Assessing the case for theism › Why does anything exist, and why is it orderly?

Cosmological arguments begin with the existence or general features of the world. Mackie's chapter 5 distinguishes arguments from contingency and sufficient reason, causal regress, a finite past, and Swinburne's inductive approach. Treating them all as the claim that everything has a cause would miss their differences. A defender may instead say that contingent things require explanation while a necessary being does not.

The dispute then concerns what necessity means and whether it supplies the explanation promised. Calling something necessary is not enough. The argument must establish the relevant necessity, connect it to the world, and show why it belongs to a divine being. Mackie also questions whether the demand for a sufficient reason for everything is justified. He allows the naturalist to face an unexplained world, while asking whether the theist has improved matters by postulating God. Chapter 5(a); chapter 14(b).

Design arguments add another question: why is the world structured in ways that permit organized life and inquiry? A biological explanation does not automatically answer why there are laws of nature at all. Mackie's chapter 8 therefore considers Swinburne's argument from temporal order, the regular succession of events, as well as familiar arguments from organized things within the world.

Swinburne regards a divine personal explanation as simple. Mackie disputes this. A mind that brings about a universe directly by intending it includes a substantial explanatory commitment. The familiar cases of intention to which Mackie appeals involve embodied agents and causal means. Mackie questions the move from those cases to an unlimited disembodied will. The disagreement concerns the explanatory credentials of the proposal, not a simple competition to count objects. Chapter 8(c), pp. 146–149.

There is a serious response available to the theist. A single agent with unlimited powers may be simpler in a relevant sense than many independent unexplained facts. Swinburne develops this account in his own work on simplicity and personal explanation. Mackie thinks the added kind of agency costs more than it explains. The reader must assess that disagreement; repeating either the word simple or the question of who created God will not resolve it. Swinburne, “God as the Simplest Explanation of the Universe”.