Where did the universe come from? Some cosmologists want to
hypothesize that it sprang into existence from “nothing.” However, their “nothing”
is something. Alexander Vilenkin believes that “something is in place
beforehand – namely the laws of physics.” However, he admits:
- It’s a great mystery as to where the laws of physics come from. We don’t even know how to approach it. (Steve Nadis, “Starting Point,” Discover [Sept. 2013])
Perhaps Vilenkin doesn’t know how to “approach it,” because
he is starting with the wrong paradigm. Certainly, from a naturalistic,
atheistic perspective, this question is a “great mystery.” However, this might
be more than a mystery but a
veritable impossibility:
- The laws of physics are elegant, universal, and immutable. Only a cause of equal or greater magnitude could explain their existence and uniform functioning. This consideration alone should eliminate naturalism.
- A natural explanation is impossible because the natural is not yet in existence to cause the natural laws. Nothing is in existence!
- Invoking any natural cause would also suffer from the problem of infinite regress – What causes the cause, and then, what causes the cause of the cause, ad infinitum! The only way to avoid this conundrum is to invoke the transcendent – an eternal Causer who doesn’t require a cause!
- It is also hard to understand how the unchanging laws of physics could arise from what is always changing. It is equally hard to envision how they can remain unchanging in our ever-expanding universe of molecules in motion.
The naturalistic paradigm clearly does not prove fruitful
here. However, there is one other paradigm that does offer a cogent explanation:
- In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth!
No comments:
Post a Comment