Necessary Being Argument for God’s Existence

Believers in God the creator the one who made all from nothing hold that all beings apart from God are contingent. A contingent thing is a thing that might not have been. The earth is an example.
 
The necessary being argument teaches that that which does not have to exist exists and can only be made from literally nothing by that which does have to exist. It assumes that nothing that exists in the universe has an independent existence. Even after being made or created it still has no independent existence. The creation requires God ongoing support to stay in existence.
 
The Bible never actually speaks of God producing something where there was literally nothing. Yesh m'aiyan, something from nothing is used by say an artist who has rubbish and it is nothing in that sense and he turns it into something. The necessary being argument comes from how Christianity to look credible began to delve into philosophy and ended up with the philosopher's God. Having said that, this God is less crude than the Bible version.
 
It presupposes that a being making things but not using anything to make them must have infinite power to make things from nothing. The distance between nothing and something is infinite.
 
God is said to be that being. He is what powers he has. If he is a necessary being, he does not need something to hold him together. He has no components. Thus he is literally his love and his justice and so on. This makes no sense for love and justice are not powers but abstract things.
 
The logic is that God turns nothing into something. If you ask what made God the answer is that he is so simple and simple beyond our imaginings that he needs no maker and his existence needs no explanation. But something being simple does not prove no explanation is needed. Simplicity and explainability are two separate things. Richard Dawkins said that God is so intelligent that he cannot be simple for intelligence requires complex minds. The Christian answer is that a mind is not the thoughts it has. So a very simple entity can have very complex thoughts. But if God is simple then he is his thoughts and they are part of him. God not being his thoughts would mean the thoughts are not his thoughts and exist independently of him - the thoughts will exist but the mind that thinks them may not exist. So God is his thoughts. We have a contradiction - God is and isn't simple. God is nonsense.
 
The logic is that something cannot come from nothing. So creation must have come from something that was always there. That something is God. The argument contradicts itself by saying that something did come from nothing after all. It says that something cannot come from nothing unless God makes something come from nothing which makes no sense. 0 becomes 1. If that is impossible then even God cannot make it possible. What we have is, "Something cannot come from nothing if there is no God. There is a God so something can come from nothing if there is a God." That is really a circular argument - a trick.
 
The word creation implies God making that which is not God. Since there is nothing else but God God must make all things from nothing.
 
The necessary being argument is a paraphrase of the dogma of creation from literally nothing.
 
Creation from nothing is impossible for an infinite God who is his own power cannot make anything that is not part of himself. The doctrine says God is all power and then that there is power that is not him, that is created entities for they are made out of energy and power.
 
The argument assumes that the universe cannot be self-existent (cause itself or be the reason for its own existence) and so it is not a proof.
 
Religion says that God is self-existent and because he just is and always was he did not make himself. That would be absurd for it would be saying God had to exist before he made himself in order to make himself. But that does not matter. If that is not what happened the problem is we still have a God who causes himself. It is about the cause not about God existing before himself in order to make himself exist.
 
It is absurd if it says that God makes himself from nothing and makes the universe from nothing when it would be easier to say the universe makes itself from nothing. Something coming from nothing by itself is far less absurd than something coming from nothing by the power of God and even more so when God himself comes from nothing for if something can come from nothing who needs God? Then you have two or three absurdities or problems instead of one, a god doing the impossible by causing himself and then the impossible happening again when he makes things out of nothing; whereas with the idea of it coming into being by itself you have merely one absurdity. The fewer absurdities the better. Simplicity is the law! It will be answered that we believe in many things that came from nothing and which are not important so why not believe that God exists? Why make an exception of him? Why not when we don’t need him or see him or hear him? Things are complicated enough without bringing that big being in. It is unfair to argue that since things are destroyed in the universe, the universe cannot be the necessary being for nothing is really destroyed but is converted into another form of energy.
 
The proof from dependence presupposes that it makes sense to say that God created the world from nothing. This creation idea is foolish for if God didn’t need a creator then it is not necessarily true that if something exists then it had to have a maker or creator. It is foolish because if something exists, it is made of power and power can never be put out of existence. It cannot become nothing again. If it cannot become nothing again then it didn’t come from nothing in the first place. The idea of something becoming nothing is incomprehensible at best and incoherent at worst. The proofs for God even if satisfactory would not be satisfactory to the layperson or even to most philosophers. And incoherent it is. Let us do some maths. If something can become nothing then 1 can become 0. This is impossible. Creation is impossible so the proofs for God are only a waste of time. They are religious conjuring tricks meant to reassure the gullible that the utterances of the Church are reasonable.

Religion says that God is an exception to the rule that everything needs a cause for God’s existence is his essence. Then they say then that they don’t understand what this means. So it is not helping anything at all. It is absurd to say that God’s nature is existence and essence are the same though the largest religion in the world says it is not absurd (page 27, Part 1, Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine). Existence is not a quality. Existing things have qualities. For God to cause his own essence he would have to both exist and not exist at the one time. And existence is a part of us not something outside of us.

God is important and matter (and us too!) is supposed to be unimportant in comparison. If something was never made but just existed it would be most likely to be an unimportant thing. We are saying that it could just be as easy to say that a lump of rock – or anything at all so there is an infinity of options - just exists and there is no reason for it as it is to say that God just exists. God is the least likely thing for there is an infinity of other things any one of which could just exist. And also for God is supposed to not just exist but to be the reason for his own existence which is as bizarre as the other things religion says about him. He may be the reason for his own existence but that does not give him importance because there is no reason why he is the reason for his own existence. He just is. That does not solve anything.

The prime mover (things don’t move by themselves so they need an unmoving God to move them) and the first cause (nothing causes itself and so an uncaused God is needed to cause all things) arguments are just different aspects of this argument that since things in the universe enter and go out of existence they must be held in existence by a being that needs nothing but itself to exist. But all things may be made of energy that changes but doesn’t go out of or come into existence. It may be this being so there is no need to bring in another one or an external one such as God. The being that exists of and by itself does not need to be an intelligence.
 
If you can imagine a God causing himself you can imagine each building block of nature causing itself. There could be countless necessary beings. Those who answer that these blocks would still need infinite power to exist for when they might have not existed some infinite power must cause them, do not realise that if component A causes component B and B causes A (which makes sense like a ring does with one part supporting the other) you have something that is not infinite but still depends on itself. This idea is no stranger than self-creating spirits. The idea of material things causing themselves this way has been accepted by most physicists and is probably verified by experiments that substantiate the quark theory (page 47, 48, God and the New Physics). It is also believed by modern physics that the universe when it first appeared was simple beyond our understanding – which strikes out the design argument - not just in shape but in the structure (page 49). Even the laws of physics with their complex results are all very simple (page 221).

Everybody who believes in a spiritual God believes that in some sense even if he is not three persons he is one and more than one – perhaps in his attributes, so matter could be able to be both its cause and its result in the ultimate building blocks of nature.
 
A God who cannot not exist is absurd. When there could have been nothing he could put himself out of existence or cease to exist. But he cannot for the power that composes him cannot just become nothing. So we end up in contradiction. It is a greater absurdity to say that there being nothing at all is impossible than to say that a being that exists can go back to being nothing or turn into nothing. The scales tip in favour of the idea that the necessary being God is rubbish.
 
Relationship to First Cause
 
We have the argument that nothing can exist without a necessary being - being that needs nothing to create it.
 
We have the argument that all causes have to start somewhere so there was first cause, possibly God, to start it all off. This would be an uncaused cause.
 
Notice the two arguments are really the same in the sense that they point to a necessary being. The first cause argument simply looks at the very first cause while the necessary being argument looks at all causes as a whole.
 
Which cause seems to be the most important? Clearly it would be the first cause to most people. But in reality if all causes cannot be unless God causes them one cause is as important as another. Each one in a sense is a first cause.
 
The argument fails to prove a God even it is correct
 
The necessary being argument if it proves anything only proves a creator but a creator is not necessarily a personal God or even if it is it is not necessarily the Christian God. It need not even have intelligence the way we have it. It may have something more like artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is when something does not really have any intelligence but functions as if it does. The argument would only prove what it needs and that is a creator that is just there and which made from nothing and which has something comparable to artificial intelligence. It is not the intelligence a person has but more like what a force might have.
 
Do not think, "The argument points to something so I may as well go a bit further and hold that that something is my Christian God." That is abusing the argument. If the argument is absolutely correct then it DISPROVES that God. There is no such thing as going further when the argument only proves a creator with artificial intelligence and who is in no way like a person.
 
A creator that has more than it needs to have needs explanation. If our impersonal creator is enough then we end up wondering, "Why is there a loving God when there might just be an impersonal intelligent creator?"
 
The argument is not really an argument for God and it is not evidence for God.
 
Conclusion
 
Being contingent means you might not have been or might not have existed. You are a “might not have been”. The necessary being argument says that God is non-contingent. He is that which is not a "might not have been." He is non-contingent and nothing contingent can exist without him. The necessary being argument is in reality the only real argument for evidence for a creator but it fails on both accounts. It is totally wrong and will soon be buried forever along with Thomas Aquinas. Religion uses it to give the false veneer of credibility for its lies. There could have been nothing. There should have been nothing. There isn't. The thought, "Necessary non-existence is what should be. The concept of necessary existence contradicts this fact so it is total rubbish" needs further discussion.  And even if the argument is right it only gives you a creator not a God. The two are not necessarily the same thing.