The Argument That Refuses to Go Away

The Cosmological Argument Most People Miss

Most discussions surrounding the “cosmological argument” default to a simplified premise: “Everything has a cause, therefore the universe must have a cause, and that cause is God”. This is usually met with the equally familiar retort: “If everything needs a cause, what caused God?” But that exchange misses the strongest version of the argument entirely. The deepest form of the cosmological argument isn’t about what happened 13.8 billion years ago at the Big Bang. It asks something far more immediate: What is sustaining the universe in existence right now?

This is at the heart of the “Hierarchical Cosmological Argument”. It doesn’t care about the start of the clock; it cares about the “floor” beneath your feet.

1. Borrowed Being: A Universe on Suspenders

We usually picture causation as a linear chain through time, like falling dominoes. But the hierarchical argument concerns simultaneous dependence. Think of a chandelier. It hangs from a chain, the chain from a hook, the hook from a beam, and the beam from the foundation of the house. At no point does the chain support itself. Its “lifting power” is entirely borrowed. If you remove the hook, the chandelier falls immediately, not after a delay, but now.

The claim is that reality has this same vertical structure:

• A tree exists because its molecular structure is held together.

• Molecules depend on the bonding properties of atoms.

• Atoms depend on subatomic particles and quantum fields.

At every level, these things do not exist by their own nature. They are “contingent”—they receive their existence from a deeper layer. This raises a sharp question: Can the entire structure be made of nothing but borrowers?

2. Why the Chain Can’t Be All Mirrors

One response is to suggest an infinite chain of dependence. But adding links to the chain doesn’t explain how the chain is staying in the air.

Imagine a room of mirrors. Each mirror reflects light but produces none. You can add a thousand mirrors, or an infinite sea of them, but without a light source, the room remains pitch black. An infinite chain of “borrowers” does not explain the gift of existence; it merely postpones the explanation forever.

If everything has existence only because something else “lends” it, then existence itself becomes a miracle without a source. At that point, one must either accept that reality is a “Brute Fact”, meaning it exists for no reason at all, or admit there is a foundation.

3. From Potentiality to Pure Act

To sharpen this, classical philosophy looks at the difference between Potentiality and Actuality. Everything we encounter is a mixture of both. A coffee bean is actually a bean but potentially a cup of espresso. It cannot “upgrade” itself; it requires something already actual (hot water and pressure) to flip the switch from potential to actual. If the universe is just a vast collection of these “switches,” there must be a First Mover that isn’t a mixture of potential and act. There must be something that is Pure Actuality:

• It has no “unrealised potential.”

• It doesn’t need to be “switched on” by anything else.

• It doesn’t just have existence; its very nature is existence.

4. Why call the First Cause “God”?

Why call this source “God” rather than a fundamental field of physics? Because anything described by physics is composite—it is a “LEGO set” of parts, laws, and properties. If a thing has parts, it depends on those parts to exist. It is still borrowing its being.

Whatever sits at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy must be:

1. Undivided (Non-composite): It cannot have parts, or it would depend on them. It is a single, seamless reality.

2. Necessary: It cannot not exist; it is the ground that allows everything else to be.

3. Unique: There can only be one “Pure Act,” as two would require a difference to distinguish them, and difference implies composition.

When classical theists speak of God, they aren’t talking about a “super-being” living inside the universe. They are talking about the substance of reality itself, the “Hook” from which the entire chain of physics hangs.

5. The Cost of Denial

Does this argument compel belief? Not like a mathematical trap. You can always walk away. But walking away has a price. To reject the foundation, you must accept that at the very bottom of reality, reason simply stops. You must accept that the “mirrors” are reflecting light that comes from nowhere. You must embrace ultimate arbitrariness as the source of all order.

Or you can ask: Why is there, right now, something rather than nothing? Why has the world not vanished into nothingness while you were reading this sentence?

The Hierarchical Cosmological Argument provides a real and meaningful answer to both questions. It is, for this reason, an argument that quite simply refuses to go away.