Arguments for the Existence of God 2

5.2 Cosmological Arguments
One of the oldest and best known arguments for the existence of God is the so called "cosmological argument," particularly the cause-effect version of it. It argues in effect that "something cannot come from nothing." So the world must have come from somewhere. It must have had a Creator, a supreme cause.

Most people have also heard the classic response: then where did God come from? Various people have made cosmological arguments in one form or another over the centuries. Some of them work better than others.

We favor the following version of the cosmological argument:

1. The universe had a beginning--we apparently can trace the chain of causes and effects in the physical world back to a point in time.

2. We lack any scientific explanation for that beginning. We have no explanation for what "caused" and began creation.

3. It is reasonable to suggest that something "beyond" this universe caused that beginning.

Now as Christian philosophers like Louis Pojman have suggested, the cosmological argument scarcely leaves us with the Christian God. At best it suggests an all-powerful Creator, and the form of the argument we have made above does not even imply that much. But assuming the argument makes sense, it implies that belief in a Creator is perfectly reasonable. Meanwhile, the atheist at present has no alternative explanation for why the universe suddenly decided to begin.<8> He or she must instead have faith that science will one day discover such an explanation or that such an explanation exists even though we have no access to it.

The universe had a beginning.
We most associate the cosmological argument with Thomas Aquinas, who in his Summa Theologica advanced five proofs for God's existence. The first three are versions of the cosmological argument. We will consider the first two now and the third in the next section.

[quote]

Here we see 1) an argument from motion and 2) an argument from cause. Aquinas' argument from motion is basically a Christianized version of an argument made some 1500 years earlier by Aristotle. In the world we observe one thing moving another. Aristotle could not imagine that this process of one thing moving another could go back forever, so he suggested a "First Mover" that was not moved by the world but gave the world its first "push" to get started.

[historical spread on Aristotle, including the fact that he learned of Aristotle through Muslim philosophers like Averroes and Avicenna]

This form of the argument has not generally convinced many people in recent times. For example, Galileo Galilei (1500's) set out the "law of inertia" several hundred years after Aquinas. According to this rule, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, while a body at rest tends to stay at rest. <9> No doubt to Aristotle and Aquinas, it appeared that something had to keep pushing in order for something else to move.

But in theory, the motion of the world could go back infinitely. <10> If an astronaut throws a ball into space, it will continue at the same speed forever unless it runs into some other force. David Hume (1700's) made a similar objection to Aquinas' arguments. <11> How do we know that the motion does not go back infinitely?

On the other hand, the argument we advanced above is a form of the argument from cause. When expressed as a proof, as Aquinas expressed it, it argues that for every effect there must be a cause. William Lane Craig has especially advocated this argument by drawing from the kalam argument of certain Muslim philosophers. <12> If something has a beginning, it must have a cause.

In our view, it is foolish to make this statement with such certainty, since we scarcely know how causation works with universes as a whole. <13> However, if the universe had a beginning, it certainly is rational to suggest from what we do observe of the world that it had a cause. This suggestion is more reasonable to us now than the suggestion that it did not have a cause.

We must also dismiss the simplistic response, "Then where did God come from?" The form of the cosmological argument we are making applies to things we observe within this universe. In this universe, effects consistently have causes. When we make this statement, we imply nothing about whether Creators must have causes. By the rules we have laid down, any Creator stands "beyond" or "outside" the creation in essence. To observe rules within the creation thus says nothing about the rules of the Creator.

While it is foolish to base one's belief in God on the current state of scientific thinking, it does no harm to mention that science currently favors a beginning for the universe. We mention just two reasons. The first has to do with the "mass" of the universe, the amount of stuff in it. Every bit of matter as we know it has a certain gravitational pull. <14> In theory, if the universe had a certain amount of matter in it, then the universe might one day stop expanding and collapse on itself. If that were the case, someone might suppose that the history of the universe is simply an endless cycle of expansion and collapse leading to another expansion (the so called oscillating Big Bang theory).

However, astrophysicists do not currently think that the universe has enough mass for this to happen. As such, they believe the evidence currently points to a single beginning to the universe. Christians do not have to agree with all the particulars of current astrophysics to enjoy the secular conclusion that the universe had a beginning. Science has refuted David Hume for us, at least for the moment.

A second argument has to do with the fact that the universe is constantly in the process of cooling down. Newton's second law of thermodynamics observes that the workings of the world inevitably turn various forms of energy into heat. The long and short of it is that things tend to disorder from order over time. There is no such thing as a machine that can go on forever without putting more energy into it. The work you do now eventually dissipates as friction and heat, never to be recovered.

Eventually, at least if things continue as they are, the universe will cool down to absolute zero. The energy in the universe will convert to heat and all the heat will spread out evenly throughout the universe until everything is cold, cold, cold. By the same token, the universe could not be infinitely old or else the heat would have already dissipated. This fact points to a beginning and, thus, David Hume is foiled once again.

Of course we should never base our faith on the "God of the gaps," the God who we bring into some gap in our understanding. History since the scientific revolution has witnessed Christian after Christian staking their faith on some unexplained aspect of science. And history has witnessed those gaps get filled in time and time again.

The cosmological argument does not prove the existence of God. What it does is suggest that, at least with regard to the matter of causation, it makes more sense to believe in a Creator than it does not to.

<8> Beware of God of the gaps arguments... Kenneth Miller.

<9> Later known as Newton's first law of motion.

<10> However, we will argue in a moment that Newton's second law of thermodynamics implies a beginning to the universe for different reasons.

<11> ref.

<12> ref.

<13> compare Paul Edwards...

<14> Newton's "law of universal gravitation."