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This is the first of a series of
articles about the existence of God. In them, my aim is
to show that belief in God can be rationally defended. I
am not aiming to prove the existence of God in such a
way that people are compelled to accept his existence,
because I don’t think that sort of proof is possible. By
the same token no-one can disprove the existence of God
in a way which compels people to accept atheism. There
has to be some explanation for the existence of the
universe and all that is in it. I personally, like
several billion other people, do not find an atheistic
explanation at all credible.
Let me make it clear that, as
with my article last month on Richard Dawkins, I welcome
questions, debate and disagreement. Should anyone wish
to write in disagreement and be nervous to do so in a
church magazine, we are happy, on request, to consider
such a letter being published anonymously (and, if
published, it would be anonymous), so long as the writer
supplies us with his/her name and address (email or
snail mail).
I do not believe
in a “God of the gaps,” i.e. that God is merely an
explanation of what science cannot (currently) explain.
Rather I believe that this complex, ordered and
beautiful universe, including the world we live in, all
of which started in the Big Bang; this human life which
is capable of such moral, intellectual and creative
heights is all the handiwork of a Divine Being. This is
not the God of the Gaps but rather the God of
Everything. However I do want to affirm that only God
could have brought the universe into being in the first
place.
Part 1: The Argument
from Causality
It is surely a self-evident truth,
supported by logic and experience, that something cannot
come from absolutely nothing. According to science,
before the Big Bang happened some 13-15 billion years
ago, there was absolutely nothing. Then a “singularity”
(a point so small it had no dimensions: height, length,
breadth) came into being. This is all rather
mind-boggling!
However, for anything to exist, it
must either be self-sufficient/self-existent i.e. have
always existed, or it must be the product or effect of
something else that has always existed.
Anthony Kenny Professor of
Philosophy, Oxford University writes, "A proponent of
the Big Bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must
believe that … the universe came from nothing and by
nothing." I think the idea that the universe came from
nothing and by nothing is not rational.
On the other
hand, to say that there is an eternal, self-existent
Divine Being who brought the universe into being is a
perfectly coherent and meaningful concept.
OBJECTIONS TO THE ARGUMENT FROM
CAUSALITY
a.
Could the universe have always existed?
This is not the view of modern
cosmologists. Professor Steven Hawking, in his book
The Nature of Space and Time (1996), wrote "Almost
everyone now believes that the universe, and time
itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang."
It also contradicts the Second Law
of Thermodynamics which states that the universe is
running down like a clock or, better, cooling off like a
giant stove. This is irreversible. So the universe could
not have been running and cooling forever. It must have
had a beginning.
If the universe is eternal that
means that the number of past events in the history of
the universe is infinite. However mathematicians
recognize this leads to self-contradictions. You can
never get to infinity by addition because you can always
add one more.
David Hilbert, late Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Gottingen, perhaps the
greatest mathematician of the 20th century, stated: “The
infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither
exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for
rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite
to play is solely that of an idea.”
b.
Could there not be an impersonal cause of the
universe?
Such a cause would have to be
self-existent and eternal. But if it were impersonal
then the cause could never exist without the effect.
This would be simply automatic: an impersonal adequate
cause must immediately produce its effect. The only way
for the cause to be timeless and the effect to begin in
time is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely
chooses to create an effect in time without any prior
determining conditions. Thus, we are brought, not merely
to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its
Personal Creator.
Dr Stephen Meyer (a geophysicist
with a Cambridge doctorate in origin-of-life biology):
“If it’s true there’s a beginning to the universe, as
modern cosmologists now agree, then this implies a cause
that transcends the universe. … To get life going in the
first place would have required biological information;
the implications point beyond the material realm to a
prior intelligent cause.”
So, my first argument is that only
an eternal, personal God could have brought the universe
into being. Next time we shall look at the Argument from
Design.
Tony Higton
Does God Exist? Part 2 -
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Does God Exist?: The Rector's Blog
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