Dr. J. Budziszewski

That's right.

And so... You would need some kind of universe generator, apparently.

You would need some kind of a universe generator.

You'd have to have, instead of speaking of the laws of, you know, maybe in some other universe Planck's constant is different, the gravitational constant is different, light travels at a different velocity, or there's something instead of light.

Okay, maybe so.

But even if the laws of nature, of this nature, are different, there have to be laws of metanature, the laws of the... So you still have the problem of what causes it.

It does not in any way dispense of the... Even the argument to a first cause was willing to say, look,

You've got the universe, and that might have been caused by something.

Well, somebody says, but what caused the cause?

Well, you have to ask, was that a necessary cause or a contingent cause?

In other words, was the cause of this universe something that had to exist?

Or was it something that didn't have to exist?

If it's something that didn't have to exist, then it's reasonable to say it had to have a cause too.

And we could say, what was its cause?

Same question.

Is that a contingent cause or is it a necessary cause?

And the argument is there can't be an infinite regress.

It doesn't make any sense.

So there has to be a first cause that is not contingent, that had to be, that can't not be.

and that is god so even in the classical this classical argument for the existence of god you don't have to say here's god and here's and here's the universe bang there can be all these intervening causes and there would still be a first cause so this is i think that people find this attractive because