William Rowe’s formulation for the cosmological argument claims that the Universe must have an atemporal cause for its existence called God. Rowe argues that proponents suggest:

1. Objects in the Universe can only be dependent beings (their existence is explained by some other being or event), or necessary beings (self-existing beings responsible for their own existence).
2. Not all beings can be dependent, as this would lead to a chain of contingent events and causes extending into the past ad infinitum (an “infinite regress”), with no explanation for the collection’s existence.

Deductive conclusion: There must be a necessary being that caused the existence of the Universe, and that being is God.

This formulation appeals to the intuition of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), which posits that every being or positive fact’s existence has an explanation. Whether that explanation is another being or itself rests on whether said being is dependent or self-existing, but no being can exist unexplained. Thus, the cosmological argument entirely presupposes the PSR, so its truth hinges on the principle's credence.

Assuming the PSR to be true to all beings in the Universe including itself, it follows that the Universe must be a dependent being because a) it exists, and b) it is a collection of dependent beings, hence it cannot be a self-existing being (Premise 2). This supporting argument is backed by Rowe’s explanation of the criteria that proponents aim to satisfy: a1) There is an explanation for each member of a collection of dependent beings, and a2) There is an explanation for why there are dependent beings at all. If we assume the Universe consists of infinite contingent beings each recursively explained by preceding causes, then we justify why each dependent being exists individually, but since the cosmological argument does not require that there be a beginning in time, we still do not know why this collection of dependent beings popped into existence to begin with, warranting a self-existing “original” cause like God.

Hence, the sub-argument that a Universe with infinitely causal relationships within it must still wholly originate from another transcendental entity can be viewed as a clear support for asserting the existence of God, granted the PSR.

However, an interesting objection on these grounds that specifically challenges Premise 2 is presented by Graham Oppy, who temporarily shifts the argument from whether the Universe’s cause is God, to whether God’s existence can truly be uncaused in reality as we understand it, before consolidating both answers. Oppy claims that the belief that natural reality exhausts causal reality requires fewer theoretical commitments than believing there is more to causal reality than the natural Universe. This is because although both make promising hypotheses for the Universe’s existence, the former restricts reality to natural events, thereby omitting the need to invoke a non-natural cause to explain two different realities. Therefore, Oppy abductively concludes that natural reality having either no cause or a single uncaused natural cause requires the fewest assumptions about reality, and therefore serves as the best explanation for why there is “something rather than nothing”. In other words, the Universe, at most, has an initial natural cause that is not the theistic God.

This objection may succeed because it grants proponents of the cosmological argument their most controversial assumption—the PSR—and still manages to effectively challenge the argument. If natural reality truly exhausts causal reality, then there is nothing stopping an infinite chain of causes from explaining each dependent being’s existence (a1), and since Oppy argues that there are no non-natural uncaused causes, even the Universe being the cause of its own existence would more plausibly explain why dependent beings exist at all (a2) than God’s existence, without ever mentioning the PSR. The “better” explanation now forces the PSR to be irrelevant to the argument, since we have an element in natural reality—the Universe itself—that could have a cause that need not be God, thus challenging the cosmological argument more powerfully than simply stating that the Universe likely exists as a brute fact.

Furthermore, although Oppy does not mention it, this objection has a downstream effect of indirectly corroding the PSR’s foundation as it exposes its limited scope to only natural reality, i.e. dependent beings. If natural reality is exhaustive and the PSR were applied to God, which theists agree is non-natural, then God would no longer be self-existent because it would no longer be uncaused, and the entire cosmological argument would defeat itself.

On the contrary, this counterargument might fail because it does not disambiguate important definitions. One might ask upon revisiting Oppy’s conclusion, which part of reality does nothing belong to? If there is no more to causal reality than natural reality, how is nothing even logical? In this proposition, nothing is utterly inconceivable, because all causes contained within natural reality are obviously something, and the closest element to nothing within natural reality is free space, which is still radiation, energy and antimatter. If nothing is defined as the absence of anything, then the only way for it to exist is in a causal reality that extends beyond natural reality, which inverts Oppy’s model. One can then freely argue that the Universe was born of a certain type of naturally imperceptible nothingness. In this case, God might as well equal a “nothingness entity” and still “exist” unexplained. It also follows that God exists independently of natural reality and within greater causal reality, and is therefore not a natural cause, which must concern Oppy. Otherwise, there is no reason at all for why there is “something” rather than “nothing”, because something has always existed without reason. Unless that existence is ascribed to a God-like entity, one cannot be satisfied with Oppy’s conclusion unless they accept the other alternative—the Universe is a brute fact. Arguing whether God is parallel to extra-natural nothingness, which is widely accepted by Eastern religion, certainly requires further argumentation.

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