Justification of God

I am currently in pain but I do not care, I will write because it is said that doing something will actually drive the pain away. It is not always what I experience, that the pain I experience actually debilitates me and that it gets worse when I do or try to do something. However, I recognize that it is my personal contract with myself, such that I must do it and write regardless of my pain. So, what will I write for the benefit of my audience, now that I have an audience? However, I write not solely for the audience such that I am a slave of my audience, instead let us reexamine my relationship to you, my reader.

I do not write in particular for your demands, rather I write what I want to write, directed to you, but it is instead what I want to write simply, instead of what you want to read. This seems to be a weird relationship of writer and reader, but that is how I establish this relationship. Remember as well that I have chosen you as my reader and all of you have consented to read my works as they are. As such, while I have said that I write for the goodness of the reader, it is also written for my own benefit, either for the increase of my understanding or for self expression which in the end reinforces my own understanding.

So dear reader, what will I present to you in this writing for your enjoyment? I will write about He who is the ultimate meaning of our lives, that is God. In fact, for most of my writings I will indeed write about God because a friend once told me, “Write about what you love the most.” So, because I love God the most, I shall write about Him. Yesterday as I recall it, I fell into a doubt in God which led to a crisis of faith which brought me to the brink of apostasy. So, I recognized the need to make a written record of the justification of my belief in God in order to remind myself of the existence of God whenever I lose faith or I forget my faith. The writing after this part may have a recognizably different style as I will write in philosophical terms, but I do hope it is understandable.

There are various arguments for the existence of God. In this first argument, I shall recall what my friend, SB, has told me about the argument from motion. Motion here refers to any kind of change, and the actual argument is about the reason for change, in other words, causation. There are 2 kinds of causation, horizontal and vertical causation. Horizontal causation is when one event or object leads to another event or object in simply one instance. For example, parents lead to their children, and their children become parents of their own children. Were the parents to perish, the children will remain. Vertical causation is when the existence of the successor is dependent on the predecessor. For example, the orbital course of the earth is dependent on the existence of the sun, were the sun to perish, in 8 minutes the earth will begin to travel in a straight line and not in an orbit, for the sun has ceased to exercise gravity over the earth.

Either vertical or horizontal causation leads to a chain of causation which must have a clear beginning. The chain of causation cannot be infinitely long backwards, in other words we cannot have an infinite regression. Why is this? The reason is the chain of causation and the objects involved within it are fundamentally finite, so there cannot be an infinitely regressive chain of causation. Another way of thinking about it is that the prime cause of the chain of causation must exist before the entire chain of causation and thus outside of the chain of causation. Imagine a series of gears, it cannot move by its own, instead it must be moved from outside.

I will now present my own thoughts on the infinite regress. I have read this somewhere, that if there were an infinite regress, there can be no motion at all. However, I do not truly comprehend the argument so I will not use that argument. My thought is that an eternal process of change, that which has no beginning in time nor any end in time, that is eternal time, requires an infinite cause. Consider a simple universe of 3 states, A, B, and C. A becomes B, B becomes C, C becomes A, and so on forever. For A to turn into B, A must have the possibility of turning into B. The same goes for the rest of the sequence. However, for the sequence to go on forever, this universe must have possibility of going on forever. This possibility of eternal change is what we call infinite power.

That means, the universe is somehow infinite, that is the entire universe is infinite. From there, we can reason our way into every attribute of the Being which we call God. However, let us take this a bit slowly. In what way is the universe infinite? The universe is infinite in terms that it has the power of infinite change. However, can a fundamentally finite thing contain infinite power? Yes, time can be infinite and still be in a way finite. So a thing can be in one way finite, and in another way infinite. As such we still cannot reason directly that the universe (which means everything or allness) is infinite in its very nature. However, it is said that the universe contains infinite power, what is power?

Power is the ability, capacity, or more precisely possibility to cause a change in the state of affairs of the universe. The infinite power in the universe is still not truly infinite as it is simply infinite in terms of duration, but not infinite in terms of the possibilities of change. Since the universe only contains 3 states, then the universe cannot possibly change into any other state. The sequence is also defined for the universe in a rule, that A leads to B, B leads to C, and C leads to A. There is no way in which this universe is actually infinite.

So I was trying to get into the idea of the infinite power being God, but apparently I cannot. As such let us move on. There is still one entity which is above the sequence that is the rule of the sequence itself. What makes the universe determined that it will go in that particular sequence of ABC? The answer is within that universe there has to be a law of ABC which manifests in the real sequence of ABC. This law of ABC is what regulates ABC to be ABC. If there is no law in the universe, then there will be no ABC, why is this?

We can reason that if there is something in this universe, for the very least that something is allowed, or is possible in this universe. However, that possibility has to be made actually existent by something, a law, or an actualizer, or an obligator. This actualizer is what makes the thing not only a possibility, but a certainty. So long as the actualizer does not exist, then the thing remains a possibility. This actualizer, cannot be part of the thing that it is about to actualize, as the thing it will actualize does not have any power yet, it does not exist yet. If the thing that is possible has the power to actualize itself, then that thing and its actualizer is the same thing. Yet, we still have to acknowledge that there is the power which actualizes the object, and the object which is actualized by the power.

The power of the object can be the same as the object or it can be different from the object, but by logic alone we see that they are 2 distinct things, even if they are actually united. Now, what can we deduce about this power? The actualizer must contain the essence of the object it is to actualize such that it actualizes the object. For example, a car remains possible in the universe, and then an actualizer actualizes the car such that it becomes a certain existence in the universe. Were the car to not be within the actualizer in any way, the car cannot possibly come into existence as there was never any car to come into existence in the first place.

The actualizer is indeed part of the universe, but it is distinct from the things it actualizes. The actualizer then must also have the power of making a choice of how the thing is actualized, which may include spatial and temporal position of the object. Therefore, in an analogous manner, the actualizer has access to all of the universe and even beyond the existing universe. Why must the actualizer has access to things beyond that which exists? Because it must restrict other possibilities from coming into existence, and only determine a certain possibility to come into existence. In that way, the actualizer has in analogous manner, an infinite mind.

What more can we know about the actualizer of the possibilities into existence? We know that the actualizer is what previous philosophers have called “First Cause”. So even in a case of eternal change, there still has to be a First Cause. This First Cause is indeed part of “everything” and is thus part of the “universe”, but it is above the things which it actualizes. The First Cause is necessary as were there to be any change, there has to be an actualizer, a law, which turns the possibility of the sequence into a certainty. Without the actualizer or the First Cause, there can be nothing at all.

The First Cause, being existentially independent of things below it, and having nothing above it, as the actualizer cannot possibly have a beginning or it would be something which needs to be actualized, is what we call existentially infinite. Existential Infinity means the First Cause is truly infinite, and this leads to a fundamental attribute of the First Cause, Simplicity. The First Cause is simple in the sense that it is not composed of parts. For were it to be composed of parts, it would be finite, for the parts would all be different from each other and thus lack something the other possess, thus the thing it composes would also be finite. The First Cause is singular, as were there to be another First Cause, the problem of finity would come into play.

The First Cause is existentially infinite, thus it must have infinite knowledge in analogous manner. In fact, it must be Knowledge itself. As Knowledge, the First Cause possesses and is in fact all Goodness. The First Cause, being the actualizer of all things, is Power itself, for the First Cause is the Law and Actualizer which actualizes all things which are actualized. The First Cause is also immutable as it is Existentially Infinite, something which is Infinite is completely immutable. That means the First Cause is Purely Actualized without beginning or end, this is the being we call God.

God is necessary in any kind of universe. Because God is the very thing which allows anything which is not Himself to exist. God can exist without anything, but God must exist if there is anything other than God. Without God, everything remains a possibility, and not a certainty. A possibility needs something other than itself to actualize itself. For all possibilities, there can only be actualizer, that is God. For the nature of the actualizer has been reasoned, that it has to be infinite. It is infinite because it does not need any actualization, it is actual without beginning or end. Therefore, God exists.