THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

This proof argues that the first Cause had to always exist or it too would have required a cause, and only God can fulfill the necessary requirements. Here’s what it looks like

1.     All things that have come into existence are caused to exist by other things.

2.     If there is no eternal uncaused Causer, then nothing can exist.

Conclusion: Therefore, there must be an eternal uncaused Causer - God.

PREMISE #1 All things that have come into existence are caused to exist by other things:

To deny this is absurd. To illustrate, if I tell you that my cup of coffee just appeared without any cause, you would think me crazy. This is because we never see uncaused things materialize out of nothing.

We reasonably assume that there are causes for any phenomena. That’s why we do science – to discover the causal relationships. Therefore, to deny that phenomena require causes is to reject the basic assumption of science – that everything has a reason or a cause.

PREMISE #2  If there is no eternal uncaused Causer, then nothing can exist:

It follows that something or Someone must be uncaused and therefore eternal in order to explain the existence of everything else. If this ultimate Causer is eternal, there is no need to explain its cause, because it always was.

However, the eternal can’t be a something – the universe or some part of it. Matter and space cannot exist apart from time, but time could not have been eternal. This would have required that an infinite number of years to have already passed to have arrived in the present – a logical impossibility. Why? Because only a finite number of years could possibility have been accomplished to bring us into this moment! It’s impossible for an infinite number of years to have already passed. Infinity knows no limits.

Big Bang cosmology also maintains that the universe – time, space, and matter – had a beginning in time. According to Stephen Hawking:

·       “Almost everyone now believes that the universe and time itself had a beginning in the Big Bang!”

Besides, the law of entropy argues against an eternal universe, since by now, after an infinite amount of time, everything in the universe would have dissipated. Besides, if the universe had been expanding infinitely, space and matter would also be infinite. However, modern science denies that any of these are infinite.

CONCLUSION: This leaves us face-to-face with a Being who transcends time, space, and materiality, a Being who has the causal power to produce everything else.

Challenges:

Many atheists argue that we know so little about cosmology that we should not come to any conclusions.

While they are correct about knowing so little, nevertheless, I think that the little we know points to God.

The skeptic will also raise the God-of-the-Gaps argument: “Because we don’t know, you assume that God did it.”

This however misrepresents theistic proofs. Here’s why:

1.    We can just as easily charge them with Naturalism-of-the-Gaps – Because we don’t know, natural unintelligent forces must have done it.

2.    There does not exist one shred of evidence that causal agents operate naturally and without intelligence or purpose.

3.    The theistic proofs do not conclude, “We don’t know, so God must have done it.” Instead, these proofs compare ID (supernaturalism) with naturalism and demonstrate that ID is the most reasonable conclusion.

Others charge that theistic proofs only make God seem probable and, therefore, are unable to serve as a basis for our faith and relationship with God.

Actually, I agree. Consequently, I do not invoke theistic proofs as a basis for faith but as a means to challenge the skeptical assaults against the faith. Besides, since I have a highly doubting disposition, I sometimes think about these proofs to silence my doubts, and they do.

Who is Anti-Science?

Creationists have long been smeared with being anti-science. However, few remember that atheism had also been notably anti-science. In Awesome Creation, Yosef Bitton writes:

•  In the 1940s, the Soviet communist regime rejected Hubble and Gamow’s conclusions [regarding the Big Bang] completely, despite their scientific soundness, on the grounds that their hypothesis failed to comply with the tenets of Marxist Leninist ideology (i.e., atheism). The Soviets’ opinion on the Big Bang was summarized by Comrade Andrei Zhdanov: “Falsifiers of science want to revive the fairy tale of the origin of the world from nothing.”  The Soviets persecuted physicists who supported the Big Bang theory. Some of those scientists paid for their support of the Big Bang theory with their lives like Matvei Bronstein, who was shot after being arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage.

For these atheists, the findings that the universe had a beginning gave too much support to the biblical account. It wasn’t just the communistic atheists who were disturbed by this support. According to Bitton, C. J. Isham said it best:

•  “Perhaps the best argument...that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas...being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory”

I don’t mean to pick on atheism. We all have our theistic-philosophical lenses through which we attempt to conform reality. However, I think that we need to be particularly suspicious of the pervasive influence of atheism since it now exercises such extensive control over the scientific community.

Here’s just one thing that should make us suspicious. Only natural, unintelligent causation or explanations are acceptable. Others are labeled and denigrated as “non-science.” However, it might be relevant to ask if this naturalistic monopoly is instead non-science. Is our determination to find only naturalistic explanations for the origins and fine-tuning of the universe, the laws of science, life, the cell, DNA and consciousness the product of science or religion?

A Unifying Theory of Everything

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:

1. 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.

2. A natural explanation is impossible because the natural is not yet in existence to cause the natural laws. Nothing is in existence!

3. 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!

4. 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!

Theistic Evolution and its Embrace of a Mythical Adam

Theistic evolutionist - he calls himself an “evolutionary creationist” - Denis Lamoureaux made a presentation at the Westminster Conference on Science and Faith (2012). He argued that there was nothing that could have prevented God from creating through evolution.

Besides the fact that such a position is oxymoronic – even God can’t guide through an unguided process – this just isn’t the point. Instead, the point is whether or not evolution contradicts the biblical account. However, Lamoureaux insists that you can have both – evolution without compromising the Bible. Nevertheless, he insists that Paul was wrong that an historic Adam actually existed.

His proof: The Bible was influenced by the errant science of its day. He cited Genesis 1 and its teaching on the “firmament” – a hard, solid object, something like the Great Wall of China, separating the waters of the seas from the waters of the skies – which he claimed that the Bible naively borrowed from ancient near-eastern cosmology. He also claimed that Paul was blinded by this cosmology, as his own writings reveal.

Lamoureaux cited Philippians 2:10 – “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” – claiming this threefold division of the cosmos reflects the errant scientific thinking of Paul’s day.

Even if Lamoureaux is correct, and this terminology is derived from an errant worldview, this fails to prove that Paul was duped by it and was teaching mistakenly because of it.

There is a great distinction between common usage and errant thinking and teaching. According to common usage, we say that the sun “rose.” Admittedly, this language might reflect errant science, but now it remains in our vocabulary because of its ability to communicate.

We know that the sun doesn’t literally rise, but scientifically precise language would fail to convey the idea, “what a glorious sunset!” Also, using this terminology doesn’t mean that we are ignorant of planetary reality or that we are misleading others.

Paul’s intention wasn’t to teach the errant cosmology of his day but rather the fact that every knee will bow wherever there are knees to bow – whether in heaven, earth, or even under the earth, if there are people there. This is the language of exaggeration!

I would imagine that language often did arise out of the rubble of mistaken ideas. We find a lot of this language in the Bible, whether in the form of the “firmament” or even in the Book of Revelation, which teaches that:

• Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth. (Rev. 20:7-8) 

 Of course, the earth doesn’t have four corners. However, it is probable that this language most clearly communicated the idea that Satan would deceive the entire world, and not just the nations at the very “corners of the earth.” Clearly, Revelation is not speaking literally! Nor is it trying to teach that the earth actually has “four corners.”

However, Lamoureaux reasons that if Paul was wrong about living people being “under the earth,” then we shouldn’t insist that he was right about an historic Adam.

Here’s what is so perplexing about all of this. Lamoureaux assured his audience that he is a bonifide evangelical. He even recited the many evangelical doctrines to which he ascribed, like the Trinity and Incarnation. However, if he denies that Paul was correct about a literal Adam, then he must also deny all of the doctrines that Paul had based on a literal Adam:

1. The Entrance of Sin and Death into the World
2. The Fall
3. The Gift and Justification of Christ Addressing Adam’s Trespass
4. The Reign of Grace Replacing the Reign of Sin and Death (Romans 5:12-21)
5. Christ as the Second Adam (1Cor. 15:21-22, 45)

Perhaps even worse, if we can’t trust what Paul had written about Adam, why should we trust anything else he wrote?

This problem cannot be restricted to merely the teachings of Paul. Adam’s genealogy connects him to the Patriarchs and eventually even to Jesus. If Adam is mythical, perhaps also Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and everyone else genealogically connected to the “mythical” Adam.

Jesus also acknowledged the historical Adam. When asked by the religious leaders about divorce, Jesus took them back to Genesis 1 and 2, and how God had joined Adam and Eve together, making them one, to prove that we have no business undoing what God had done (Mat. 19:3-8).

Well, if Paul was mistaken about an historical Adam, then Jesus also! If this is the case, what then can we trust about Jesus’ teachings? I guess that Lamoureaux would then have to position himself as a judge above the entire Bible to determine what is trustworthy. In this case, Jesus would no longer serve as Lamoureaux’s judge, but Lamoureaux would reign as judge over Jesus – not exactly what Jesus had intended!

Based on what, then, does Lamoureaux believe in the Trinity? Habit? Fear?

I therefore began to wonder what the scene would look like if the venue was changed. If instead of presenting a talk at Westminster, where he was received with applause as a respected professor, he had been debating the Prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel, what should have been the response of the faithful? Would it be fitting to extend Lamoureaux applause or an opportunity to repent?