Stephen Fry on The cosmological argument
Fry finds the cosmological argument unpersuasive because it merely replaces one mystery with a bigger one and stops asking questions at a convenient point.
Fry has engaged the cosmological argument in several public discussions, approaching it not as a trained philosopher but as an intelligent lay thinker. His primary objection is the one shared by most sceptics: if everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If God does not need a cause, then not everything needs a cause — and we might as well say the universe does not need one either.
He is characteristically eloquent about the deeper issue: the cosmological argument purports to answer the question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' but actually just relabels the mystery. Saying 'God created the universe' does not explain anything unless you can also explain God. It is, as Fry has put it, simply moving the bump in the carpet from one place to another.
Fry is also suspicious of the emotional appeal of the cosmological argument. Humans are storytelling creatures who find it deeply unsatisfying to say 'I don't know.' The cosmological argument offers the comfort of an answer — but Fry regards intellectual honesty as more important than intellectual comfort. Not knowing is uncomfortable, but it is more honest than pretending to know.
“It is perfectly okay to say 'I don't know.' It is not okay to say 'I don't know, therefore I know.' That is the logic of the God of the gaps.”