This essay was written as background information for a seminar I gave on apologetics at Summer Wine 2001 and 2002. Consequently, it is not written as formally as some of my other essays.skinragnarok online

The cosmological argument for the existence of God is based on two assumptions, and then the logical consequence of those assumptions.

1. Anything that begins must have a cause
   
2. The universe began

Therefore, the universe had a cause.

We will now justify these two assumptions, and examine the consequence.

Anything that begins must have a cause

This assumption is more commonly known as the principle of ‘cause and effect’. If something happens, something else must have caused it to happen. One of contemporary philosophy’s most prominent atheists, Kai Nielsen, once said: “Suppose you suddenly hear a loud bang… and you ask me, ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply, ‘Nothing, it just happened.’ You would not accept that.”

David Hume (possibly history’s greatest sceptic) said: ‘But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.’

This assumption fits very nicely with the laws of physics, in particular with Newton’s first and third laws. Newton’s first law can be stated as: ‘an object will move at a constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force’. This means that there is no change in an object’s velocity unless something forces it to change. For a change in the object’s velocity to occur, there must have been some cause.

Newton’s third law is: ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. This is stating the assumption in reverse, by saying that a cause must have a result.

This assumption simply means that things do not just magically appear – something must have caused them to happen. It is worth noting that the vast majority of people have no problem accepting this assumption as being true.

The universe began

For a long time, the belief held by most atheists was that the universe had no beginning. This is known as the steady-state theory of the universe, and it holds that the universe has always existed, and will always continue to exist.

Unfortunately for atheists, this theory has little support from modern science. In 1965, two scientists named Penzias and Wilson discovered background radiation in the universe, allowing us to date the universe to having a definite starting point around 14 billion years ago (plus or minus several billion years). For the purpose of this argument, however, the date of the starting point is irrelevant. All we are arguing here is that the universe began, and it makes no difference whether it was 100 trillion years ago or 8000 years ago.

Today, the big-bang theory of the universe points to an event that started the universe. It says that originally all the matter of the universe was compressed together, and an explosion of energy caused it to spread out and form the universe as we know it today. But all the matter was not just squashed together – it was compressed to a point of infinite density. Density can be calculated using the formula p = m / V (where p is density, m is mass, and V is volume).

Rearranging this formula gives: V = m / p. If we take the mathematical limit of this equation as ñ approaches infinity, this gives a volume of zero. If the universe began from a point of infinite density, it was created out of nothing. This corresponds very closely with the book of Genesis where it says that God created the universe out of nothing.

Furthermore, Einstein’s theory of general relativity (for which there is extensive evidence) shows that matter, space, and time are all linked together. The consequence of this is that if the universe began, space and time also had a beginning.

This is also supported by the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics says that the total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant, and the second law says that the everything is moving from a state of order to disorder, or that the amount of useful energy in the universe is reducing. The universe is running down. This indicates a point in the finite past where the universe was ‘wound up’. If the universe had no starting point, then it should have already run down completely.

Therefore the universe had a cause

So, if the universe began, it must have had a cause. Now this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being.

It must be uncaused because we know that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless, or eternal, and changeless, because it was the creator of time (at least causally before it created time). In addition, because it also created space, it must transcend space and therefore be immaterial rather than physical in nature. This further implies that this being is separate from its creation, not a part of it.

This consequence rules out a large number of worldviews right from the outset. Atheism is no longer a valid option, as some supernatural being must exist so that the universe could be created. It rules out Buddhism (and its many derivatives) since Buddhism denies the existence of this sort of God. It rules out Hinduism and many others because this result shows that the supernatural being must be separate from creation, contrary to the claims of Hinduism. It actually rules out any non-monotheistic worldview, leaving us with just Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. We cannot determine which one of those three is true from this argument, but it does remove many options from consideration.

Summary

We start with two assumptions:

1. Anything that begins must have a cause
   
2. The universe began

Therefore, the universe had a cause.

This cause must be:

1. Uncaused
   
2. Changeless
   
3. Timeless (at least prior to creation)
   
4. Immaterial

This conclusion would appear to rule out any world-view except for Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

A number of sources were drawn on for this essay, particularly:

• William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, Moody Press, 1994
• Norman Geisler, When Skeptics Ask, Baker Books, 2001
• Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, 1988
• Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith, Zondervan, 2000

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