The Argument From Change for the Existence Of God
We all notice a lot of things about the world, and some things we may not notice at all, but one thing we can all be sure of–one thing that is as certain as anything–is that things change. We can all see that things don’t stay the same—cars move down the street, flowers come into bloom, and dogs make progress when chewing their bone. Some things change in shape and size and color, and other things change in where they live or how they act. Things can also change in existence: one day they are, another day they aren’t. My grandmother recently demonstrated this rather alarming example of change.
We can also hear that things change. For what is music if not the moving from one note to another, and all those kinds of things? And then, of course, we can all feel change. Certain sensations, like the occasional muscle cramp, come and go.
But even more fundamental than the changing of a muscle, is the changing of our mind.
We experience different perceptual states. One moment we think about this, another moment we think about that. As I write this very sentence, your thoughts are changing, and so are mine. I really cannot see how the notion of change is anything but certain: To even deny that change occurs is to affect the very thing you’re hoping to get away from. It cannot be done.
But how do things change? And in what way do they change? At first, this all seems rather odd.
Some philosophers used to think that change was impossible. They thought that for something to change would entail something coming into existence from nothing, which is absurd. Other philosophers thought that change is all there is, and that there are no abiding entities—no you, no me, no “self.” Everything, they would say, is an illusion but change.
But neither of these seem accurate. Clearly, things change. Yet, on the other hand, there are certainly abiding entities—there is a you, and there is a me—since the only thing we can be as certain of as the fact of change, is that we are experiencing the fact of things changing.
If there were no change, then what are we experiencing as we read through this sentence? Why are my eyes more irritated now than they were five minutes ago? Why is my grandmother no longer physically animated? Did we really not ever travel anywhere, or change our mind about anything? The position is silly. Of course change occurs.
But, on the other hand, if change is all there is, and there are now abiding realities, then why do we have remembrances of the past and expectations of the future? Why do we say that the rock that is changing is still the same rock—why don’t we say that the “rock is change”, instead of “the rock is changing.” This may seem a subtle difference, and perhaps it is, but is not insignificant. Things change, of that there can be no doubt. But there are also things that endure. And so we need some way to reconcile this.
It was Aristotle who provided the answer. He said there are indeed things that endure—me, you, the rock, etc—but that everything which exists has, within itself, a certain potential to exist in some other capacity: in other words, a potential for change. We exist, but we also have the potential not to exist. We think one thing, but we have the potential to think another thing. We currently have this amount of knowledge, but we have the potential for even more knowledge—more languages, musical instruments, and so on. We also have the potential for Alzheimer’s. We have the potential to rot and decay, to know less and less. Maybe even the potential to know nothing at all.
Most everything which exists has the potential for change. Cars can go faster or slower, rocks can erode, and balls can bounce. Now, certain things may be able to change in some ways, but not other ways—that is certainly true. A rock has no potential for conceptual thought, as humans apparently do. So not everything has the same potential for change, but almost everything has some potential for change. We will arrive at that one exception shortly.
So, it would seem—and at this point I will have to introduce some new vocabulary—that everything has a mix of potentiality (or how it could be), on the one hand, and actuality (or how it is right now), on the other.
For example: I have the potential to be downstairs enjoying a plate of eggs prepared lovingly by my wife, but I am actually upstairs writing this. I also have the potential to be dead, but I am “actualizing” being alive, thank goodness.
Let’s take a brief account of everything we’ve uncovered so far. First, change occurs. Second, nearly all things have a mix of potentiality and actuality; or the way they could be, and the way they actually are right now. We’ve offered examples to support this, but these are the only conclusions we’ve drawn so far. They do, however, seem obviously true, even if we’ve introduced some technical jargon. I don’t believe think we can conceive of any exceptions to them. For the very act of imagining something as an exception is itself reducing a certain potential (the fact that you could imagine something otherwise) to actuality (the fact that you are now imagining it), which would only go on to support each of these Aristotelian claims. So, you might be able to imagine it, but you cannot conceive of it.
It’s now time to move onto the next stage: How do things change?
So far, we’ve given a few examples of things in change, but now it might be better if we remain with just one. Let’s take the example of the car.
Certain things have a potential to change; this much we’ve established. The car could be further or nearer down the road, or traveling faster or slower, or compacted. But the car cannot cause any of these changes itself—a car cannot compact itself, and a car cannot drive itself down the road, even if it’s a self-driving car. The title “self-driving” car is misleading: What causes a car to change its position are things always other than the car—a person, programming, an explosion of chemicals, friction, fundamental particles, etc.; go as deep as you like, and you will always find some agent of change that itself entails another agent of change, always other than itself, unless and until… well, we’ll see.
So, the car (when properly considered) cannot cause any of these changes to itself. It may have the potential to change—the potential to be further or nearer down the road, traveling at a higher or lower speed, or compacted—but it requires something other than itself to actualize that potential. So, there is potentiality, on the one hand, and actuality, on the other. I apologize for the repetition, but feel it is very important to become familiar with these terms and how they relate to one another. You’ll see why, I hope, in just another minute or so.
Now, if this example is true, then we are arriving at a very interesting conclusion: Change occurs, but cannot occur itself. In other words: all change requires a changer.
Nearly everything we can think of has potential for change. Peoplegrow taller, bugs become squished, stars erupt into supernova. U2 could even write another hit song, at some point—that, too, would be a change, however unexpected. But very few things we can think of—in fact, there is only one, but we must resist the urge of getting ahead of ourselves—actualize themselves, or bring one of their potential state of affairs into an actually existing state of affairs. Speaking philosophically: Nothing can reduce its own potency to act. Yet all things are being actualized in some way (that is, changing)—whether they’re over here or over there, or growing taller or thinner, or even existing at all—which means all this is being done by something other than the things themselves. Everything in change requires something already in change, to affect the change that it’s in.
That sentence was somewhat clunky. Allow me to state it again, this time more simply. Nothing can change unless something causes it to. Nothing can actualize its own potential, unless… again, we’ll see.
But even just to exist is to fulfill a potential, is it not? I’m not talking about coming into existence, but existing at all. For every moment we continue to exist, we are, in fact, changing; we are realizing one potential (to exist) rather than another (to not exist). We all (as humans) have the potential to not exist. And this would also seem to be true of the universe. Every moment the universe continues to exist, the universe is changing: It is actualizing one potential (existence), over another (non-existence); the potential to be, rather than not to be. Hamlet, yes–very good. And since no one thing can enact its own potential, there must be something that is enacting this potential (existence) for everything which exists. But what is this thing?
It’s important we take another second to do some accounting of everything discussed so far. Because what we are doing now is chasing the series of changers “downward,” so to speak, rather than back in time. Not accidentally (forward and back), but hierarchically (up and down). What we are now trying to figure out, is this: what is causing the “change” of our existence at this very instant? To put it another way, we’re not asking what brought us into being, but rather, what holds us in being? What—or Who—is this mysterious force of ex-nihilation?
The universe is changing. Not only all the stuff in the universe, but the universe itself—which, essentially, is just all of space-time reality. But for all of this to be changing is for the universe to be actualizing potential; forget about its movement from “then until now”, for just the simple fact that it continues to exist, at all, is for it to be actualizing potential. (Again, think up and down, not forward and back.) And we have just seen that no potential can actualize itself; no thing can change without there being a changer to change it, even if that change is simply remaining in existence, rather than going out of existence. But if the universe does not offer an explanation of what changes it—that is, what preserves it in being; what actualizes its potential to exist, over any other potential, including the potential to not exist—which the universe doesn’t, there must in principle be something beyond the universe that does. Something that keeps the universe in place.
Let’s take another moment to collect our thoughts, because there’s a few things that people often misunderstand at this point.
The first point is that things change—that is Thing #1. The second point is no change can occur without something to change it—and that would be Thing #2. The third point is that the very act of existence itself is a “change”, even if does not entail any particular collection of time—Thing #3. And this (Thing #3) is the crucial distinction, and the one that often loses people. What must be understood is that to exist here and now is to actualize a certain potential. That, in itself, is a form of change, even if we do not see it as such, because the picture is “static”, so to speak. Time has nothing to do with it. The very fact that anything exists at all, at any moment, at all places, and everywhere, requires something which brings that potential about—to affect the very change of existing, rather than non-existing. This is the essential part of the argument: Too many people are stuck in seeing change only as something that goes on overtime, as something that differed from “yesterday” until “today”. But what we have done is given examples of change over time simply to get the ideas in our head of “potency” and “act”, and then inverted the argument. We’ve just titled everything on its side. What was running parallel, is now standing straight up and down. Our perspective has shift one hundred and eighty degrees. We are no longer looking forward and back, but right down through the very nature of being itself. So, what is causing this particular change, we would like to know—this very potential to exist, of anything existing, at all? There must be something which is actualizing it. There must be something which is causing everything that is, to be. This is true for us, and it is true for everything around us: People, plants, formaldehyde, and the universe as a whole. The very fact that space-time reality exists, and continues to exist, is the reduction of a certain potential to act; the bringing of a potential state of affairs (existence) into an actual state of affairs (actual existence). When properly understood, this is utterly significant.
This may have all gotten a bit technical, which is why I’ve wanted to go slow, and why I’ve risked repeating myself to the point of annoyance. But let’s continue.
The universe existing is the universe in change. But all change, as we’ve seen, requires a changer. So, for anything to explain the existence of the universe—of why the universe not only exists but continues to exist—there must be something beyond the universe which is affecting its existence. But to be beyond the universe would entail an entity that is, by necessity, transcendent: space-less, timeless, immaterial, and so on. Since there is nothing about the universe which explains why the universe exists, and there is nothing within the universe which tells us why anything the universe is construed of (laws of nature, fundamental particles, etc), why the potential for any of those things to exist, is continually endorsed into existence—is continually brought to act, we are now at an unavoidable impasse: If we’re going to explain the existence of universe, we must be willing to go beyond the universe. Otherwise we have not explained anything at all.
This is where we need to make one final and essential distinction. Because if change is just potentiality brought into actuality, how do we suppose to explain the very nature of change itself? If all change requires a changer, how do we ever get to the beginning of the line, in other words? What, we would like to know, is causing all this change to occur? There seems to be only one potential solution: There must, in principle, be something which itself is not in change, something which is—how do you say—pure actuality. Something, in other words, that is composed of no potential and is itself unable to change, because it would not itself need to change. This would be the only conceivable way to terminate this series of events and find any ultimate, satisfactory explanation for why anything exists, at all. There must be, as Aristotle once had it, an unchanged, changer: Something that does all the changing but something which itself does not, and cannot, change. For if that thing also changed, then it too would require a changer, and so we’d just be on the hunt again, and would be for all infinity. But we can’t be on the hunt for all infinity, because then nothing would be explained; we’d have no reason why anything was put into change to begin with, including the existence of the beavers, formaldehyde, or the universe. (I, for one, should want to know why beavers exist. They’re my favorite. And most are probably equally curious about the universe.) What we would have are a series of instrumental agents of change, but no ultimate agent of change. What we need is an ultimate agent of change.
Why? For a very simple reason such as this. If we take an example of change—say, a fence being painted—it doesn’t matter how long the handle of the brush is. The handle of the brush does next to nothing to explain why the fence is being painted. What we need is a terminus. That terminus (at least in this limited example) would be a person. The fence is being painted because a person is painting it. All the instrumental causes of change—the paintbrush itself, and however long the handle is—all need an ultimate explanation, a final resting point: Something that does not derive its power from something other than itself, but something from which everything else’s power is derived. Now, I said this example is limited, because, as we think deeper about it, the very existence and action of that person painting also requires an explanation for all the change that he is in, but it at least serves our initial point. Even though the person does not “actualize his own potential”, we can see why an infinitely long brush handle is a wholly inadequate response for why the fence is being painted. The same could, and should, be said of all the things in change when attempting to explain why anything, whether football helmets, trash-trucks, or even the universe, continues to exist. To keep chasing one changer back to another changer indefinitely, is just to extend the handle of the paintbrush. It leaves virtually nothing explained. We have no way of getting the entire series started. But since the entire series is started, we need to arrive at that which started it. This cannot be done unless we reach something which is fully actual and not in change and therefore cannot change. There is no other conceivable endpoint. Logic compels us.
But is the concept of something “fully actual” coherent? What would this something even be like? Let’s examine the proposition.
First, I think we can affirm the concept is coherent. In fact, I think it makes quite a good deal of sense of everything we’ve discovered so far. For example, as we have already seen, if something is sustaining the universe, it must be beyond the universe to sustain it. It cannot be itself the universe, since the universe is in change and all change requires a changer. This something must be immaterial, since all matter changes. This something would also have to be timeless, since time is also a measure of change (“earlier than” vs “later than”). It seems our deductions are so far consistent. By removing this unchanged changer from the universe, we strip it of all those things which necessarily come with change. This is a sort of peeling away process. We are getting at the very core and sustenance of reality, not by addition, but rather, subtraction. We are making the explanation as simple and as slim as possible by doing away with everything that has the ability to change. Time, space, matter, and energy—all of these, their very nature, let alone existence—entails potential, which in turn gives us something in change. Therefore, our unchanged, changer cannot be comprised of any of these entities. He must precede everyone of them, and everyone of them must proceed from Him.
You’ll notice the employment of formal language at this point; I seem to have let loose of the cat’s tail. Though, I suppose, it should no doubt come as a surprise to see this unchanged, changer is God. For what we’re left with, if our reasoning has been right, is a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, transcendent being, who Himself is never changed, but affects all things in change and causes them to be. A being that is pure act, with no potentiality,. A being that is absolutely simple and noncomposite and complete. A being that is perfect and powerfully so. He cannot change because there is no way that He can change. Nothing can be added to Him, because there is nothing to add—no knowledge, no power, none of it. He has all these things and He gives all these things away in certain quantities as he deems appropriate to do so. This, too, would seem consistent. For nothing can have that which wasn’t given to it. So, if there is love in the universe, there must be something which offers love. If there is goodness in the universe, there must be something which has this goodness to give. And if there is mind, there must be something greater than matter. God is all of these things, and He is all of these things, in one.
God exists.
Mike Rickard says
If I was going to play background music while I was reading this, I’d tune into David Bowie’s “Changes.” All kidding aside, the universe is in a state of flux as stars die, stars are born, and planets form. Likewise on Earth, we see changes in weather, politics, culture, and more. Our bodies change with time (although the good thing is we can help mold this change). Inherent to this is God. I can understand that some people have no place for God in their thinking of the way things operate, but it astounds me Pat. To see this majestic universe we live in with patterns, laws, and such, how do you deny there is something guiding the change? I know I’m a bit off-topic from what you’re saying, but it truly astounds me.
Mallory Jackson says
Pat, I have a question for you or any of your readers. What is the difference between change and entropy? I would argue that entropy is part of the natural progression of the universe as it breaks down into chaos.
Pat Flynn says
Entropy would be an example of change, so far as change is used in the demonstration above. But it is just an example; they’re not equivalent terms.