Then Who Made God? Part III:

The Logical case against an Eternal Universe

In part II of our series we explained the scientific problems with the atheist's claim of an eternal universe. The atheist's reasoning was that since the universe has always been here and requires no cause there is no reason to imagine a God exists to be its agent. However we demonstrated that this flew in the face of nearly a century of science beginning with Edwin Hubble.

Today I would like to discuss what is arguably the most devastating evidence against an eternal Cosmos, the very impossibility of such a universe existing. The problem with an eternal universe is not just scientific as we previously learned, it is one of logical incoherence. Stop and think for a minute about what an eternal universe is. To say that anything is eternal is to attribute to it the quality of having no beginning and no end.

In other words no matter how far back you looked into space and time you would never arrive at a point where a beginning of events occurred. Imagine an eternal universe as a pair of railroad tracks you follow through the countryside, and when you have gone 10 thousand-thousand-thousand miles and stop to assess how far you have gone, you are not any closer to the end of the tracks than when you started. Let's tease this idea out.

Waiting for the Train!

Imagine we have a train that has an infinite amount of fuel and can go an infinite distance, and sets tracks that go on infinitely in each direction. Furthermore the train has been chugging along at 30 MPH in one direction for an infinite amount of time. Now imagine that you are at the other end of the tracks waiting for the train to reach you. I want to ask you a question, "How long will it take the train to arrive at your location?"

You would be right to answer, “That depends on how far the train is from me. If the train is 30 miles away, and travels 30 miles per hour, it will take 1 hour to reach me." Pretty easy so far, right? If you were 60 miles away the train would reach you in 2 hours, at 90 miles it would take 3 hours, etc. Even if the train were a billion miles away it would eventually reach you on condition that you lived long enough to greet the train.

But what if the train was infinite number of miles away and started moving an infinite amount of time ago, then how long would it take the train to reach you? The answer is that the train would never reach you, because between you and the train there is an infinite distance that the train would have to traverse. Philosophers call this type of logical error the Fallacy of the Impossibility of an Actually Infinite Number of Finite Particular things.

If you just got a Charley horse between the ears your intuitions are working right. An infinite train and infinite tracks are a logical impossibility. Suppose the train did reach you. If it did then it could not have been an infinite distance away, nor begun its journey an infinite time ago. Faced with such a dilemma you have two possible options; one, the train does not exist, or two, trains exist but eternal trains and eternal tracks do not. For you logic geeks you have a classic Disjunctive Syllogism [Either (p or q) ~p, therefore q)]. For the rest of you, since the train obviously exists, it could not have been eternally in motion.

Trains and Universes

An infinitely expanding universe faces the same problem. All atheists acknowledge that the universe consists of an interconnected series of causes and effects. The universe is a hermetically sealed entity (sealed from the inside). It is composed of matter that stands in causal relationships within space, and that matter is acted upon by governing laws (Gravity, Electro-Magnetism, and the Strong and Weak Nuclear Force).

I do not want those of you confused by the Physics jargon to be put off. The thing to note is that the atheist believes in an interconnected series of causes and effects, each one dependent upon the other going back eternally. The key phrase here is each one dependent upon the other. There is no action, state of being, or any behavior exhibited by a material thing that was not the result of a previous cause. Everything down to the smallest atom was at some time either the cause of something, the effect of something, and often both. The Cosmos is a set of dominos and if one domino does not do its job, the rest fail to be part of the cause/effect chain.

The Eucalyptus Tree

This fact does not bode well for the atheist. I am looking outside of my window at a beautiful Eucalyptus tree. In order for that tree to exist where it does depends upon a whole series of past events which bring the natural and material forces together to accomplish this Eucalyptus tree viewing event. All the atoms in this tree were once used by the universe for some other material structure on earth. Before that, the tree’s atoms were part of the congealing of space matter that formed our solar system. Before that the same matter comprised some stellar gas expanding through space that began to solidify into the Milky Way Galaxy.

So here I will ask the same question, "If the universe has been expanding through an infinite amount of space, over an infinite amount of time, how long will it take all the material causes and effects, one after the other like dominos, to make the Eucalyptus treeI am looking at right now?” Can anyone hear a train?

The answer is that no such cause will reach me, because the series of causes and effects in the natural history of the universe required to produce the Eucalyptus tree must traverse an infinite distance and go an infinite time in order to get to where I am right now.

Another way to mentally capture the fallacy of an infinite universe comes from the Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali (1058-1111). Let us imagine there is a solar system just like our own containing a Moon and Earth. Let us then suppose that our imaginary Earth and Moon have the same orbits as our real Earth and Moon. For every orbit the Earth completes around the Sun it takes 365 days, and for every orbit the Moon completes around the Earth it takes one day, or 24 hours. What if the only diference between our real and imaginary solar system is that our imagined one had been there for an eternity?

Now regarding the actual Earth and Moon it is no surprise that after say a million years the Moon would have completed far more orbits than the Earth. But what of our eternal Moon and Earth? Remember that the moon has been completing 365 orbits around the Earth for each year the Earth completed one ad infinitum.

So the question is, “Which planetary body completes more orbits if both the Earth and the Moon have an infinite amount of time to complete an infinite amount of orbits?” Given an infinite amount of time both will supposedly complete an equal amount of orbits because the earth has an infinite amount of time to catch up. But how could this be? For every orbit the Earth makes around the Sun the Moon makes 365. This is logically impossible; therefore an eternal Moon and Earth could not possibly exist.

Notice that this problem is insurmountable and has nothing to do with correcting some scientific data, or tweaking the math. It is like the statistician who is trying to figure out how many times a quarter will land on heads if a man named Bob never flips the quarter. The statistician’s problem is logical, not scientific. No matter how many times the statistician accesses the size and strength of Bob’s flipping thumb, he will never arrive at a correct answer, because it is a logical impossibility for any toss to occur if Bob does not do the flipping. The bottom line is that infinite, concrete, finite particular objects which stand in causal relations cannot exist. To put it in simpler, non-egg head terms, physical, material things cannot exist eternally, and since the universe is made of such things which stand in causal relations the universe cannot be eternal.

Yeah, but why believe God is the cause of the universe?

This conclusion puts the atheist in a predicament, because if the universe began a finite time ago the atheist has no rational way to explain how it got here since belief in God is excluded.This observation however, inevitably brings the following objection, “Since an infinite regress is an impossibility, isn’t it true that your argument also applies to an eternal God?” The problem here is that the atheist has fundamentally misunderstood both the Christian's argument, and the nature of the Judeo-Christian God.

Remember that in part I of our essay series I pointed out that it was not the Christian's argument that what ever exists requires a cause, but what ever begins to exist requires a cause. Well, as we have just shown, the universe began to exist, therefore it requires a cause. The fact then that there was a point in the past before which no universe existed, whether atheists like it or not, proves something else. What ever caused the Cosmos, even if we suppose it was not God, must be distinct from the universe itself. This is because to say that the universe had a beginning, and was also the cause of itself, is to come to the ridiculous conclusion that the universe was the cause of itself before it existed.

There is also a disingenuous side to the way some atheists offer this observation. They tend to relish in the idea that the idea of God is irrational simply because the idea of the eternal is in and of itself irrational. This is odd because whether you are an atheist or a Christian, both put the entire realm of existing things into two categories, finite and infinite. The atheist divides the world into an infinite universe that contains things which are finite, while Christians put God in the infinite category and the rest of the creation in the finite category.

Therefore the question the Christian need not answer from the atheist is how belief in something eternal could possibly be rational, because the atheist himself has always argued that the universe itself is eternal. The real question the Christian needs to answer is how theism escapes the same logical impossibility that specifically makes belief in an eternal universe impossible.

A causal Necessity not a God of the Gaps

In attempting to answer that question it must be noted that the Christian Theist’s argument is not based on special pleading, the famous God of the Gaps, where by some Christians have put God in place of the gaps in their knowledge, “Oh I cannot explain why the universe is here so I will just say God did it.” As you will soon see, the logical argument for Gods existence is arrived at by necessity, not by empty assertion.

Something Exists which Brought the Universe into Being

First consider that there must minimally be an existing something which brought the universe into being. Never mind for now if it is God. We have successfully argued already that what ever has a beginning must have a cause. We have further argued that a series of infinite particular physical things cannot exist eternally. The universe is made up of finite particular physical things. Therefore the universe could not be eternal. The universe is here however, and therefore it must have begun a finite time ago. Since nothing which begins to exist begins without a cause for its existence, there must be something which caused the universe.

What ever Caused the Universe Could not Itself be the Universe

Next we demonstrated that if the universe began a finite time ago it could not have been the cause of itself, because that would mean it was the cause of itself before it existed in time (consult parts I and II for the full case). Therefore what ever caused the universe must have been something different from itself.

What Ever Caused the Universe Must Exist

Since the universe had a beginning, and required a cause, that cause must exist. By definition for something to be a cause it must exist. I don't know about you but I have never heard of non-existing dominos knocking down other dominos, or non-existing gases causing the pressure in a chamber to rise, or non-existing causes making universes come into being (Ex nihilo nihil fit- from nothing, nothing comes). Even the world's most renoun atheist in the English language Kai Neilson admits to this problem. He once said, "suppose you were in a cafe one day and suddenly outside you heard a loud bang! What if afterwards you approached someone and asked him, 'What caused that bang?', and he replied, 'nothing.' I suspect you would not find that answer very satisfying."

The Disjunctive Argument

As we move to our next step also consider that we do not have to offer anything in the way of positive argument for the existence of our something that caused the Cosmos, because our argument is disjunctive in nature. Either the universe began to exist or it didn’t. It was either caused or un-caused. There are no other possibilities to choose from. As a result when you show that one possibility cannot be the choice, the other must unavoidably be the answer, because only two possiblities exist. (Either A or B. Not A, therefore B).

Think of it this way. My dog Spot is either dead or alive. If I have successfully shown that Spot is not dead I do not need to then positively prove that spot is alive. He must be alive because that is the only other choice. The only way to refute a disjunctive syllogism is to show that more choices exist than just two exist, or that the option the arguer has shown false really isn't false.

So how do you argue that there are more choices than, “The universe either exists or it doesn’t exist,”, or “The universe is either caused by something, or it has always been here”. Good luck! I will give an atheist a million dollars if he can show me one thing in the universe that is in a category other than eternal or caused by something!

The other problem is that the atheist’s infinite regress does not apply to God, and here is why. The reason why the universe being eternal is erroneous is not because the idea of the eternal is in itself incoherent. The problem, rather, involves two things; the first is the concrete and temporal nature of matter, and the second is the sequential nature of the universe.

The Temporal Nature of Matter

Matter is bound, occupies space, and is subject to motion, and consequently it is subject to change, and what ever changes is within the dimension of time. Time literally is change marked by duration. Therefore something inside of time could not possibly be eternal? God, on the other hand, is not physical. He is a spirit. Therefore He is not temporal and not subject to change.

Remember that in part II of our series we learned that time and space were both created with the big bang event and did not exist prior to it. This was further reinforced by the ground breaking work of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. This means that what ever existed prior to the universe could not be physical because only a non-physical thing can escape the problems of occupying space, of motion, and of change. All of these point to an object being within the dimension of time. Prior to the big bang there would be no place for a physical thing to exist inside of because space hasn't been created yet. We also know that what ever it was that caused the universe must have existed before the universe, because how could a cause be prior to it's effect?

The Problem with the Sequential

Furthermore since time did not exist prior to the universe (again see part II for the rational) our object must be timeless. Time's definition is bound up with the existence of matter. Time had a begining just as physical matter did. Matter must be in motion, and motion is a property of change. Anything that changes must, by definition, be within time, for as we have just said time literally is change marked by duration. Therefore any meaningful definition of matter presuppose motion since matter is bound by the three Laws of Thermal Dynamics. The last of these laws says that matter cannot exist in a motionless state.

However you also cannot avoid the necessity of placing our necessary cause before the universe, for what else can it mean to be a cause of something than to be prior. Therefore our cause must be timeless, non-physical, and changeless. That is to say, if our cause exhibited any of the properties just mentioned, physicality or change, it could not be our cause, becuase each would demonstrate that our cause was within the demension of time. And if it were within time it could not be our cause because time is cought up in the very beginning with the universe.

Arriving at an Eternal God

We have thus far arrived at five conclusions; (1) the universe had a cause. (2) That cause must have existed. (3) It had to be non-physical and (4) changeless. (5) Our last assertion was that it was also timeless. Let's stop an consider what a timeless thing means. If our thing out there in the great abyss is timeless it literally means it is without time being part of it or attached to it. What else would it mean for a thing to be timeless? So if our thing out there is without-time isn't it true that it is also eternal?

Consider the following; what sense would it mean to say that a thing is eternal but it is NOT timeless. Or what if I said something were eternal but was also subject to decay and destruction. Didn't we already say that the very definition of time is understood as change marked by duration? And isn't decay or destruction a form of change? Yes. So if something did decay such a property would by definition mean it was not eternal.

Would it also make sense to say that something timeless had a beginning? No. If something had a beginning you could say that at such and such a time it was younger, but now it is older. That then cannot be the case So you see our necessary object which had to have existed prior to the universe must be beginningless, timeless, non-physical, and indestructable. This something is starting to look an awful lot like the God of the Bible.

By the way we have just established that our cause is also eternal, because the quality of timelessness, if all the above premises are true, is just another way of saying our cause is eternal. Remember our cause of the universe is not an option we choose to plug in, it is logically and causally necessary. Since our cause is prior to time it must be timeless, and if timeless it is eternal, bacause to be timeless is to be eternal.

Furthermore God’s attributes are not divisible and additive. The universe is made up of past events, and we get to the present by adding one event after another in a continuous series until we reach the present. The past is done with and unretreivable. The present is only here until it becomes the past, and the future has not yet arrived. Because the past, present, and future are definite, seperate, and sequential in nature we have argued that the universe cannot be eternal.

Our train example earlier illustrated why infinity cannot be reached by adding one particular event upon another. Since the universe exists now in the present, it cannot possibly be eternal, for how could a series of past events which began an eternity ago bring the universe up to this moment.

God however is not sequential. Among His characteristics are his being all loving, all powerful, and all knowing. These characteristics are no more physical than God’s being itself. You don’t discover how much love God has by weighing it or adding up pieces of it until you reach a number. Besides how can something outside of time be sequential.

An Atheist’s Rebuttal

Lastly God does not change internally in His being. Some, like Professor Rudolf Grunbaum of the University of Chicago, have argued that the idea of God is incoherent, because if an eternal God engages in the act of thinking, as Christians believe, this demonstrates a kind of change. God thinks one thing then has a completely different thought, and if God’s thoughts change He could not be eternal. For example, the Old Testament portrays God as being pleased with King David, then later on God becomes angry with David’s behavior.

This is an interesting angle. However it doesn’t work because God doesn’t actually learn. If you think about it this is not because God is eternal or outside of time, but rather because He is all knowing. God does not begin to learn something because He already knows everything. Neither does he arrive at a place where he must deliberate about a decision or select between two courses of action.

Also being outside of time, He does not have thoughts one after another. All of his nature, including his thoughts are at once present and outside of time. Neither does God become angry at David, as if he did not know what was going to happen. Rather God in his decision making (which really isn't the proper term for the actions of an eternal mind) has an eternal determination of the will to do (X) or an eternal determination not to do (X).

God and Consciousness

Here is one final reason for God’s existence; the existence of consciousness itself. By consciousness we mean our self awareness, our knowledge that we exist. The atheist’s world view cannot account for consciousness, because consciousness like all mental objects such as thoughts, beliefs, and acts of the will, is a non-physical object. By definition all atheists are materialists. A materialist is one who believes that only matter exists. If consiciousness is non-physical the atheists worldview is contradictory.

To be fair, there are those atheists who attempt to argue that things like immaterial souls exist. The problem however is that in order to successfully construct such an argument they must overcome the problem of how you get a material cause which can produce a non-material effect. You see no matter what, an atheist must still start from a material universe, because atoms are the only stuff he has to work with.

If I put an electron together with a proton I will get a Hydrogen atom. The electron and the proton are each simple physical objects. When they are combined I then have a more complex object. However the object is still physical. I do not know how rearanging subatomic and atomic objects like tinker toys will ever produce something non-physical, because all you are going to end up with is just a more complicated form of matter. A soul is different in both kind and degree from a physical object. Given this scenario the atheist seems to be turning the universe into the poverbial free lunch where atoms can bring forth snow angels, and the branches trees can produce unicorns. And they call Christians wishful thinkers!

Returning to our investigation, some, like the neurologist, will counter that consciousness can be explained by pointing to states of the brain, by c-fiber firing patterns. The brain scientist here is arguing that brain states are literally the same thing as mental objects like thought. However that is not the case. We can use the Law of Identity to show why brain states cannot be this same as thoughts.

The Law of Identity is a foundational law of logic necessary to the scientific method. It states that if you have two things, (X) and (Y), if both of them turn out to be the same thing then what ever is true of one of them will have to be true of the other. Here is an example.

Suppose someone is trying to find out if a man living in Boston, and my father, are the same person or are different persons. Well it is obvious that if both the man in Boston and my Father are the same man, then what ever is true of one will be true of the other. My father is 5ft. 8in. tall. If it is correct that the man in Boston is my father then he too must be the same height. However, what if the man in Boston were 6ft. tall? Then obviously, the man in Boston could not be my father. Notice here that in any situation where we have an (X) and a (Y), if we can show just one thing true of (Y) that is not true of (X), then we have successfully shown that (X) and (Y) couldn't possibly be the same object.

The same is true with the question of whether thoughts and states of the brain are the same. If the thought I am experiencing and a brain event the Neurologist is observing are the same, what ever is true of the brain states being observed will also be true of my thoughts and vice-versa. The problem though is that they are not the same.

My thoughts, to begin with, are not physical, while my brain states are. As I speak an event is occurring in my brain. It is a C-fiber firing event. Potassium ions and electricity are flowing across the neural pathways in my brain. That traveling of ions is a certain length. That is, if I wished I could measure how many angstroms long my brain event was. But how long is my thought that dinner was delicious? A thought isn’t the kind of thing that is long. It would be like saying my thought that, summer camp was great, is two inches longer than my thought, I like strawberries. Length is a characteristic of material things, not immaterial thoughts.

My c-fiber firing patterns are also spatially located. My thoughts are not. My brain event is located in my frontal lobe or perhaps some where else, but where is my thought, "I like the color red", located? You could cut up my brain all day long, and you will never find my thought of red in my cortex.

Remember we are not say that there is no correlation between the events occurring in our brains and the thoughts we have. I know that every time I think of my dear mother there is a corresponding brain event. The question is weather or not thoughts ARE brain events. This is a question of identity not correlation or cause and effect. Sadly I think people confuse these phenomena. For example, isn't it true fire causes smoke? Surely it does, but does that mean that fire IS smoke? Of course not. The same is also true of thoughts and brain activity.

Neither does the correlation of my brain activity with my thoughts prove that they are the same. For example, two things always occur when you have before you a triangle. When ever you have a triangle a characteristic appears, trilaterality, the property of having three sides. Another property also emerges when you have a triangle, triangularity, which is the property of having three angles.

Would it make any sense to say that the triangle's triangularity was the cause of its trilaterality? No. Is the triangle's laterality the same thing as it's angularity? Of course not. So just because I have a brain event which is also always coupled with a thought proves nothing.

Lastly brain events lack intentionality. Intentionality is a quality exhibited by thoughts. Intension what philosophers call of-ness or about-ness. My thoughts are of my mother or about a better future. But my c-fiber firing pattern isn’t about anything. In fact a brain scientist could look at an MRI of my brain activity all day long and never be able to tell me what my thought was specifically about. Therefore, if my brain states are physical and my mental states exhibit none of the characteristics of the phyical world, then it is reasonable to conclude that the first person introspective awareness of my thoughts I experience are not physical things.

So in the human being we have a non-physical consciousness that cannot be explained by the universe itself. We already established that an existing, timeless, changeless, non-physical thing exists as the cause of the Cosmos. Here is the final step in our process.

Remember that for something to be a cause of the universe from eternity, that something must have the power to produce the effects which the universe itself possesses. Suppose I arrived at a planet that was once was teeming with sea life like fish and crustations. Would it make sense to say that the planet never in its history possessed water? Of course not. How could a planet that never had water produce a species whose very existence depended on water.

To follow the water anology again, what if I said that there exists a world completely covered in water, and furthermore that all the water it possesses has been frozen from eternity. Now what sense would it make to say that an eternal cause created the planet with its water, but did not possess the power to make it's waters freeze. For if the cause of the planet did not possess that power, how did the planet come to possess the quality of being frozen.

Consciousness is the same way. If we possess an immaterial consciousness, then the cause of that consciousness must be conscious as well. We then can add another attribute to the list. Note now that we have a timeless, changeless, eternal, non-physical being that possesses consciousness. That being I would argue is the God of the Bible.