I read recently in Nous a review of a variety of Cosmological argument that says:

God exists because Something had to create the Heavens and the Earth and whatever created the Heavens and the Earth is what we call God.

The author broke this down symbolically as follows:

(1) If E(heavens and earth) -> Ex: !x -> !E(heavens and earth) 
(2) if (x -> E(heavens and earth) && !Ex -> !E(heavens and earth) ) -> x = God

Thus quickly displaying the metaphysical nature of logic itself plainly for us.

The author went on to point out that the argument in (1) needs some more "explaining" before it can be allowed to go through, in particular an explanation of what constitutes "heaven and earth" and why we would expect that the existence of Heaven and Earth would entail the existence of something without which it would not exist.

The author considers a few options for the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" - the totality of events, the totality of facts, the totality of objects - but seems to think that there's a problem with sufficiently well restricting whatever totality we choose so that it seems plausible that it must have an explanation, cause or reason.

Secondly, the author objects that the force of "->" above is unclear - that the necessity of the necessitated object is not given as a "reason" or a "cause" or a "condition", where cause would be interpreted materially, reason interpreted epistemically and "condition" interpreted abstractly (e.g. logically).

Lastly the author objected that any suggested use of "->" that made it required for the existence of the Heavens and Earth would also apply to God, since the question "why is there any such thing as God" would seem to arise just as it does in the case of the Heavens and the Earth.

I - THE TOTALITY OF CONTINGENT FACTS: U

Unfortunately, the author did not consider the actual argument as usually given here, viz that the "Heavens and Earth" is constituted by the totality of Contingent Facts - facts that could have been otherwise but just happen to be the way they are.

That is, the set of true facts satisfying the condition: 

U: (AF: F & Pos(!F))

If the author had considered THAT definition it would have been clear how to adequately demarcate the constitution of "Heavens and Earth" as everything that might not have been the way it is in fact.

It would also be clear from that definition why the the existence of that totality, U, stands in need of a "reason", what kind of "reason" it stands in need of, and why whatever would fit the bill would not itself also stand in need of the same kind of reason.

TWO KINDS OF WHY

In particular, it seems that the Contingent world stands in need of explanation for there arises the question "why is this the case, rather than that" or "how did this come to be at all?" both of which are varieties of the general question "why F?". But it's important to note that there are two different questions and that for contingent questions it is not always necessary that we have both, but only rather that we have an answer to the second kind of why. 

This is easy to see in general:

We can very often say why we, in our own cases, are doing something - e.g. that we decided to do it. But when asked why we are doing that particular thing rather than any other possible thing we might have done, there's no reason to expect that there's a particular answer. That is, in our own cases we know that we can be a sufficient condition for a thing taking place without thereby also making it necessary that thing had taken place rather than all the other things that might have taken place.

Furthermore, we know that in some cases while there are explanations for why something came to be at all (why it exists) there may not even be the need to explain why the thing is the way it is as a result - for instance, we know that if a woman is pregnant and survives a normal pregnancy in general it will determine that a baby will be born, but that these facts alone will not necessitate the character of the baby born.

And we know this not just because there may be intervening facts - the application of thalidamyde for instance drastically alters the character of the born-child - but also because we know that some facts need not be determinate AT ALL in the intervening steps in the process. That is, we have a quantum theory of unobservables that allows that states of things be indeterminate until observed and that the closing of an event chain does not necessarily close all the possible event chains in between observations. That is, while we know that every step along the way must be in -some state- observed or unobserved, we also know that the unobserved ones may well be in an indeterminate state - a superposition of states as they say - whos character is not determined either by the initialization of the process nor the conclusion of it.

Nevertheless, though, we know that the contingent character of the baby at birth REQUIRES that the intervening states, be they determined or indeterminate, must exist in order for the baby to have been born normally. If there were simply NOTHING AT ALL along any path in the time-line of the baby, then the baby would not be born. We would regard this "nothing at all" as a complete and inexplicable mystery, and even the believe that it might happen we regard as a bizarre kind of superstition.

So we have two kinds of "Why" - one which inquires into why something is at all, and one that inquires into why something is the exact way that it is and not some other possible way.

We'll call the first kind of why "Causal Explanation" and the second kind of why "Deterministic Explanation".

WHICH WHY - WHY NOT DETERMINISM

As I've said before, we don't believe that everything has a deterministic explanation (at least not everyone does), and there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that everything does have such an explanation since it would imply not only determinism, but that all facts tout court are necessary facts since, at every step along the way in every process, all the aspects of that process would have to be completely determined by previous events along that path. Thus the distinction between contingent and necessary fact is removed and all and only necessary facts remain. 

But this conclusion is absurd since we have within our own wills the ability to refute such a claim simply by doing something on purpose ourselves that wasn't in our own immediately prior plans - e.g. something spontaneous like suddenly whistling a new song. But worse, the idea that it was Absolutely Necessary that I happen to be sitting at my desk after midnight on a wednesday writing this email be a fact in the same way that it being necessary that 2+2=4 is preposterous. Clearly I might not even have existed. At least, anyway, the only reason for supposing that me writing this was absolutely necessary would be a rigid and axiomatic belief in Absolute Determinism.

Now it will be beyond the scope of this email to refute determinism of that kind since, as we know, all kinds of things have been said in favor of absurd propositions before, but we can say that if Determinism is true then Quantum Mechanics is strictly speaking false and that we have good Empirical Evidence of our current Quantum Mechanical model so, at the very least, such a belief in Determinism is anti-scientific.

Therefore, coming back to our original topic, the kind of explanation we're looking for when looking to interpret our (1) above is Causal Explanation - a cause is a reason that something is at all, but not necessarily is the way that it is. It is itself a Fact, for only Facts can be the causes of other Facts - and it is therefore not a purely mental explanation nor a purely abstract "reason". Facts are external, "real" things with real being in a real world.

A CAUSAL EXPLANATION 

We are, as a result, looking for a Causal explanation for the existence of the totality of Contingent Facts. We know that that totality has such a thing because each of its members do and that that totality itself could therefore be different. We don't know, given that, that it has a deterministic explanation since, as we just admitted, each of the members of U could have been other than what they were in fact - so we don't expect to necessarily know why every fact is the way it is, only that the existence of these contingent facts as a whole itself must have a Causal explanation, otherwise, there would be a "nothing" in our chain of causal explanation which would appear to us worse than miraculous, but outright absurd ("nothing" can not be causally related to any real thing, obviously).

That is, the suggestion that there might not be at least a causal explanation for any set of contingent facts is equivalent to the suggestion that there is "nothing" in the causal chain of those facts, which is equivalent to the suggestion that "nothingness exists" for how else could it be related to the contingent facts, and which is a manifest absurdity.

Let's call that causal explanation for U, "G". 

We can also therefore see that whatever the causal explanation of U is, it can not itself be a contingent fact, and so must therefore find itself among the necessary facts - it must be. Because it must be, that is, because it is a necessary fact, there simply is no question of inquiring into its causes - it can not be caused to be or not-be - just as it is absurd to inquire into why 2+2=4 in a causal way.

This does not preclude us from inquiring into its character or further into exploring its relations with other necessary objects! For we can, of course, give an argument that has as its conclusion 2+2=4, and just in the same way, we can give an argument that has as its conclusion the existence of G. That is, we can give an explanation to someone who doesn't believe that G exists in the form of a proof or reasons, but those reasons are NOT the same kind of Causal Reasons that lead us to find the relationship between U and G. That is, G explains the existence and contingency of U whereas G itself needs no explanation of its existence because it is not contingent, but necessary, but only a demonstration of its necessity, which we have just done - viz by demonstrating its necessity relative to the existence of a totality of Contingent Facts.

But what if there were no totality of Contingent Facts. It seems, if we follow the argument above, that we've proved G's existence Contingently on the basis of the existence of any Contingent facts. But said basis is not necessary, and so neither is the inference from U to G.

But is it necessary that there be contingent facts? I think the answer is clearly yes.

THE NECESSITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF CONTINGENT FACTS

We can clearly imagine there being lots of different varieties of Worlds - worlds with only shrimp in them, worlds of fire, earth and snow. But what we can't imagine is a world with NOTHING AT ALL in it - that is, a world in which there are no facts. For suppose there were no contingent facts in that world, it would remain a contingent fact that there was nothing in that world - contradicting the supposition that there were no contingent facts. That is, the supposition of the possibility of the existence of a non-existent contingent world is self-contradictory (and that can't be regarded as surprising). 

As a result, we know that there must be contingent facts, but as before we don't know that this fact entails WHICH contingent facts there must be. To the contrary, if it did, they wouldn't be contingent!

THE CHARACTER OF CAUSALITY

Lastly a word about the nature of Causal Determination.

We gave two examples above of the way in which a cause may effect the necessitation of its effect without determining the character of the effect, but I'd like to elucidate further. 

I can make a law "There will be baseball games on sundays" - and I may be able to enforce the law by conscripting players. Nevertheless, unless I have absolute control over the players I can not determine the quality or character of the game itself. That will still be determined by the decisions of the players. Now I can choose good players, but even good players can play badly if they so choose. Thus, any time I involve myself in a causal stream with something that can choose, while I may be able to guarantee that -something- happen, I likely can not guarantee WHAT happens.

The creation of the world must be roughly analogous to this - that in virtue of being "The necessary thing that must create some contingent world" the world which that thing creates must itself be actually contingent - that is, it can not be completely determined beforehand by the being what the content of the world created is. Thus, in a way, God must allow a world in which there is a significant amount of what we call Chaos or Randomness. Otherwise, if it contained no randomness, the world would be wholly Necessary, contradicting the supposition that it needed a Cause in the first place. 

CONSIDERATIONS OF OBSERVATION

Importantly, this coincides obviously with our observed world, where people choose their own destinies and which, at the smallest level of particles and at the largest level of stellar systems, we observe large amounts of Randomness.

We also observe large amounts of Willfulness. Willfulness is the other primary case in which -some- outcome is guaranteed, but WHICH outcome is not. For instance, by our wills we can become married, but we can not guarantee the success or quality of that marriage beforehand no matter how hard we try. Similarly, we can enter a war and thereby guarantee some amount of violence, but we can not guarantee what the outcome or intervening states of the war are. NEVERTHELESS, the choosing of the initial step is a sign of Willfulness and is a case where clearly Randomness is not the appropriate explanation for the nature of what ensues.

Willfulness is to be defined, therefore, as the beginning of a chain of events which itself is not random, but which contains random resulting events. This willfulness we observe in ourselves but also in the relation between U and G. Seeing that G can not determine the complete character of U, but G must initially and non-randomly be the cause of U, we can see that U must be effectively Temporal in that a world in which only one thing happened that was the result of G's action could not be Contingent since that one thing would be necessitated by G's action. Thus G must set in motion the sequence of random events in U. G, therefore, is willful by analogy to the character of our own willfulness. Thus U must also be Temporal in character since there must be elements of U which are not necessitated by G's initial (or subsequent necessary) effects on U.

A WRONGHEADED OBJECTION - AN ORDERLY CHAOTIC PROCESSION IN TIME

I have heard it objected that the character of a necessary thing is that it always must have all its properties at all times and that if G is as I explain here, then G must always be having the same effect on U as it does at any time. Thus, goes the object, G can not be the creator of the universe since the universe has already been created only once, and G would have to be continually creating them.

I hope the explanation given above gives a clue about how this objection is wrong-headed. G's effect on U is NOT deterministic, what is necessary is that G continue to have an effect on U - that is it is G's character to have a non-deterministic effect on U. Thus while it's true that we should expect G to continue to have an effect on U, we shouldn't expect it always to be the Exact Same effect on U since that would, again, make U deterministic. Secondly, it is of course possible that G would continue to create new U's ad infinitum - to always be creating new worlds, and that again would be an explanation of the existence of the observed phenomenon of Time. Time, to us, looks like the constant addition of new factors to the character of the universe as a whole. That effect, globally observed, appears simultaneously random (watching sunspots) and carefully planned (watching the rotation of the planets), and this is just as we would expect from the character of U described. U is willful and so attempts to do specific things, but is non-deterministic, and so produces effects that are radically chaotic. 

CONCLUSION

It seems to me, therefore, that the standard cosmological argument for the existence of God as the ultimate Cause of all Contingent Beings (that is, created things) stands, and that this basic argument is obvious and demands the rational assent of anyone willing to consider the matter thoroughly. At the same time, I have not described here the proof of the Unity of G nor the Moral Character of G though I have provided clues that should lead an interested party to the right answers.