Existence Does Not Always Need a Cause

Philosophy has a general maxim: whatever exists must have a cause of existence.

This is founded on intuition, which is a kind of conviction.

But this maxim has no intuitive certainty in it.

All certainty arises from the:

• comparison of ideas, and
• discovery of such unalterable relations, so long as the ideas continue the same.

These relations are:

• Resemblance
• Proportions in quantity or number
• Degrees of any quality
• Contrariety

None of these relations are implied in the proposition: Whatever has a beginning has also a cause of existence.

Therefore, this proposition is not intuitively certain.*

We can only show a cause to existence if we can show that everything was created.*

If its creation cannot be proven, then we cannot prove its existence.

This proves that the foregoing maxim is not intuitively nor demonstrably certain.*

We can imagine a non-existing thing to exist at the next moment by itself.

Therefore, the mind can separate the idea of a cause from the idea of a beginning of existence.

Consequently, the actual separation of the cause from the object is possible.

Therefore:

• the cause cannot be refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas.*
• every demonstration produced for the need of a cause is fallacious and sophistical.

False Argument 1: All the points of time and place in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are equal in themselves.

The object must remain in eternal suspense if there is no cause for that time and place to fix and determine its existence.

The object thus can never begin to exist unless there is some cause to fix its beginning.

This is the argument of Thomas Hobbes.

But I ask: Isn’t it easier to suppose that an object’s time and place are fixed without a cause, than to suppose its existence came from a cause that is uncertain?

The first question is this sophistical system is always whether the object shall exist.

The next question is when and where it shall begin to exist.

If the removal of a cause of whether the object shall exist is absurd, then the removal of a cause of where and when the object shall exist is also absurd.

If that absurdity needs a proof whether the object shall exist, then that absurdity will also need a proof in the time and place of that object’s existence.

Thus, the absurdity of not having a cause whether the object shall exist, can never be a proof of the already-existing object.

Likewise, the existence of the object can never be a proof that there was a cause that determined it to exist, because both cause and existence:

• are on the same footing, and
• uses the same reasoning.

False Argument 2: Everything must have a cause.

For if anything lacked a cause, it would produce itself.

It would exist before it existed, which is impossible.

This argument is from Dr. Clarke and others, and has equal difficulty of Hobbes’ argument.

Its reasoning is plainly inconclusive because it supposes that in our denial of a cause, we expressly deny that there must be a cause.

The cause is taken to be the object itself.

This is a contradiction.

If anything comes into existence without a cause, it does not mean that it itself is its own cause.

On the contrary, it means that the idea of needing a cause is removed.

An object that exists absolutely without any cause, is certainly not its own cause.

The problem is caused by asserting that the one follows from the other.

By doing so, you conclude that it is impossible for anything to ever begin to exist without a cause.

If you cancel one probable cause, then you must find another cause.

False Argument 3: Whatever is produced without any cause, is produced by nothing – its cause is Nothing

I reply that nothing can never be a cause, just as nothing cannot be something.*

By this same intuition, we perceive that nothing can never be a cause.

Consequently, we must perceive that every object has a real cause of its existence.

This argument is from John Locke.

All of those arguments are founded on the same fallacy.

When we exclude all causes, we really do exclude them.

We cannot suppose anything or even the object itself to be the cause since we already removed the idea of a cause.

If everything has a cause, it follows that after removing all causes, then the cause is either the object itself or nothing.

But this takes the very point of the question for granted, whether everything must have a cause or not.

Some say that every effect must have a cause because it is implied in the very idea of effect.

• But this is still more frivolous, caused by calling phenomena as effects.

This is because effect is always related to cause. So to avoid this, we should call phenomena as phenomena instead of as effects.

The true question is whether existence exists as is without a cause [and therefore no purpose], or whether it exists through a cause [and therefore with a specific purpose].

It is not intuitively nor demonstratively certain that everything has a cause [and therefore a purpose beyond existing].