During his debate with Arif Ahmed and Andrew Copson at the Cambridge Union Society, Peter S. Williams gave a lucid illustration for the argument for the existence of God based on the contingency of material reality.[1]
Imagine if I asked you to loan me a book. You say you don’t have it, but you’ll ask your friend to loan you his, and in turn you’ll loan it to me. When you ask your friend for the book, he says he does not have it, but he’ll ask his friend to borrow his copy, and in turn he’ll loan it to you, who will loan it to me. If this process continues ad infinitum, I will never receive the book. If I do receive the book it is because the process of requesting to borrow the book is not infinite, but temporally finite. Somewhere down the chain of requests to borrow the book, someone actually had the book without having to borrow it from someone else.
Similarly, nothing we observe in the universe has necessary existence (everything is contingent). Everything has to derive its existence from something that existed prior to it. Clearly this process cannot continue on for an infinite time in the past for the same reason the process of borrowing a book cannot continue for an infinite time in the past. If nothing in the past has existence in itself (necessary existence), then no contingent beings would exist in the present. Since contingent beings do exist in the present, there must be a necessary being from whom they derive their existence—a being that does not derive its existence from anything else, but has existence in itself. Williams went on to quote philosopher Richard Pirtle who similarly argued, “Consider any contingent reality. … If the process of everything getting its existence from something else went on to infinity, then the thing in question would never have existence. And if the thing has existence, then the process can’t have gone on to infinity. There was something that had existence without having to receive it from something else.”
If God did not exist, nothing else could exist. Since contingent beings do exist, God exists.
[1]Starting at 12:44.
Thinking to Believe 
May 2, 2012 at 8:01 pm
This is the best illustration I’ve seen yet for the argument from contingency. Also, I think you left off the word NOT in your quote, “…a being that does ___ derive its existence from anything else, but has existence in itself.”
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May 3, 2012 at 9:07 am
That is a very powerful analogy.
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May 3, 2012 at 9:15 am
rpviv, thanks for catching that. Fixed.
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May 14, 2012 at 8:35 am
ANALOGIES and PARADOXES: This “book borrowing” paradox is similar in analogy to Hilbert’s Hotel paradox (a hotel with infinite rooms). There are two problems with these analogies: 1) the term and meaning of infinite, and 2) the term and its ultimate meaning of a ‘thing’ (be it a book or a room and making the comparison as if to include God – His existence).
The ancients posited the “Out of nothing, nothing comes” chant and scientists now (sort-ta) puzzle over that into the idea of a quantum foam or zero-point energy. But aaaah, if it is energy then it is not nothing! How ’bout then—there is no such thing as a ‘thing’. Sort of like, “Where does the donut hole go when one eats the donut?” Wasn’t the hole always there—it just needed ‘something’ around it (the nothing) in order that it could then be defined. If that hurts your head then what is material other than ‘frozen’ light (energy) E=MC^2. (Just solve for ‘M’ which is everything and BOINK everything equals energy and light) and then too, at the atomic scale there is more space (nothing?) between the electron and the nucleus then there is material (then again is the electron a massless partical or wave). Does that then meaning that is where the nothing hides? No, it is where the information, relationship/math, and energy IS. Information points back to an intelligent source just like any language points back to its author—the information weaves itself through the medium which is the arrangement of the words (grammar) and points then by the plot/order/symmetry/design (etc) back to its source. Now look to science and notice all the information (the math) that is information which MUST point back to some source (chance is not a source—it’s a condition which cannot satisfy the equations).
These two paradoxes try to infuse material properties in to abstract concepts—it hurts ones head. It was Einstein who said, ‘it is strange that we CAN comprehend what seems to be incomprehensible’. Get rid of the idea of material (thingness), focus more on the abstract qualities (integrity, honesty, numbers, love, and etc), and notice then that every’thing’ turns into sort of an electronic signal and you can nearly step out of our materialist world and into a ‘sprit’ world where time, space, matter and energy take on different values. God is in the values of the abstract timeless spaceless world—and yet ‘now’ we are foreigners in a strange world, stuck in a Time & Space-bounded journey—an infinite spirit in a finite earthsuit. And ‘naturally’ we should be frustrated by this paradox too.
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May 15, 2012 at 7:47 pm
“an infinite spirit in a finite earthsuit. And ‘naturally’ we should be frustrated by this paradox too.”
Amen to that!
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June 19, 2012 at 7:34 am
“If God did not exist, nothing else could exist. Since contingent beings do exist, God exists.”
Why does it have to go back to God? Why couldn’t you say If the universe did not exist, nothing else could exist. Since contigent beings do exist, the universe exists.? Why does it have to go back to God? Not that I don’t believe in God, but this is the same as saying something had to create something, because it can’t come from nothing, which means something had to create God. You say that it has to stop somewhere, I say why not stop at the universe always existing? It has to stop somewhere right? Why does it have to stop at God? In this sense, the universe could be thought of as God, as in a Pantheist POV. God plainly means the beginning of which we know nothing about. God is a word used to describe that which we don’t know. This is a philiosophical conundrum that will never be solved, only pondered upon by everyone for the rest of this universe’s existance.
And by the way, if God does exist, which I think he does, that is a looooong way from saying the Abrahamic God of the bible exists. Theists always love to ramble off a Deistic POV and pass it off as a reason to prove the Bible God to be true. I still can’t make the connection. This is no ways shows there is a big gray bearded guy that lives in the sky, lol.
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June 19, 2012 at 9:02 am
There has to be an uncaused cause: something that began/begins has to have a reason/cause for its being/order/information. This may sound a bit theological (and projecting God via a Gap scenario) but really it can/does (and should be included to) move towards entropy (the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Also this means that if we discover information (via mathematics) then there has to be a source for it (an Intelligence) for information does not come out of chaos (it goes the other way…that is, too much information tends to get unorganized unless much effort is put in operation to maintain its order…and even any little amount information that is NOT ordered makes for confusion very quickly). Spend time cleaning up your teenagers’ room and then watch it go into a state of disarray as they enter the time frame! We also know of this order via the CMBR (WMAP Satellite), and too the formation of matter via stellar nucleosynthesis can help to see overall the process of entropy and too the formation of complicated elements (over time and pressure) into more complicated elements as hydrogen fusses into the some odd 92 elements.
Really it ALL comes down to this: No science no God; no God no science. If we ‘see’ science (empirically) revealed via mathematics then God has to be (that is, information must have a source). Science is not against Christianity…Science is the forensics result of a designer who has left His fingerprints behind. We just do not ‘see’ these fingerprints because we are smothered in too much information—we are like fish in water; we do not even know we are wet! There are two individuals responsible for the science verses religion ‘fuss’ look them up (here is the leading sentence from off Wikipedia) “The scientist John William Draper and the intellectual Andrew Dickson White were the most influential exponents of the Conflict Thesis between religion and science.” They are an interesting pair and they have not done anyone any service but rather has stagnated the search for truth. In fact, it is the Bible that states we are to test everything and hold on to that which is good/true (1st Thessalonians 5:18) and there are other verses about: wisdom and seeking and reason. Enjoy.
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June 19, 2012 at 11:06 am
At #6 Jason…
This is how I understand it based off of William Lane Craig’s (WLC) Kalam Cosmological Argument:
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
This is a simple and logical syllogism that is supported by both philosophy and cosmology that can be used to support Deism or Theism. Both scientific evidence (big bang cosmology) and philosophy indicate that a universe with the properties we observe could not exist in the past eternally. To argue that it has, is to ignore vast amounts of evidence. This is one of the reasons some cosmologists have proposed the multiverse as a cause (which also runs into some of the same scientific and philosophical problems).
But it seems that your question has more to do with the nature or properties of the Cause, rather than the notion that there must be a cause. So how do Christians get from First Cause to a monotheistic God, then to “gray bearded guy” in the sky? That requires a couple of other arguments. (I’ll state them here. To support them is too much for a comment. Either way, this is a way to get from first cause to God of the Bible.)
The existence of objective moral values and duties show that the first Cause must be moral.
The fine-tuning of the Universe/Galaxy/Earth/Life/Human Mind show that these were designed, and design implies purpose.
And lastly, Christ. There is ample evidence for the truth of the person, life, death and resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament Gospels.
All of the above cause, morality, fine-tuning, and Christ are adequately accounted for in a Biblical worldview that is Christ-centered. One can argue against any single point. But each of the above is a rational belief that can be supported philosophically and evidencially.
Contextually, one can probably take most deistic arguments and use them as arguments for theism. Deism, in a sense, is God minus activity. So whatever evidence there is for the existence of a Divine Being, works both for Deism and Theism (as long as the evidence doesn’t imply activity).
Finally, and most importantly, if all of the above is true, each of us has a decision to make about Christ. Is he wacko, or is he who he said he was–God? With the evidence available, and innate need we all have to answer the questions of beginning, purpose, morality, and eternity, there is no better worldview than Christianity (I don’t recommend a simple gray-bearded guy in the sky as a rational basis a worldview 😉 )
God loves you, and He proved it in Christ…
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February 12, 2013 at 11:22 am
[…] involving the borrowing of a book to make this same point, which I detailed in a previous post. Recently I stumbled on two more lucid illustrations by Rabbi Adam Jacobs. Writing at the […]
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