the avalanche of doubt on these causal principles which are used to try to demolish classical theism. Next time I will deal with David Hume’s critical analysis of causality, the British empirical philosopher. His watershed critique on causality has lead many later thinkers to believe that Hume demolished the very definition of causality. Who want to avoid and deny the enormous power of causal thought that drives people to give a sufficient cause for effects that we recognize to be effects.

Every effect must have a cause = everything must have a cause?
No, they are not equal or the same.

Some of the far reaching and diverse thinking that utilizes LC

1. Aristotle and his Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics
2. Determinism and existentialism in which the universe is no more than a chain of events following on after another according to the law of cause and effect.
3. Using the scientific method, scientists set up experiments to determine causality in the physical world.
4. Physicists conclude that certain elemental forces: gravity the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism are said to be the four fundamental forces which are the causes of all other events in the universe. Causality is hard to interpret to ordinary language from many different physical theories. One problem is typified by the moon's gravity. It isn't accurate to say, "the moon exerts a gravitic pull and then the tides rise." In Newtonian mechanics gravity, rather, is a law expressing a constant observable relationship among masses, and the movement of the tides is an example of that relationship. There are no discrete events or "pulls" that can be said to precede the rising of tides. Interpreting gravity causally is even more complicated in general relativity. Another important implication of Causality in physics is its intimate connection to the Second Law of Thermodynamics Quantum mechanics is yet another branch of physics in which the nature of causality is somewhat unclear
5. Cosmological argument One of the classic arguments for the existence of God is known as the "Cosmological argument" or "First cause" argument. It works from the premise that every natural event is the effect of a cause. If this is so, then the events that caused today's events must have had causes themselves, which must have had causes, and so forth. If the chain never ends, then one must uphold the hypothesis of an "actual infinite", which is often regarded as problematic, see Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel. If the chain does end, it must end with a non-natural or supernatural cause at the start of the natural world -- e.g. a creation by God.
6. Karma is the belief held by some major religions that a person's actions cause certain effects in the current life and/or in future life, positively or negatively. For example, if a person always does good deeds then it is believed that he or she will be "rewarded" for his or her behavior with fortunate events such as avoiding fatal accident or winning the lottery. If he or she always commits antagonistic behaviors, then it is believed that he will be punished with unfortunate events. In Buddhist philosophy, especially Zen, the word karma simply means the law of cause and effect, i.e. Causality.