IS God dead? The Stars & Cold Coffee

The last few weeks we have been standing on the back porch with the Bible skeptic Michael, gazing at the stars. We have been working our way through the simple argument: 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.

Regarding premise two; “the universe began to exist,” we have considered the impossibility of walking a timeline from eternity past and ever reaching today. We have also looked at the data from the Hubble telescope indicating the universe is expanding from a tiny beginning point, and we have looked from the Second Law of Thermodynamics that the stars still having fuel to burn. These observations (and others not mentioned here) tell us the universe did begin to exist. “Therefore,” the conclusion suggests, “the universe had a cause.” Now this does not tell us that this Cause is the God of Christianity—far from it. But before we look deeper into the nature of this “Cause,” we need to answer a very important question; “who made the Cause?” It is an important question that bears directly upon the Law of Causality; that law that is the foundational basis of all scientific discovery. Science, in its pure form, looks at “effects” and makes scientific assumptions about their “causes.” We have all heard of cause and effect. At the ground level, that is what good science is based upon. And from extensive observation throughout science, we know that every effect has a cause. So drives the question, “if everything that begins to exist has a cause, ‘who’ caused the Cause?” or, we might ask, “who created the Creator?” It is a legitimate question and it deserves an answer.

We can say that the first premise does not apply to the First Cause because the Chrisitan claim is that the Cause of the universe did not “begin” to exist, but has always existed in a timeless and spaceless realm. Before the universe was created there was absolutely nothing existing except for the Cause . . . nothing. (Aristotle once defined nothing as “the thing that rocks think about”). At any rate, the Law of Causality applies only to things that “begin” to exist. That means the First Cause, existed from all eternity outside of space and time because space and time did not exist until the universe came into being. Christian apologist Norman Geisler put it this way; “When you get right down to it, there are only two possibilities for anything that exists: 1) it has always existed and is therefore uncaused, or 2) it had a beginning and was caused by something else.” That is why Aristotle reasoned there had to be an “unmoved mover” of the universe: a First Cause that exists outside the Law of Causality that caused everything else.

Although we cannot yet say this is the God of Christianity, we can say some significant things in our conversations with the Bible skeptic Michael about what type of Cause the evidence suggests. Paul told the Romans that there are things we can learn about God’s “eternal power and divine nature” based upon what “can be clearly seen” in nature (Rom 1:19-20). The evidence from nature suggests that the First Cause is beginningless because He is uncaused. Also, we can say that the First Cause is changeless because He exists outside of time. But we can still say more; that the First Cause is immaterial because material things involve changes, at least at the molecular and atomic level, and that the First Cause is timeless. Given that time had a beginning, the cause of the beginning of time must itself be timeless. The First Cause is spaceless since He transcends both time and space. And, we can say that the First Cause is enormously powerful by virtue of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). But more importantly, we can deduce from the evidence so far that the creation of the universe can only be explained by an Agent and his volitions (will). Since an Agent acting to satisfy his will is a personal action, we can say the creation of the universe was a personal demonstration of the will of the First Cause. Creation ex nihilo also eliminates all pantheistic gods since the Creator and the creation cannot be one and the same. From what we have learned from “looking at the stars,” we can deduce this: there exits an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe, who in relation to the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.

As we look to new evidence next week in our quest to answer the question, “is God dead?” I leave you with a sobering thought. In his PhD thesis the brilliant physicist Steven Hawking argued convincingly that time had a beginning; sadly, he spent the rest of his life trying to disprove what his own conclusion points to. Nonetheless, both atheists and Christians alike come to the same conclusion; it seems that the universe (and time) has not always been here. Robert Jastrow summarizes the significance of the evidence this way: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Does God exist? And if so, is God dead? The quest for truth continues next week.

Gloria in excelsis Deo! 

Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife Vicki are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.