God and Creation
WHAT IS CREATION?
ARTICLE FOLLOWS MY COMMENT……..
The problem I see in discussing such issues is having a
common understanding of Creation. Since we are mortals....we tend to define
events in terms of a beginning and an end.
Most consider there was no Cosmos before Genesis 1. For the writer of Genesis....the earth and
the sky was pretty much "the Cosmos." They had no ability to comprehend the Cosmos as we do today.
The Bible is clear that God existed before the Earth was
formed...this means God is eternal ...no beginning and no end. I submit that
this means "existence always existed and always will." I suspect that this means the Cosmos always
existed and always will and that the current Cosmological Theories suggests that the "Big Bang Inflation
of space/time/matter and energy is NOT a single event but is just ONE of an
infinite number of
"inflations." (Bubble Theory)
In addition the Law
of Biogenesis, verified by French Chemist Louis Pasteur 145 years ago in his
simple "S" shaped flask experiment, also supports the
"eternal" nature of existence because "ALL Life MUST come from
pre-existing Life."
Theoretical Physicist Stephen Hawking in his most recent
book claims the Laws of Physics are so constituted that there is no
"need" for a God for Creation. Ironically Hawking has inadvertently
DEFINED who God is. God is PERFECT...His
Laws are PERFECT. The ancient "inspired" writings compiled into the "library"
called the Bible reveals that God is the "WORD" (John 1) The WORD is communication and thought. and
the mathematics of the Laws of Physics is the highest "level" of
communication and thought......GOD IS HIS LAWS. This real God incarnated in the
"flesh" 2000 years ago as Yeshua ben Joseph not only restores mankind
to the Cosmic Kingdom of God, He also reveals the ETERNAL God in the
"WORD."
ARTICLE……………
Could God cause the beginning of the universe?
Published: 9 April 2016 (GMT+10)
iStockphoto
The beginning of the universe is a common fact used to
argue for God in an argument called the Kalām Cosmological
Argument. The argument runs like this: everything that has a beginning has a
cause, the universe had a beginning, therefore the universe has a cause. But is
God a suitable cause for the universe?
Daniel C from the United States writes:
When my acquaintance asked who created
God, I replied, God is defined as eternal and uncreated, and therefore it is
invalid to ask “who created God.”
But then he asked, “Can you prove or reason that God is eternal? What if he isn’t?”
I don’t know what to say. Help?
But then he asked, “Can you prove or reason that God is eternal? What if he isn’t?”
I don’t know what to say. Help?
CMI’s Shaun
Doyle responds:
Your acquaintance has become doubly distracted. Your
response to his first distraction was correct, but the purpose of such a
response is to push people back to dealing with the claim ‘everything that has
a beginning has a cause’ as given. Your acquaintance is refusing to do this,
and instead is focusing on being distracted by ‘God’ in doing what all
untrained agnostics/atheists do—demanding evidence for anything about God that
can be named. One way to disarm the objection is to say: ‘God? I haven’t
brought God up yet! The claim isn’t about God (at least, not directly); let’s
just deal with that first without getting distracted. God isn’t going
anywhere.’
If everything that has a beginning has a cause, then
all uncaused beings have no beginning.
Moreover, the claim implicitly gives us the eternality
of the universe’s cause (or, more technically, the ultimate cause). Since the
claim runs like this:
Everything that has a beginning has a cause,
to affirm it is also to affirm this:
Everything that has no cause has no beginning.
We can see why if we turn the claim into an if-then
statement:
If something has a beginning, then it has a cause.
If we negate both parts of the statement and flip them
around, we get what’s known as a contrapositive:
If something has no cause, then it has no beginning.
And the thing about contrapositives is that they
always have the same truth value as the original statement. In other
words, if everything that has a beginning has a cause, then all uncaused beings
have no beginning.
This means that if the claim is true, there are only
two possible options for ending the causal chain of beings with a beginning—an
uncaused cause (which must be eternal if the first premise is true) or an
infinite regress of causes with beginnings. Although calling the latter option
a ‘possible’ option is a bit of a stretch! The uncaused cause is clearly the
better option—it’s simpler, explains all the data, and avoids an infinite
regress.
Rather than it being problematic that the uncaused
cause would be sentient, it’s highly likely that it would need to be sentient
to be able to produce a contingent effect like the universe.
The important thing to note here is that we have
said nothing about God yet. We haven’t even provided any warrant for
accepting the claim! (After all, your acquaintance is too busy being distracted
by a red herring of their own making.) We have only shown that the only
plausible implication of the claim is an eternal, uncaused, first cause. Is God
eternal and uncaused? Irrelevant at this point.
Nonetheless, here is another counter thought for your
acquaintance: ‘Why call a being with a beginning “God”’? By demanding evidence
for God’s eternality, they’re implying that we should believe God has a
beginning before we have any warrant to reject such a notion. But why think any
being with a beginning and a cause worthy of the title ‘God’? Your acquaintance
has their intuition precisely backwards; the onus is on those who think the
greatest conceivable being (i.e. the being we call ‘God’) must have a beginning
to prove their case, not those who think such a being is eternal. After all,
it’s pretty obvious to just about anyone who thinks about it for longer than a
second that an eternal being is greater than a being with a beginning. And
since ‘God’ is simply a moniker we use for the greatest conceivable being,
‘God’ so defined clearly can’t be anything other than eternal!
And most importantly, the Bible abundantly testifies
to God’s eternity (e.g. Genesis 1:1, Psalm 90:2,
1
Timothy 6:16, and Revelation 4:8) and self-sufficiency (1 Chronicles 29:11–14, Acts
17:24–28). Bible believers have a reason to believe God is eternal even
before we look at these arguments, and the Bible is certainly consistent with
God as the eternal uncaused cause.
For more information, please see Who created God?
T.O. from the United States comments:
And most importantly, the Bible abundantly testifies
to God’s eternity and self-sufficiency.
I read the following argument, which
portrays itself as a rebuttal to the Kalām argument.
(P1) Everything that is sentient has a cause.
(P2) God is sentient.
(C) Therefore the God has a cause
Would you accept this as a sound argument?
(P1) Everything that is sentient has a cause.
(P2) God is sentient.
(C) Therefore the God has a cause
Would you accept this as a sound argument?
CMI’s Shaun
Doyle responds:
First, we need to be clear about what such an argument
is trying to rebut about the Kalam argument. The Kalam
argument usually takes this sort of form:
Everything that has a beginning has a cause
The universe had a beginning
Therefore, the universe had a cause
Subsequently, the nature of the effect (the universe)
is analyzed to determine what type(s) of cause(s) could’ve produced it. Note
that the form of the argument you presented doesn’t refute anything in the Kalām
argument as presented above—even if God has a cause, the universe still needs a
cause in view of it having a beginning. Rather, the argument you mention tries
to show that no sentient being can be an uncaused cause, so that if we think
that the cause of the universe itself has to be uncaused, it can’t be God
because “Everything that is sentient has a cause”.
Nonetheless, we would consider the argument unsound
because the first premise is false. Why think that all sentient beings have
causes? There is no evidence for the first premise. Worse, there are powerful
positive reasons to reject the first premise. To avoid an infinite regress of
contingent causes, we would need a first, uncaused, necessary being to ground
the causal chain in reality. But how else could a necessary being cause a
contingent effect, other than by being able to choose to create,
which is of course something only sentient beings can do? Rather
than it being problematic that the uncaused cause would be sentient, it’s
highly likely that it would need to be sentient to be able to
produce a contingent effect like the universe.
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posted by The Doubting Thomas (David Brown) at 7:23 PM
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