Alex O'Connor on The cosmological argument
O'Connor engages the cosmological argument seriously but argues it fails to bridge the gap between a first cause and God.
O'Connor treats the cosmological argument with philosophical seriousness, engaging with both the Leibnizian and Thomistic versions. He grants that the question 'Why does anything exist?' is a genuine and important philosophical puzzle. But he denies that the argument succeeds in establishing that the answer is God.
His primary objection is to the inference from 'a necessary being exists' to 'that being is the God of theism.' Even if the universe requires an external explanation, nothing in the argument tells us that the explanation is personal, conscious, or moral. The necessary being might be an impersonal physical principle, an abstract mathematical structure, or something entirely beyond human comprehension.
O'Connor also questions whether the principle of sufficient reason — that everything must have an explanation — is self-evident. It may be that some things are brute facts. The universe's existence might be one of them, and our discomfort with that possibility is a feature of human psychology, not a guide to metaphysical truth.
“The cosmological argument gets you a first cause. It does not get you a mind, a person, a father, a judge, or a saviour. The gap is everything.”