kevdog said:
What created the Creator? What was there before him or was he created? This question has often been asked. Put another way it could be restated as:
If something exists now, then either something must be eternal,
or something not eternal must have risen from nothing.
Or another way of saying it is, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” We can boil this down to four possible scenarios.
1. The universe is an illusion.
I’ve been told that represents about half of the world’s religions because it encompasses the Eastern world’s religions. I have some experience with Shintoism, and Taoism, and am familiar with Hinduism and Confucianism, and while they do not have absolutes, this statement may be a stretch. The corollary is interesting though: Truth is relative. If it is true that truth is relative then it is truly relative, and relative to relative is meaningless. Another definition game is to say that, “Nothing is true”—if that statement is true, then you have a truth, and nothing becomes something.
“Cogito ergo sum,” (I know therefore I am) contradicts the philosophy that everything is an illusion. Furthermore, no one acts like this in his life, and you won’t get anyone who espouses such a philosophy to step out in front of a moving bus.
2. The universe has always existed.
The trouble with this is that what has a beginning or an ending cannot have always existed. Science used to hold onto this position until astronomers came up with the Big Bang. Now we have more evidence for a hot start, and have even measured the background radiation at 4 degrees Kelvin as predicted for a 14 billion year-old universe, as the second law of thermodynamics states that useful energy will always be decreasing. This is also known as Einstein’s “heat death of the universe.” Eventually, all the energy will be used up and in billions of more years, the universe will be a dark and quiet place. Kind of makes worrying about leaving a legacy behind pointless, when in the end there’s nothing to be here.
A view that encompassed the age old cyclical nature of time as in the seasons was that the universe was like a bungee cord, and that this was just a cycle in a series of Big Bangs; speculation fueled no doubt by the discovery of black holes. Unfortunately, there is not enough light and dark matter in the universe to reverse the trend of expansion. In fact, the telescope that bears his name has validated Dr. Hubble’s equation; it was the reason it was launched after all. The Hubble constant has shown that our universe is ever expanding. And while the expansion is constantly slowing in outward velocity; it will always be expanding. Besides, a bouncing universe would violate the law of entropy.
3. The universe arose from nothing.
Actually, this is not as implausible as it first sounds. The Big Bang theory fit this fairly well to the atheists’ creed, and to their thinking did away with the need for a creator. Unfortunately, it violates the first law of thermodynamics, which simply stated is that the sum of matter and energy is constant. From what energy did matter come into being? (And no, the Jedi life force doesn’t count.) To the scientist who refuses to consider a cause outside the natural, they had to eliminate an outside energy that could be converted into mass. To get around this, they reasoned that there was the primordial mass.
But this raised its own question of cause and effect. Even though the primordial mass is so small because all the space between the particles has been eliminated, and Stephen Hawking, who is not a Christian, says that this mass can fit not on the head of a pin, but on its point; what was it that told this primordial mass that it was pregnant with a universe that contained life? How could mass be compressed and not be stable? (Remember that we have already ruled out a bungee cord universe.) So what would give impetus for an explosion that would punctuate equilibrium? Science has no explanation, and although they can theoretically go back to ten to minus 43rd second after the Big Bang, they cannot give an answer that would not contradict their own science. We can conclude that this statement is also false. The universe came from something. Now how did the something get there?
4. The universe was brought into existence by something eternal.
So these are the facts: (1) The universe is real, it is not an illusion. (2) The universe is not eternal. It has a beginning and an end. It is not constantly rejuvenating itself. (3) The universe obeys the laws of nature. It could not have come into existence by itself.
We are left with this proposition (4) as the only viable solution. Something outside the universe had to create the primordial mass. And now we know from Einstein how this works, E=mc2. By the power of God’s Word, He brought that point into being, and the universe unfolded as one spreads out a tent (Isaiah 40:22). And that pregnant point gave birth to a universe under God’s laws and designs, balanced between positive and negative charges and the strong and weak atomic forces that allows for life itself to exist.
In the three dimensional world of space, with a linear time moving constantly forward, every thing, or effect, has a cause. They fall under the rules and laws of physics and chemistry. Effects are finite, they can be measured. The Infinite, being outside our three dimensions of space, has no need for a cause. It does not have to obey the laws of the three-dimensional. It transcends the natural bounds of our space and time.
The natural laws form the bounds of our existence. We can think of a point in space as a location, with no length, width or height. Add another point, and now you can describe a line, having just one dimension: length. Place a third point outside that line, and now you describe a plane of two dimensions: length and width. Now put a line perpendicular to that plane and you have space: three dimensions of length, width and height. But how do you put a plane to a cube? We can’t think beyond our natural world how a fourth physical dimension might come to be.
We discussed before that the bounds of our world would have no bearing the infinite. This is because the infinite God would operate in dimensions beyond our three. Since this is so hard to envision, it is easier to see how a three dimensional being would be viewed by a two dimensional world described by A. Arnold in his 1884 story, Flatland. This story is analogous to how incomprehensible we find the person of God to be. The story of A Square (like a drawing on a sheet of paper) being visited in a closed room by A Sphere is humorous as he tries to understand what we already know: A Sphere’s true form. Moving through the plane of A Square’s existence he sees from his one eye on his perimeter that A Sphere starts as a point and grows into a circle and then shrinks back to a point. A Sphere and A Square have a conversation as A Sphere hovers above. He says that for A Square to be able to see him he’d have to an eye on his side; that is his inside in order to see up. “Preposterous!” says A Square, “an eye on my inside!”
While we think it comical that the concept of the vertical was incomprehensible to A Square, to extrapolate a fourth dimension of space to our world is just as hard for us to see. That we cannot does not disprove its existence. Stephen Hawking had to extrapolate to ten dimensions to reconcile gravity to quantum mechanics. That does not prove there are ten, but it does show it’s possible. If there is a fourth (or more) dimension(s) available to God, He could be as close to us as we can get to the surface of the flatlanders world, and we would be as ignorant of His presence as they would be to ours. Examples that can be termed space folding, and inter-dimensional travel are found in the Bible. Being able to think outside the box of our assumptions of the natural three dimensions can offer a possibility to accept that there is knowledge that we do not yet possess.
And why not consider a two or three-dimensional world of time? It is as if we are trapped in line land as far as time is concerned, always being propelled on forever forward with only a rearward view and the ever-present present. If the infinite is timeless, could it be that it is not bounded by our limited time frame? If time were like space, all of our time line, and all possibilities of our time lines made possible by free will could look like a fan coral in two dimensions, with the infinite hovering over all of it, omnipotent, in a third, vertical dimension of time. Such a conception draws in analogous fashion the ability to prophesize.
Science tells us that space and time are interrelated. Genesis 1:1 confirms that. Time, space and matter were created in an instant and along with them, all the laws that bring order to our natural finite world.
The Infinite has no need for a cause. It simply is. The beauty of God’s name, Yahweh: I am who I am, can be appreciated in this manner. The ancient Hebrew had only two verb tenses: a past perfect, and a future perfect. Not a very good language for technical discussions, but an excellent language for storytelling with words that draw up a snorting horse as an illustration of how anger is expressed. When God said His name to Moses, He literally said, “As I always have been so I always will be.” God is an eternal unchanging God existing outside of our bounds of space and time, who by the power of His Word brings mass into being. He transcends the natural finite world and time: truly an infinite God.
God: the something that is greater than everything.
N.L.
