The Cosmological Argument for God

I want to return to an important book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. The first couple of chapters dealt with arguments for the existence of truth. The authors move to a new chapter in which they attempt to prove that God exists. Their first argument is called the Cosmological Argument.

t\They start with a story of Albert Einstein. It was in 1916 when Einstein's calculations revealed the universe had a definite beginning. This upset Einstein as well as other physicists who wanted the universe to be static and eternal. Why should they care about the beginning of the universe? Because it allowed for God as creator.

Einstein's work hinted at the possibility of God for a simple reason. His theory of General Relativity supported one of the oldest formal arguments for the existence of a theistic God -- the Cosmological Argument. It sounds complicated but it's very simple. In logical form, the argument looks like this: everything that had a beginning had a cause; the universe had a beginning; therefore, the universe had a cause. This cause came to be called the Big Bang.

The authors give five reasons to prove the universe had a beginning with this Big Bang. First, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Law of Entropy, says that nature tends to bring things to disorder. We see that the universe still has some order left with some usable energy, so the universe cannot be eternal. Secondly, we have found over the last 75 years that the universe is expanding; if we could watch a video recording of the history of the universe in reverse, we would see everything in the universe collapsing back to point. Another piece of scientific evidence is the cosmic background radiation, which is actually light and heat left over from the initial explosion of the Big Bang. A fourth clue was the discovery of slight variations in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation. These temperature ripples enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction into galaxies. A fifth supporting fact is Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which shows that time, space, and matter are interdependent; you can't have one without the others. This theory demands an absolute beginning for all three.

The book contains an interesting quotation from Robert Jastrow, the director of Mount Wilson and founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. He is an agnostic when it comes to religious matters, so this is not someone in the camp of Christianity. He writes, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." In other words, Genesis seems to give a good picture of the Big Bang.

Why does God have to be dragged into this? Couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Here's the key point -- natural forces, in fact all of nature, were created at the Big Bang. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Something outside of nature had to do the job, and that's where the term "supernatural" comes into the picture.

At this point, when God is suggested as the Beginner, atheists come up with an age-old question: "Then who made God? If everything needs a cause, that God needs a cause too." But the Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes into being needs a cause. God did not come into being. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he didn't need a cause.

What characteristics of God can be seen from the evidence discussed in this chapter? He must be self existent, timeless, non-spatial, and immaterial. He must be unimaginably powerful. He must be supremely intelligent. He must be personal in order to choose to convert a state of nothingness into the time-space-material universe.

The authors end the chapter with a key question: "If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing?" Good point.