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Why this? as in Why this set of caused causes?

Sean Carroll insists that the question "Why everything?" is in some sense illegitimate.  Elsewhere in this blog I've discussed why his reason for objecting to this question is part of a circular argument. But I am approaching his claim from another angle here.

We needn't ask "Why everything?" in order to come up with God as the answer: simply asking "Why this?" will suffice.

As a matter of fact, the first two of Aquinas's five ways start with very particular observations rather than global ones, and proceed from there to argue toward God's existence.  Consider how the Second Way, in considering a concrete order of efficient causes that we find in nature, we are confronting a whole that includes not only caused causes, but uncaused as well.  In looking at even a part of reality, with its mixture of activity and passivity, and asking whence it comes, we are open to discovering divine efficacy in this or that part of the world. If Aquinas's argument is sound, therefore, we need only ask "Why this?" n order to find a path of reasoning that leads to God.

But once I look at the Second Way more carefully, I am tempted at least for a moment to reconsider what I've just said. For while the Second Way starts with a particular ordered series of caused causes rather than talking about all caused causes, the conclusion that it arrives is, by definition, the Cause of any such order.  The conclusion of the Second Way, conceived of as an answer to question, is the answer not only to the question "Why this order of efficient causes?" but also "Why any order of efficient causes rather than none?"

I don't know what to make of that fact: I'm just pointing it out.

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