The single source of everything

Cosmological Arguments for God's existence argue that there must be a first cause, which itself is uncaused. One objection to this is that instead of an uncaused cause, there might be a cycle of causes - for example, A was caused by B, B was caused by C, and C was caused by A. A second objection is that there might be an infinite regress of causes. Defences have mean made against these two objections, but in this article I want to build a cosmological argument against which the objections cannot be made.

The main difference between typical cosmological arguments the cosmological argument in this article is this: Usually, cosmological arguments try and find a particular thing that exists, i.e. a first cause, and then show that its properties are the same as God's properties. However, in this cosmological argument, I want to take everything that exists, consider it as as a single thing, and show that it has certain properties. Then I want to show that, from those properties, it follows that everything that exists contains God.

Along the way I also want to paint a picture in which the whole of existence is a single thing, with no two things truly separate, and God as the person who unites it. I also want to suggest that God is not complicated, or made of parts, as many atheists believe.

An uncaused cause

Think of the whole of existence - everything that existed, exists, and will exist - as a thing. Don't think of it as a list of separate things, but as a single thing. Call it X for now. Notice that X must contain any cycle or infinite regress of causes. X is not caused. Therefore we can say with certainty that there is an uncaused cause.

A sovereign uncaused cause

The next hurdle for the Cosmological argument is showing that this uncaused cause has certain properties. 

For now let's define "sovereign" as "Not restricted or controlled by anything outside itself, and controlled only by itself". Does this description apply to X? Well, consider the properties of X: It has nothing outside it, since it is the whole of existence. Therefore, it has nothing outside it that can restrict it. It has no law external to it that can limit it. It holds all power. It is controlled only by itself. It fulfills our definition of "sovereign" exactly.

Here is our argument so far:

Definition 1: Let X be everything that exists, considered as a single thing.

Definition 2: A thing is sovereign if it is not controlled by anything externally and controlled only by itself.

Then X is not controlled by anything externally.

Therefore X is only controlled by itself.

Therefore X is sovereign. 

Therefore something sovereign exists.

(Note that it does not necessarily follow that all parts of X are sovereign. The whole can possess a property while a part does not. For example, the team composed of the US President and his pet dog has the power to declare war. But it does not follow that all members of this team have the power to declare war. The dog lacks this power.)

Some may object that our definition of "sovereign" is not satisfying, even misleading, because even if something is not restricted by anything outside itself, it might nevertheless be restricted by something inside itself, or simply restricted, but not by anything. I have two questions in response to this objection. First, in everyday speech surely to be restricted only by yourself is exactly what it means to be sovereign? Second, if something is restricted, and the restriction is not outside itself - not an "outside force", so to speak - then where does the restriction come from? It does not seem forced onto the thing.

Another objection to Definition 2 in the minds of many people, "sovereign" entails sentience, which we have not proven. We will return to this point later on.

A sovereign, all-powerful uncaused cause (do we want this?)

There is something else we can say about X, apart from its sovereignty.

Define "all-powerful" as "sovereign, and controls everything".

Since X is sovereign, it controls everything inside it, which means it controls everything.

An irreducibly sovereign uncaused cause

At this point we want to ask: Is there anything we can subtract from X such that the remainder of X (that is, everything in X except for the thing we subtracted) is sovereign? For example, if you subtracted a piece of dead matter, such as a stone, from X, would the remainder be sovereign?

This brings us to a couple of new definitions:

Define something as irreducibly sovereign if it is sovereign, and contains nothing sovereign except itself.

Define something as reducibly sovereign if it is sovereign, and contains something else sovereign not equal to it.

In this section, we argue that there is something irreducibly sovereign. To do this, let's consider all possible cases:

Case 1: X is irreducibly sovereign.

Case 2: X is reducibly sovereign, and contains nothing irreducibly sovereign.

Case 3: X is reducibly sovereign, and contains something irreducibly sovereign.

Case 1 seems very implausible to me. There seem to be things, like the stone we mentioned earlier, which if subtracted from X, leave the remainder sovereign. However, even if case 1 is true, that still proves what we want to prove, that there is something irreducibly sovereign.

What about case 2? Case 2 says that we can exclude things from X without harming X's sovereignty. It also says that no matter what we exclude from X, we will always be able to exclude more without harming X's sovereignty. This is difficult to imagine, so let us look at an analogy: In mathematics, you can exclude the smallest integer from the set of all positive integers. You can repeat that as much as you like, but you will never be left with the highest integer. What if we face a similar problem here? This might be the case, but it would seem strange that the whole of existence is a self-sustaining infinite regress that does not contain a reason or explanation for its existence.

That leaves us with case 1 or 3, that there is something irreducibly sovereign.

Only one irreducibly sovereign uncaused cause

In this section, we argue that there is one, and only one, irreducibly sovereign thing. To do this, let us suppose there are two different irreducibly sovereign things. Call them A and B. Consider these two cases:

Case I: There is something that belongs to both A and B.

Case II: There is nothing that belongs to both A and B.

Suppose Case I is true. Let C be the collection of everything that is both inside A and inside B. We know that C is contained in A, which not controlled by anything outside A. Therefore C is not controlled by anything outside A. By similar reasoning, C is not controlled by anything outside B. Therefore C is not controlled by anything outside A or anything outside B. By definition, this means C is not controlled by anything outside itself. Therefore C is sovereign. This is obviously a contradiction, since C is contained in two different irreducibly sovereign things.

That leaves us with Case II. Consider the following argument against Case II:

Neither A nor B is controlled by anything outside it. Therefore neither can be controlled or restricted by the other. Since A is sovereign, it can bring about any event E inside it. (For example, E might be the event that A affects B but is not affected by B.) Similarly, B can bring about any event E' inside it, even if E' contradicts E (for example, E' might be the event that B affects A but is not affected by A). This would seem to be a contradiction.

Shrewd readers may have spotted an assumption with the reasoning above. Earlier, we defined "sovereign" to mean "not controlled by anything outside itself, controlled only by itself". In the argument against Case II above, we say that if something is controlled only by itself, it can put itself into any possible state, and that if it can put itself into any possible state, it has complete control of its own causal power and influence, and therefore it can put anything else into any possible state. Therefore, we have deduced from a thing being sovereign (controlled only by itself) that it controls everything else.

If this assumption is unconvincing, then instead of making the assumption, you can simply re-define the word "sovereign" to mean "controlled only by itself, and also controls everything". A quick scan of the arguments above show that we can repeat them using this new definition of sovereignty without much harm. (Check this! Maybe a different word, such as "all powerful" would be better.)

If these arguments against Cases I and II are successful, then there must be exactly one irreducibly sovereign thing.

Only one sovereign uncaused cause, sentient and not made of parts

Here is a reason for thinking it is sentient: Sentience seems to correlate with both being controlled by yourself, and not being controlled by other things: You can predict how a piece of dead matter (like a stone) will behave because it is entirely controlled by the laws of physics, but you cannot predict how a person will behave.

Another reason for thinking it is sentient is this: We know x is not limited by any laws outside itself, since by definition it is not limited by any thing outside itself. Everything that humans observe that is limited in power turns out to be limited by external laws. It is impossible to imagine what something would look like if it were not restricted by any laws outside it. Even if you try to imagine a space in which particles pop in and out of existence "at random", you are imagining them (and the time and space containing them) to be controlled by physical laws. The only thing we have observed which it could be is a mind. In fact, the more free and sentient a mind is, the more we will say it is a "law unto itself".

Here is a reason to think it is sentient and not made of parts: Imperfections occur because of separation between things in the world. For example separation between brain cells mean that one part of your brain may not able to access another, making you unable to remember something. Separation between people and groups is what makes communication break down. Wars happen because nations are separate. Errors in machines happen because one part of the machine fails to communicate correctly with a separate part. Errors in computing usually happen because one instruction fails to communicate correctly with another, or is works against the other, either accidentally (programmers failing to communicate) or deliberately (a computer virus, for example) . To be sovereign, it seems X must not be made of parts.

Write argument for oneness: God is the single deciding point and source of everything that exists. There is no separation in him. There is no imperfection in him. Everything is from him. He is the single unified thing that exists, on which all other existing things depend.

Reason for not being made of parts:

Things under physical law require a lot of intricate effort to make them work. For example, computers and cars are made of many parts, and different parts must be made to interact in a particular way for the whole to work. God, however, requires no effort to make him work. The property that causes God to work is a very simple one: Namely, the property of having no limitations. By contrast, the property of computers and cars that causes them to work is: Limitations, applied in a very precise way, for objects are defined by their shape and the laws that apply to them. That raises the question, "What would something without limitations be like?" Since we have only ever observed physical things, it is impossible to imagine something physical without laws of limitations controlling its behaviour. Maybe one can imagine a space containing randomly-shaped objects appearing and disappearing at random. But even that seems to be controlled by external laws.

People say that in order to be unlimited you need to be complicated. But in order to be unlimited, all something needs is no laws limiting it. That sounds like the simplest thing ever, definable merely in that sentence!

The word "definition" originated from a word that meant "limit" or "boundary". Maybe a thing can be defined by the laws that limit it. In which case, God has the simplest definition! Or even no definition!

Suggestion, might not be true: A mind is not made of parts. Two thoughts cannot simultaneously exist. (Possibly to do with quantum particles in your brain that are not merely copies of each other but the same particle?) You cannot be half of you. Whereas any physical object can be split into two, even an electron. If an electron is defined as the forces it exerts around it, you could imagine the force on one side and the force on the other being separate.

Only one sovereign/all-powerful uncaused cause, sentient and not made of parts, necessary

Reason for sentience and necessary:

(Could mention that the ontological argument and its parodies, such as "a necessary being" or "a necessary being with a purple hat", have varying probabilities of being coherent. But it seems like adding the purple hat decreases the probability. Thus the most likely to be coherent is simply "a necessary being". Then say that the cosmological argument adds evidence for this)

Just as the physicist knows that a closed system, considered as a single thing, never changes its momentum or energy content, regardless of how its parts might transfer momentum and energy between them, so it might be possible to realise that a closed system, considered as a single thing, is all-powerful if there is nothing outside it to limit it, regardless of how its parts might limit each other.

Nothing can be more complicated than the complete sum of its causes.

An argument for the existence of God is called a teleological argument if it claims that the best explanation for something's existence is that God designed it. For example, Antony Flew started believing in God because he thought the molecular mechanisms in our cells that replicate DNA were designed by God. Isaac Newton argued that God is the best explanation for the symmetry of living things, and the best explanation for the fact that the orbits of the planets do not allow them to collide.

Some teleological arguments tend to be vulnerable to two main objections, the God-of-the-gaps objection and the who-designed-the-designer objection.

First objection: The God-of-the-gaps

This is the objection that if you infer God as an explanation for things we don't understand, then he becomes less necessary as we understand more. For example, many people today find Newton's argument (see my first paragraph) unconvincing. We would rather explain the symmetry of living things using evolution than a designer. And we would rather say the planets do not collide because by now the only planets left are those whose orbits do not allow them to collide. You could say that Newton used God to fill a gap which has since been filled by something else.

There are still things which science has not explained, but suppose science were allowed to progress for an infinite amount of time with infinite resources. In principle, could all explanatory gaps which are filled by God get filled by something else?

Second objection: Who designed the designer?

This is the objection that a designer must be more complicated that the thing he designed. In chapter 4 of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes that if God designed the universe then he would have to be at least as complicated as the universe. Dawkins says that instead of suggesting God, we should prefer an explanation that starts with something simple and gradually adds complexity. He states that Darwinism "teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increasing complexity".

I disagree with Dawkins. I believe it is logically impossible for something to be more complicated that its complete set of causes. We will look at why later below.

An argument that avoids both objections

Theists have given counter-arguments to these two objections. To the God-of-the-gaps objection, theists usually respond that some gaps in principle cannot be explained physically. For example, the existence of space and time. Or they argue that some things require a designer because we understand them, not because we don't. To the who-designed-the-designer objection, some theists reply that God is simple, not made of parts.

However, I don't want to make those counter-arguments here. In this article, I want to construct a new teleological argument that is immune to both the god-of-the-gaps objection and the who-designed-the-designer objection. I want to simply avoid the objections, instead of fight them. My argument will rest on the following sentence:

If X is the complete sets of causes of Y, then X must contain Y, or else X is not actually complete.

Here is my argument:

Let X be anything that exists. For instance, a phone, an antelope, or a planet.
Let Y be the complete set of causes of X. Note that Y is not some of the causes of X, but the complete set of causes of X.

We draw 4 conclusions about X and Y:

1. X must be unavoidable given Y. We know this because if X were avoidable given Y, then Y would not be the complete set of causes of X. There would be something missing from Y that was required to get X.
2. Y contains X. If Y does not effectively contain X then Y is not the complete set of causes of X. There was something missing from Y that was required to get X.
3. Y must be at least as improbable as X. Whenever we have Y, we must have X, so the probability of Y is at most the probability of X.
4. Y must be at least as complicated as X. To prove this, think what would happen if Y were less complicated than X: We would have a change in complexity, and change requires something like time. Therefore X and Y must both exist inside something like a timeline. Inside this timeline, consider the changes that happen in-between Y and X. Those changes must be included in Y, since they contributed to X. Therefore Y cannot exist at any point before X. Y must include the timeline and all changes that are applied right up until we get X. Therefore Y must be as complicated as X.

Apparent counter-examples to this argument

Notice that these four conclusions seem like different ways of making the same claim. I have never seen this claim refuted, but I have encountered many objections to it. These objections are normally examples of things which seem at first to be more complex than their complete set of causes. Here are three such objections, along with my reasons for believing they do not harm my claim:

Objection 1: When an unzipped file comes from a zipped file, the zipped file is simpler that the unzipped file. That is an example in which the result is more complex that all of its causes.

Why I disagree: To get the unzipped file you need more than just the zipped file. You also need a computer programmed with unzipping instructions and you need it to apply those instructions to the zipped file. Therefore the zipped file is not the complete set of causes of the unzipped file. In everyday life it is convenient to say that zipped files "contain" larger files, but this is technically not true - we say it because we take for granted that anyone who hears us already know about the unzipping instructions required.

Objection 2: There are simulations, for example Conway's game of Life, which start with very simple data and apply very simple rules over time, to end up with very complicated data. In this example, the result is more complex that all of its causes.

Why I disagree: As we saw in the previous example, to get the complex pattern at the end you need more than just the simple pattern at the start. You also need a computer programmed with the rules of Conway's game of Life, and you need it to apply those rules to the starting pattern.

Objection 3: Life on earth is very complicated, yet it originated from a simpler self-replicating cell. In this example, the result is more complex that all of its causes.

Why I disagree: The first self-replicating cell is not enough to give us life on earth today. To get to life on earth today we need evolution, and evolution requires nature to obey laws. For example, the law of gravity means that giraffes with longer necks will be more likely to eat, and therefore reproduce, than their siblings with shorter necks. So the next generation of giraffes will on average have slightly longer necks. The same will happen to the next generation, and all generations after that. This is dependent on the law of gravity being consistent over many generations of giraffe. Evolution requires far more than the first self-replicating cell: It requires some mechanism to enforce physical rules consistently over multiple generations.

(Mathematicians might notice that these three objections are about things with high "raw" complexity, but low Kolmogorov complexity. For example, the final pattern in Conway's game of life has high "raw" complexity because it takes you a long time to describe pixel by pixel, but it has low Kolmogorov complexity because it takes a short time to describe the start pattern along with the instructions required to get the final pattern.
The trouble is that, if something has high "raw" complexity but low Kolmogorov complexity, that will be because the Kolmogorov complexity states something which must be repeated, and in the next paragraph we argue that this means some mechanism has to repeat it.)

Overview: Laws of physics must be enforced to avoid contradicting claim about X and Y. How does that help? It doesn't but it shows the who designed the designer problem applies not just to designers. And God is also a preferable solution because...

Also look at fb conversation with James

Are the laws of physics "natural", or are they caused by something?

You may not be satisfied by my answer to Objection 3. Maybe you are unconvinced that rules require some mechanism to enforce them. To many people, it seems that the laws of physics happen naturally, without any mechanism. In this section, I want to provide two reasons for believing a mechanism is required to enforce them:

First reason to think the laws of physics are caused.

Suppose one day you and a companion discover a new underground cave. On exploring, you discover hundreds of objects flying through the air inside the cave. You do not know what they are made out of. You do not know anything about them except their size, and that they all move in straight lines except for when they bounce on the cave's wall. After a few days of measuring their speed and weight, you and your companion discover that they all have exactly the same speed and mass as each other, to as many decimal places as you can measure. What would you think of this behaviour? There are only two explanations. The first explanation is that each object is travelling at its own randomly chosen speed, and that all those speeds happen, by chance, to be the same. The second explanation is that someone or something is forcing them to do this.

I will assume that you and your companion would both choose the second explanation. That something is forcing them to do this. At this point, suppose your companion says "It is the nature of the object that forces them to do this. No external explanation necessary." How would you respond?

I asked you which explanation you would choose in a thought-experiment. But this experiment has, in fact, already been done in reality. We have actually grown up, all of us, in a kind of cave where objects really do fly around and all have exactly the same speed and mass as each other - we call them photons. Unless you can point to some significant difference between photons and the fictional objects flying around in the cave, there is no reason your conclusion about the photons should be different from your conclusion about the objects in the cave.

Second reason to think the laws of physics are caused.

Suppose the laws of physics did not need anything to enforce them. That would contradict our claim above. We would have a situation where Y contained X, yet was less complicated than X. In every other apparent counter-example to our claim, it turns out there is "something enforcing the rules" which actually makes Y more complicated than X. It is special pleading to say that our universe is different, just because we happen to be inside it (for that is the only difference between our universe and a simulation such as Conway's game of life).

The problem

By now many will have spotted the obvious problem.

This argument sums up why I don't believe any process can well and truly start from simplicity and end with complexity, as Dawkins claims.

A possible solution

However, I agree with Dawkins that this leaves us with a problem: The ultimate cause of the universe must be at least as complicated as the universe. So what could it be? Philosophers divide objects into contingent things and necessary things. For contingent things, being complex means being improbable. The same does not apply to necessary things since necessary things (if they exist) are not improbable. So probably the ultimate cause of the universe is something necessary.

I also have a suggestion. I cannot prove this, but it is a suggestion. We do not know what something would look like if it were not controlled by any laws, since everything that we know about has been controlled by a law. I argue here that such a thing must exist:
http://timcrinion.blogspot.com/2020/05/god-is-one.html

My suggestion here is that God is all-powerful, not because he is constructed in a complicated way, out of separate parts, but because he is simple: His definition is simply that he is not restricted by any laws, and there is no separation in him.

It is often assumed that something not restricted by any laws (eg the whole of existence) would not have any abilities, for abilities in the physical world seem to belong to complicated things: Organisms and machines have abilities because they are complicated, and the more abilities they have, the more complicated they seem to be. By this reasoning, something not restricted by any laws would be very simple (its definition is "not restricted by laws") and therefore would have little power or ability. How would it think without the machinery of something like transistors or neurons?
However, no one can imagine what it is like for something to not be restricted by laws. Yet something is: the whole of existence. I'm suggesting the whole of existence may be all powerful precisely because it is simple and not restricted by laws. But that is only a guess.

Machines that are made of parts are complicated because parts of the machine which are separate need to be connected. These connections between separate things make the machine more complex. However, the connections make the machine more like a single thing than separate unconnected things. Ironically, they make the machine more similar to God, who is not made of parts and contains no separation. But God is different from the machines: He has no parts. You might call him the only uncomplicated thing: For machines have laws above them to govern their  parts, whereas God simply has no laws above him. We don't know what something would look like if it were not restricted by laws, so maybe it would be unrestricted and all-powerful, without needing laws or parts or things to make it unrestricted. Unrestricted might be the "default setting".

In short, things are defined by their limitations. If God is not limited, then his definition (all-powerful, all-knowing) then he is simple.

This seems compatible with the ontological argument. The ontological argument states that the definition of God is of something so perfect, that God cannot fail to exist. This means God exists necessarily, not contingently. While many find the ontological argument unconvincing, I believe it is useful for explaining *how* God might exist without a cause, or neurones, or transistors, and this makes him a good candidate for where this complexity may have originated from.

It also seems compatible with the way existence works: For nations, organizations, and machines have more power the more unified their parts are, the more they are a single thing. For it is miscommunication between individuals that causes groups to fail, it is miscommunication between nerve cells that causes brains to fail, and it is miscommunication between parts in a machine that causes the machine to fail. I am reluctant to try to define God, since it is not possible, but an attempt might be to say that there is no separation in him, and he is not controlled by anything, and has full control of other things.

Uniqueness of God

There are many arguments for God's existence. But what about his uniqueness?

One argument for his uniqueness is the ontological argument.
Another is the moral argument.

Another is:

Let both G1 and G2 be distinct omnipotent beings.
G1 can do anything that is logically possible.
G2 can do anything that is logically possible.
Let X and "not X" both be logically possible.
G1 is able to bring about X.
G2 is able to bring about not X.

Another might be:
G1 knows everything that G2 knows.
G2 knows everything that G1 knows.
Therefore, G1 and G2 are not distinct minds.


Both would be completely aware of each other's thoughts. Both halves of your brain are only partly aware of each other's thoughts, but you still count yourself as a single person. G1 and G2 are completely aware of each other's thoughts, they certainly count as one person.

"G1 and G2" has infinite power.
Therefore "G1 and G2" is an all-powerful being

Another thing: two necessary things cannot exist without each other. In maths, any statement follows from a false statement. Two necessary being cannot exist without each other any more than two necessary facts can be true without each other. You cannot have 3+3=6 without 30+30=60, or 30+30=60 without 3+3=6. In a sense, they would be the same being.

Common arguments against morality

An argument commonly used to "prove" that morality was caused by evolution:

1. Evolution caused the human mind.
2. The human mind has moral beliefs. (For example, "Rape is evil")
3. Therefore, evolution caused moral beliefs.

While this argument shows that evolution caused your moral beliefs, it does not follow that moral facts are caused by evolution. Consider this parallel version:

1. Evolution caused the human mind.
2. The human mind has arithmetic beliefs. (For example, 2+2=4)
3. Therefore, evolution caused arithmetic beliefs.

The conclusion is true, but no one believes that arithmetic facts are controlled by evolution. All the argument says is that evolution has allowed us to know about arithmetic facts. The same goes for moral facts.

Notice that the word "evolution" does not really affect the logic of the argument: You could replace the word "evolution" with "mad scientists" or "breeding by the Nazis" or "a random explosion". The point is, we cannot show that the thing which caused the human brain has any power to actually affect the truths believed by the human mind. It can only affect whether the human mind believes them.

Some have used the fact that psychopaths exist to suggest that moral truths don't exist. Again, this seems to me like suggesting that, since there are people ignorant of the ten times table, the ten times table does not exist.

Some have pointed to varying moral beliefs to suggest that moral statements are not objectively true. This is a bit like suggesting that the law of gravity is not objectively true since it is different on the earth and the moon. Suppose both of us are nurses: you believe the green bottle of medicine would cure a patient, and I believe the blue bottle would cure him. Clearly we don't disagree on whether it is right to cure the patient: We only disagree about which methods are effective. That some cultures believe a man should have five wives and other cultures believe he should have only one is not a difference in morality: All cultures believe the man should not have anyone he likes. They merely believe different methods are effective for achieving that aim.


It seems to me that if evolution were able to make you believe whichever moral belief happened to be convenient, it would have done so a lot more than what it has. For example, when I stole my classmates' sweets at school, I never did so because I felt morally obliged to do so. Quite the opposite: I did so despite feeling morally obliged not to. If evolution has the power to make us believe any moral statement, it has not exercised this power as effectively as it could.