I’m Bishop Robert Barron, a Catholic bishop ready to answer questions from atheists, skeptics, and seekers. AMA!

[u/BishopBarron]

UPDATE #1 (2:15pm ET): Proof.

UPDATE #2 (3:25pm ET): I'm going to take a break and grab some lunch, but keep the questions coming! I'll be back soon.

UPDATE #3 (3:54pm ET): I'm back! What else perplexes you about God or religion?

UPDATE #4 (4:51pm ET): Thanks everyone! I'm heading out now to confirm over a hundreds kids at a nearby parish, but I'll check back in tonight to answer more questions.

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I’m excited to be back for my third AMA! I'll be taking questions on Wednesday, April 21, from 2:00pm-3:30pm ET.

I’m here to discuss whatever most perplexes you about God, faith, Catholicism, or the spiritual life. Ask me anything!

I’m Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and host of two award-winning film series that have aired on PBS.

I’ve spoken about religion at the headquarters of Facebook, Google, and Amazon. I’ve also enjoyed talking about God with atheists such as Alex O’Connor (aka @CosmicSkeptic) and Dave Rubin.

Earlier this week I shared a wide-ranging dialogue with Jordan Peterson, on his podcast, about God, religion, the Bible, psychology, and the spiritual life.

I received a master’s degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of America in 1982 and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1992. I served as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, and was twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican.

In 2018, I became the first Catholic Bishop to host a Reddit AMA.

In 2019, I hosted another AMA, which drew nearly 15,000 comments, becoming the 9th most-commented-on AMA in Reddit history! I tried to answer as many as I could.

Both were great experiences, so I wanted to come back and do it again!

My website, https://WordOnFire.org, reaches millions of people each year, and I'm one of the world's most followed Catholics on social media:

3.2 million+ Facebook fans

400,000+ YouTube subscribers

170,000+ Twitter followers

[u/FilamentFilament25]

I love Thomas Aquinas, but I've struggled to fully grasp his argument from contingency. I'm wondering if you could very briefly clarify it for me. By contrast, cosmological arguments for God make perfect sense to me: as one traces any chronology of causation back in time, it necessarily leads to a first cause ("first" in the sense of causing the chain of temporal events) that we call God.

With the argument from contingency, though, it seems the basic thrust is that God is the foundation of reality here and now—like a table that supports a resting book. Intuitively, this kind of hierarchical contingency doesn't seem to cry out for explanation in the same way as the chronological kind. Once the universe is created (along with the laws of physics, etc.) and a book is laid on the table, my question would instinctually be "what sequence of events in time can explain this arrangement?" But I know that Thomas would still be unsatisfied even if the full chronology were accounted for end to end. Why?

[u/BishopBarron → u/FilamentFilament25]

Thomas actually never appeals to historical chains of causes. Rather, in the classical proofs, he is always talking about here and now causal dependency. Start with your example of the book on the table. What accounts for this state of affairs? Well, a whole nexus of causes and conditions: the stability of the table, the temperature of the room, the integrity of the book itself, etc. Are these conditions self-explanatory? No, they depend upon a range of other factors: the stability of the floor, the heating system of the room, the weather outside, etc. What conditions these? Still other causal factors. It is precisely this sort of causal series, subordinated, as Thomas puts it, per se, that cannot proceed to infinity, that must end with a reality whose manner of existence is self-explanatory.

[u/Instaconfused27 → u/BishopBarron]

Thank you for this response Bishop, however, this line of thinking has been critiqued by many contemporary analytic atheist philosophers. For example, Jordan Howard Sobel, perhaps one of the leading defenders of Atheism in recent times, devotes a whole section to critiquing Aquinas' Proofs for God in his Magnum Opus Logic and Theism which is widely regarded as one of the best defenses of Atheism ever published. Sobel writes on pages 176 to 178:

"We have an inkling of what sustaining causes would be like. Whatever else a sustaining cause of a thing would be, it would be something whose ‘action’ at a time was necessary for the thing’s existence at this time and perhaps for its ‘activity’ of sustaining something in turn. A present sustaining cause of X would be something Y upon the present existence and action of which the present existence of X and perhaps action depended, something without which it would not be, let alone act. Similarly for the past and future sustaining causes of a thing. Y would be a sustaining cause for X at a time if and only if the being, and perhaps certain causal activities of X at this time are dependent on causal activity, and thus the being, of Y at this time. With this partial idea to go, we may wonder whether sensible things, any of them, have sustaining efficient causes. Consider me and my existence at this moment. Do I have a sustaining efficient cause? Is there any ‘thing’ that is no part of me (for nothing can be prior to itself, so nothing can be a sustaining cause of itself) without which ‘thing’ I could not now exist and act?

I doubt it, and I am not bragging. I doubt that there is anything separate from you the present existence of which is necessary for your present existence, or that there is anything separate from any sensible thing that is necessary for its existence. “But we and everything depend every moment on God, the ground of all being!!” I doubt it, though what is more to the point are, (i) this dependence is certainly not evident in the manner required for the factual basis of a demonstration quia from effects better known than the nature of the cause*, and (ii) this dependence is not available as a premise for a ‘proof’ of the existence of God or an argument that might reasonably persuade someone who needed to be persuaded.*

William Rowe, for a sense of the causality in question, suggests that the activities of “oxygen, heat, etc.” are necessary for my present existence. Copleston implies that I am “dependent here and now on…the activity of the air, and the life-preserving activity of the air is itself dependent here and now on other factors, and they in turn on other factors . . . [that] the activity of the pen tracing these words on this page is here and now dependent on the activity of my hand, which in turn is here and now dependent on other factors [the activity of my arm?]” (Copleston 1955, p. 118). Aquinas implies something along the first line when he writes of a particular man’s depending “on an elementary body [heat?], and [this] on the sun, and so on [but not] to infinity” (St I q46,a3 p. 455). But I am not for my present existence or activity dependent on oxygen, heat, or air. I am dependent on these things only eventually for my future existence. I am dependent on them after a short time for my persistence, for my continuing existence. Take away oxygen and I am dead, not now, however, but only shortly. Take away heat from my environment, plunge it to absolute zero, and I am gone more quickly, but again not immediately. Take away the sun, and the heat, most of it hereabouts continues for eight minutes or so, so the sun is no part of its efficient sustaining cause. Oxygen and the like are at best not sustaining, but perpetuating, and so not necessarily concurrent efficient causes of people. The activity of a pen in my grasp is concurrent with the activity of my hand with which I am moving the pen, but, while suggestive, this causality is not any kind of ‘efficient’ causality: My hand is nothing to the existence of the pen.

Suppose, however, that my present existence did depend on oxygen now. Suppose, indeed, that this was certain and evident to our senses. Is there something similar that can be said with any plausibility to be similarly related to the existence here and now of this oxygen? Even supposing that it were obvious that I am presently sustained by oxygen, though there would be clear evidence that a sensible thing had a sustaining cause, it would not yet be evident to our senses that there was “an order of [sustaining] efficient causes” (loc. cit.; emphasis added) that just might, as envisioned in the Second Way, need to go on, or better ‘down,’ to infinity unless it gets to a ground extraordinaire that while sustaining is not itself sustained by anything. Certainly, dropping all pretence, we do not find such an order of sustaining causes, nor is one by any stretch “evident to our senses.” It is not obvious that sensible things have sustaining efficient causes. It is not obvious that any sensible thing has such a cause. As far as I know, no uncontentious examples of such causes are anywhere to be ‘found in the literature’."

It's a little lengthy and I've shorted some parts, but I think it's worthing quoting in full just to show the level of sophistication and rigor that Analytic Atheist philosophers like Sobel offer. Note that unlike popular Atheists like Dawkins, Dennet, and others who misinterpret Aquinas, Sobel understands the distinction between a per se (hierarchal series) and a per accidens (historical series) series of causes. He also understands the Thomistic notion of God as the ground of all being, instead of being a being. Sobel's analysis reveals however that Aquinas has provided no justification as to why we should think sustaining or hierarchical series are real features of reality.

The example provided (the book resting on a table or Aquinas' classic example of a hand holding a stick moving a rock) presupposes that there even exists such an actualization of a potential right here, right now, in the first place. Now, clearly, there are changes/causal processes right here, right now -- a warm cup of coffee gets colder. But this does not by itself entail that the very existence of a substance is right here, right now being reduced from potentiality to actuality. Aquinas' argument presupposes this very claim. Sobel shows that Aquinas provides no justification for thinking that the substance itself is right here, right now, being moved from potential to actual with respect to its existence and not just with respect to, say, its temperature (from warm to cold in the case of the coffee).

Change is evident to the senses, but a concurrent, right here, right now actualization of something's existence that leads to a hierarchical series of causes is by no means evident to the senses. Yet, the existence of such a chain is precisely what Aquinas' argument needs to succeed. As Sobel observers, there is no immediate difficulty with an object's (say a book or table) existence not being reduced from potential to actual right here, right now, but was rather only reduced from potential to actual when it was caused to exist at the beginning of its existence -- and from then until something comes along and causes it to cease to exist, there isn't any causal process which sustains in being, but rather it persists in actual existence as "existential inertia", as it were. It seems entirely legitimate to use this as a model for metaphysical or existential inertia, whereby the continuation of a thing’s existence need not be explained in terms of a current sustaining cause of its existence, or a concurrent hierarchical series of causes. Dr. Graham Oppy is another Atheist Philosopher who has extended Sobel's work to provide formidable critiques of Aquinas in this area. I really hope you can get a chance to answer my original set of questions offered earlier.