Richard Talyor

a. There is a world.
b. The world as a whole is contingent, and every part of the world is contingent.

Taylor defends this claim in two ways. First, he says that everything within the world comes into being and (eventually)ceases to be. It would be very “strange,” he says, if a world composed of such things were a necessary being. In the second place, Taylor asks us to perform various thought experiments. The main thrust of these is that we can, without any obvious contradiction, conceive of the possibility of there never having been any world. From this, he asks us to conclude that the non-existence of the world is really possible.

c. There must be something that contains the sufficient reason of the existence of the world.

( This follows from the Principle of Sufficient Reason. )

d. There are only two possibilities: Either there is an infinite regress of contingent causes depending on other contingent causes for their existence, or there is a self-sufficient, necessary being on which all the others depend for their existence.

Taylor is thinking about the matter in somewhat the following way. The world must have a cause. This cause must be either necessary or contingent. If it is necessary, well and good - we have what we were looking for. But if it is contingent, then it too must have a cause,and the same questions apply. Is it necessary? Then we have the conclusion we want. Otherwise, we must press on. If we never arrive at a necessary being, then it seems that PSR forces us to conclude that there is an infinite series of contingent beings, depending on other contingent beings.

e. An infinite regress of contingent causes depending on other contingent causes for their existence is impossible.

For then, Taylor says, there would be no answer to the question why those contingent things should ever have existed. An adequate answer to that question requires a “first cause” that doesn’t require anything else for its existence. In other words, it requires the existence of a necessary being. Thus we arrive at the conclusion we were looking for . . .

f. Therefore there is a necessary being on which the world depends for its existence, and this the tradition calls “God.”