Why Did the Universe Begin?

So far, "On Guard" has laid the important groundwork for understanding the pitfalls atheism faces right out of the gate. Not only does atheism fail to produce meaning, purpose, and values (see post "Absurdity of Life Without God"), but it also falls short in the areas of philosophy and reason, as atheism fails to produce an explanation of the universe - unless "inexplicability" is considered a good explanation (see post "Why Does Anything At All Exist?"). At the same time, Craig spent the previous chapter showing how God is a viable explanation for the universe, God maintains the explanatory property of necessity, and is the only explanation with explanatory power apart from entities like abstract objects, which are not viable options for reasons addressed elsewhere.  

In this next chapter, "Why Did the Universe Begin?" Craig begins to move beyond abstract philosophy, and starts to bring in some of the scientific evidence we find in the universe. It is an important chapter for understanding the more abstract ideas laid out in the previous chapter, and it helps the reader to really begin understanding the weight of the dilemma atheists face. It also helps the reader to understand the tremendous evidence for a being outside of the universe. It still does not point us to the Christian God, but we are moving more and more in that direction, as Craig continues building the positive case for God.

While the origins debate is very heated today, it is by no means a new debate. Philosophers have been discussing the origin of the universe for millenia. The general consensus, at least from the Greeks on, is that the universe is eternal. It has always been. Even most creation stories include a deity using material that is already existing to create. Really, most creation stories are about the reformation of matter, rather than the creation of it. However, the Bible seems insistent that God created out of nothing, which lead Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars to push back against the notion of an eternal universe, and pursue evidence to the contrary. It is Muslim scholar Abû Hâmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazâlî whom Craig credits with the formation of what he calls the Kalam Cosmological Argument. 

Kalam Cosmological Argument
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

Readers who have familiarized themselves with the previous chapter should notice that if we show that the universe has a cause, atheists are out of the game. Craig showed in the previous chapter how atheists cannot and largely do not adhere to causation of the material universe. So if the Kalam is successful, it is another win for the argument for God. As with the previous argument, this line of reasoning is perfectly valid. IF the premises are true, the conclusion MUST follow. The only way to prove the argument is wrong is to disprove or create significant doubt about one of the two premises of the argument. The video below will briefly run through the argument, and prepare you for some of the major points that will be brought up in the rest of the post.

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause

It seems utterly intuitive that something cannot come from nothing. We have no examples of this, ever. To deny premise one, then, seems utterly absurd. If a leaf falls, something caused it to do so. The thing that caused the leaf to fall was likewise caused by something else. The chain of causation goes on and on and on. Things do not happen or come into being without a cause (personal, natural, or necessary). 

At this point, atheists usually cite subatomic fluctuations in a vacuum as examples of particles coming into being out of nothing. However, there is a fallacy of equivocation here, as when physicists are speaking of this vacuum, they are talking about a sea of energy, not a vacuum devoid of anything. So even these virtual particles are coming from something. In the video below, you can get a glimpse at how vacuous such language and ideas are. Lawrence Krauss prides himself on being the spokesperson for defining nothing, and says that science determines this definition. I am unsure what scientists use to measure how much nothingness there is. But as Krauss - the leading scientific expert on nothing - speaks, you can hear contradiction after contradiction. 

- Krauss argues that nothing is very big and important, yet says philosophy and religion have contributed almost nothing to this discussion. By Krauss's definition of nothing, I'm wondering if that's a compliment or a derision. 
- Space can be created by nothing...from quantum mechanical effects. So you need quantum mechanics. That's not nothing.
- The dominant energy of the universe...resides in empty space. Well then I guess space isn't empty.
- The universe will become cold, dark, and dead, and nothingness will reign supreme. If we still have the universe - as dead and cold as it may be, that's still something. 

Fortunately, most people don't currently buy this equivocated argument, as it is utterly intuitive that something does not come from nothing. As Craig says in the book, we would wonder, then, why we don't frequently see something coming from nothing all the time. If it can happen to something as large and complex as the universe, certainly we would see objects pop into existence with at least some frequency. 

Premise 2: The Universe Began to Exist

While this premise is not quite as intuitive as the first, Craig selects several examples to make it pretty intuitive. The first line of reasoning is philosophical, along the lines of infinity, while the second line of reasoning focuses on scientific evidence. 

Craig uses several examples to make his case, some of which are a bit complex. We will just address one of these examples - the most simple one. Imagine counting to infinity. Obviously, you would never arrive at the end. If we apply this to the universe, which is supposedly of an infinite age, we have to ask how we could have ever arrived at today? If it's impossible to arrive at infinity by counting in succession, how could we have ever arrived at today through an infinite series of successive, days? If I can't count backwards long enough to ever arrive at the beginning, how would I have ever started counting to infinity and arrived at today?  It seems obvious, then, that the past is finite. For more examples, I recommend checking out the chapter, as well as checking out the video below.

Along with philosophical evidence for the universe, Craig also cites scientific evidence. The major scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe lies in the big bang and expansion of the universe, which is an almost universally accepted fact, evidenced by the red shift and background radiation (see video below). It is very clear that our universe began some finite time ago. We can quibble about how long ago, but we know that it was a finite amount of time. The question, then, becomes whether or not the beginning of our particular universe is part of some larger cycle, or whether our beginning was the beginning of it all. 

Atheists try to avoid the beginning of everything by arguing either for a "big crunch," or a multiverse. The first line of thought says that while the universe exploded in a big bang, gravity will one day overcome the force of expansion and pull everything back in, where the cycle will start all over again. However, most scientists today recognize that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing, and gravity will almost certainly be too weak to pull all matter back in. 

The second line of reasoning, the multiverse, has little to no evidence for it at this time. In fact, if we have been birthed alongside or out of other universes, we have no access to them. We only have access to our universe. The notion of a multiverse is something that hangs almost solely on the motivation of escaping some other conclusion. Just as we saw with the atheist's go-to explanation for why the universe exists (it's inexplicable!), so those that cling to a mutliverse seemingly throw off evidence based conclusions and reason at this juncture. But even if they were right, and we did one day find evidence of a mutliverse, the problem of origins would still linger. Why does the multiverse exist, and how did we ever arrive at today if the multiverse is infinite? The multiverse still needs an explanation and has a beginning that must have a cause.

In the end, the Kalam rounds out Craig's previous argument. It shows us the absurdity of believing in an infinite universe, and the absurdity of clinging to the notion that something can come from nothing. If you find both of those things intuitive and/or factually weightier than their counterparts, your conclusion has to be that something beyond the universe is responsible for its being brought into existence. That entity or object would have to be outside of time, or we'd run into the same problems with infinity. That being must also be uncaused (property of necessity as discussed in the last chapter), or we would be caught in an infinite regress of causation. For such an entity or object to begin the creation of something, especially creation as complex as the universe, we can probably surmise that this entity must be some sort of personal being with the power of choice and will. Such conclusions lead us away from impersonally existing objects outside of the universe (abstract objects), as well as away from pantheism, where choice is not exercised. Finally, it takes us away from creation stories that center around deities reforming eternal matter. That doesn't leave us with many other options as we build more and more towards the Christian God. .