One day a co-worker and I were talking about God and how we all got here. Because he’s a skeptic and agnostic leaning towards atheism, I was interested to see where he thought the universe came from. He replied that it has always existed and that it was eternal. This gave me the opportunity to ask some more questions and explain how we can know where the universe came from and that it hasn’t always existed.
For centuries, many scientists and philosophers have believed that the universe has always existed and that it did not have a cause for its existence. However, due to modern scientific discoveries and rigorous philosophical reflection, many scientists and philosophers are now very confident that the universe did come into existence.
The kalam cosmological argument which has been around for centuries[1] has persuaded many that the universe cannot be past eternal, but rather that it had a beginning at some finite moment in the past. There must be a First Cause that caused our universe to come into being. But what is this cause and how do we know it’s God?
Philosopher and Theologian William Lane Craig has revitalized and strengthened this cosmological argument, bringing it to the forefront of contemporary scholarship. This argument shows that our universe was brought into existence by, what can only be, God.
The argument is quite simple and goes like this:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.[2]
A good argument is one that is both valid and sound. Validity means that the argument is formatted correctly, meaning the conclusion follows from the premises according to the laws of logic; and soundness means that it’s not only a valid argument, but it also has true premises.[3] Your premises should be more plausible than not, and stronger than your conclusion.
My co-worker, who disagreed with this logically sound conclusion, needed to show which one of the premises were false to successfully challenge the argument. A skeptic must do more than just disagree with you—they must explain why they disagree and show why you are wrong. Make them do their homework!
Craig gives four (two philosophical and two scientific) reasons to support the truth of his premises in his kalam cosmological argument. Let’s look at each of the premises to see why they are true.
Premise (1): Whatever Begins to Exist Has a Cause
The first premise—Whatever begins to exist has a cause—seems obviously true. We know that things cannot just pop into existence uncaused out of nothing. Moreover, everything that we have ever experienced in our world has confirmed this first point of the argument. Things do not just randomly come into being from non-being.[4]
Nobody has ever seen a car, house, or zebra randomly pop into existence without a cause. It’s silly to even imagine. And if objects could pop into existence uncaused from nothing, why is it that we don’t see other things doing this? Why should we believe this is only a special category reserved for the universe and not anything else?
Any kind of contingent object is going to need a cause to bring it into existence. No amount of time and chance alone can cause something to exist suddenly and randomly. Probability is a mathematical concept—not a cause. Chance cannot produce or cause anything to happen by itself. There must be something to initiate the cause to bring about the effect.
The physical laws of the universe can only explain how the universe operates, but it cannot explain the origin of those laws.
Objections to Premise (1)
Some skeptics have challenged the idea that “whatever begins to exist has a cause” by appealing to quantum physics, claiming that virtual particles at the sub-atomic level can randomly come into existence out of the quantum vacuum.[5]
However, Craig provides strong reasons for why this objection does not hold. First, he points out that several physicists do not believe that sub-atomic events are uncaused, but rather are deterministic. This means they have a cause and are not random.
There are several different theories concerning the quantum realm, and some quantum physicists believe there is a cause behind this realm. So, if anyone brings this up to counter the first premise, simply point out that not all interpretations of quantum mechanics agree with their objection, and that other physicists believe these particles are not randomly coming into existence without a cause.[6]
Second, on the traditional, indeterministic interpretation, particles do not pop into existence out of literally “nothing;” rather, they are coming from the energy contained in the sub-atomic vacuum. This vacuum is a sea of violent fluctuating energy that is governed by our existing physical laws—it is far from nothing![7]
So, skeptical astrophysicists or science popularizers (who receive all the publicity and attention from the media and entertainment industry), are misleading people when they claim that our universe could come from “nothing” in the same way that these sub-atomic particles do. This is because those particular secular scientists aren’t telling you that when they refer to the term “nothing,” they are actually referring to something.
They are simply trying to redefine the term. For example, if I didn’t eat any food yesterday, and you asked me what I ate, and I replied that I ate nothing—I am not implying that I ate something called nothing. So, if there was nothing (not anything) physical before the universe, then there was nothing that could bring the universe into existence.
Premise (2): The Universe Began to Exist
What’s the evidence for this premise of the argument? How do we know that the universe began to exist? Here are four good reasons to believe that our universe began to exist.
First Reason for Universe Beginning (Philosophical)
The first philosophical reason demonstrates this by focusing on the impossibility of an actual infinite, which is to say that there cannot be an infinite temporal (relating to time) regress of physical events.[8]
What does this mean? Craig summarizes an actual infinite as “a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number 0, 1, 2, 3….”[9] And this type of infinite is used in set theory (mathematics) which uses an infinite number of members in those sets. Its total number can neither be added to or reduced; hence, it cannot get larger or smaller. It will always remain the same in total.
The other type of infinite that we’re familiar with is called a potential infinite, which is simply a collection of numbers that are increasing toward infinity as a limit but never actually reaches it.[10]
For example, if you measured a distance of 12 inches, you could divide that distance into smaller and smaller and smaller increments, increasing toward infinity. Or suppose you began counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…and so on, you could count toward infinity, but you would never reach it because there is always one more number that could be added to the last number you counted.
The key point is this: an actual infinite—a collection of infinite numbers—can only exist as a mathematical concept. You could never have a collection of an infinite number of physical things existing in the real (mind-independent) world.[11]
If you tried applying an actual infinite to the real world, it would result in absurdities which can’t exist in reality. Notable philosophers Michael Peterson et al. conclude,
“Though an actual infinite exists in the ideal world of mathematics, it cannot exist in reality.”[12]
For example, suppose that I had an actual infinite number of hamburgers and an infinite number of hotdogs, and I fed the entire world 8 billion hot dogs but kept the hamburgers to myself. Since no actual infinite has more members than another, I would still be left with the same number of hotdogs as I do hamburgers. But how could that be? I just got rid of 8 billion of them!
Or imagine trying to jump out of a bottomless pit. How could you? There is no starting point for you to jump from! That is metaphysically absurd (for better examples provided by professional philosophers, see my footnote below).[13]
This means that if our universe has existed in eternity past with no beginning, then that would imply an infinite number of temporal or physical moments stretching back into the past. And if there are an infinite number of past moments, then an actual infinite has occurred, which isn’t possible within our real world.
Therefore, the series of past events in our universe cannot be beginningless. The universe is a direct part of this series of past events/moments, it is not distinct from it. This means that the universe (space-time) had to have a beginning, otherwise an actual infinite would exist, but again, as we’ve shown, that is impossible and logically absurd.
Craig and physicist James Sinclair explain,
“The only legitimate sense in which one can speak of the infinite is in terms of potentiality: something may be infinitely divisible or susceptible to infinite addition, but this type of infinity is potential only and can never be fully actualized.”[14]
In other words, potential infinites are possible in the real world, but actual physical infinites are not!
Second Reason for Universe Beginning (Philosophical)
Another reason why our universe cannot be past eternal or infinite in the past, is because an actual infinite cannot be formed by successive addition of physical events.[15] Recall what we just reviewed: the universe is a direct part of the physical events that are being discussed here.
So, if there’s a collection of physical events in time that are forming one after the other stretching back into eternity past with no beginning, then we never could have arrived at the present moment that we’re experiencing right now.
This is because our past was formed in a sequential way, namely, by moments or events happening one after another. Obviously, before I was born (event), my mother had to be born (event), and before she could be born, my grandmother had to be born (event), and so on, stretching back into the past.
So, if there was no beginning to our universe, then there is no starting point for events to begin happening. One event would always have to occur before the next one could occur. Before today could arrive, there would need to be an infinite number of yesterday’s that would have to occur first.
In fact, no event could ever arrive, because before that particular event could happen, there will always be one more event that has to happen first! As far back as you can possibly imagine, you would still have to add another moment immediately prior to that one, which means we could never arrive to the present moment.
Skeptical Objection Fails
What about the skeptic who raises the following objection? Suppose that we are in our present moment of an infinitely old universe because we’ve just reached this stage as time has ticked on for all of eternity. Couldn’t we have finally arrived to where we are now after an infinite amount of time and events have elapsed? Wouldn’t we have eventually reached today?
The answer is no. The same logic applies from the first example: because there’s no beginning, no matter how far back you select your “event-starting point,” there would always be an event that would have to happen before that point.
Wherever you choose to “begin” to start counting moments of time, you would need to add another moment to count before that moment, and hence we could never get to where we’re at right now. Just as someone cannot count to infinity, one cannot count down from infinity. This is sometimes referred to as traversing (traveling across) the infinite.
And even if it were the case that we arrived at the present from an infinite past, how could we even determine what the present is on an infinite scale of time? If you say it’s because your last birthday was the present moment, we can then ask why that specific year was considered as the present. And if so, why did that year happen to arrive at that particular point? Why not much sooner or later? Craig remarks, “An infinite past is a bottomless quicksand which affords no foothold for the determination of the present.”[16]
Another Skeptical Objection Fails
What about the skeptic who raises the following objection? If you select any event in the past, then there would be a succession of events between that moment and our present moment. This means that there is a finite amount of time, which can then be divided an infinite number of times.
For example, let’s pretend we have an infinite past with no beginning, and so we select some point in the past, say the year 2000. This means that because I’m writing in the year 2021, we can take those 21 years and divide them into an infinite number of times or moments. Wouldn’t that count as having an “infinite” past, or being able to traverse (travel across) an infinite?
The answer is still, no. This idea commits the fallacy of composition, which says that because something is true of one part of a thing, it follows that it is true for the whole thing. For example, just because each part of a horse is light in weight, it does not follow that the whole horse is light in weight.
Likewise, just because a portion of finite time can be formed by successive addition to reach the present, it does not follow that the whole infinite past can be formed by successive addition to reach the present.[17] Traversing a finite part of the past is in no way the same as traversing the whole infinite past.
See? More logical absurdities. Because today is here, we know that we do not have a beginningless past. Our past had to have a beginning in order for us to arrive to our present. Craig and Sinclair conclude,
“One gets driven back and back into the infinite past, making it impossible for any event to occur. Thus, if the series of past events were beginningless, the present event could not have occurred, which is absurd.”[18]
Third Reason for Universe Beginning (Scientific)
These scientific reasons are not meant to be the primary method in determining that the universe had a beginning, but rather serve to support what the philosophical evidence has already established.
That said, modern cosmology suggests that the universe began to exist. This scientific argument focuses on the expansion of the universe. In 1917, Albert Einstein applied his recent theory of general relativity to cosmology, and later in the 1920s, other scientists were able to take features from Einstein’s model and formulate solutions to his equations which predicted an expanding universe.
This would soon be supported by empirical data in 1929, when astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the red-shift in the light from distant galaxies revealed that the universe was indeed expanding.[19]
This is said to be one of the greatest predictions in the history of science because of its implications. Prior to the 1920s, scientists always believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging.
This new model shows that the material content of the universe is not expanding further into preexisting space, but rather space itself is expanding. These galaxies are actually at rest with respect to space, but as space itself expands, so do the galaxies—like buttons glued on a balloon—as the balloon inflates, the buttons would grow further apart.[20]
Physicists Ram Brustein and Judy Kupferman take the analogy a step further, reminding us that with a balloon there is air outside of it, however, there is nothing outside of the universe; stating,
“Simply expressed, it [universe] is all there is. So, into what does it expand? The current explanation is that it expands into nothing. Certainly, there is no one outside the universe watching it grow bigger and bigger, as with the balloon metaphor.”[21]
So, as time moves forward and our universe continues expanding, our universe becomes less and less dense. However, when scientists reverse this process, they infer that the expansion gets more compressed and denser (just like if you deflated the balloon, the buttons would get closer together), which means you would ultimately arrive at a state of “infinite density” at some point in the finite past, and this state is commonly referred to as the initial singularity.
Why am I going through all of this science stuff? Because there are astonishing implications that cosmologists have discovered from this model which aligns with a biblical narrative of God’s creation.
From this scientific data, we can infer that the origin of the universe came into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing). There cannot be a natural cause for the universe because all of nature—space, time, matter, and energy—came into being at the initial cosmological singularity.
Craig quotes two prominent physicists to support his case: John Barrow and Frank Tipler, who said,
“At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.’”[22]
This is impressive and serious data supporting the argument that our universe began to exist, that it’s not eternal, and that literally nothing existed prior to it. A famous astrophysicist (1882-1944), Arthur Eddington, was reluctant to receive this idea, but eventually accepted the fact that the universe was indeed expanding, stating,
“The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”[23]
If there truly was a finite beginning point in which the universe came into being, then that would imply the cause of the universe was most likely due to a Creator. This is why several other atheist astrophysicists have looked to explain the origin of the universe from a different model. Because they assume that there is no Creator, they must look for a different explanation as to how we got here. However, those other models are highly conjectural and lack supporting evidence.
What about the multiverse theory that some modern cosmologists are adopting? Surely this would explain why the universe doesn’t need a beginning. Wrong. As world-renowned cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin states,
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”[24]
Fourth Reason for Universe Beginning to Exist (Scientific)
This argument is based on the second law of thermodynamics which applies to closed systems. This basically states that if energy is not provided to a system, then that system’s current source of energy will eventually be used until it runs out. When this law is applied to the universe (which is technically a massive closed system on a naturalistic worldview, since it is everything that there is and nothing exists outside of it), given enough time, the universe will use up all its energy.[25]
This is known as the heat death of the universe. If the universe has existed forever from eternity past, then why has it not reached heat death by now? Like a tank of gas in your car, the fuel eventually burns up and you are left empty. We know that our universe will eventually run out of usable energy at some point in the finite future—so, if it’s been using it for an infinite amount of time, why haven’t we run out yet? It’s because our universe has not existed from eternity past.
Conclusion: Therefore, the Universe Has a Cause
Inference to the Best Explanation for the First Cause
So, what caused the universe to come into being? In summary from the four reasons provided, we know that the universe had to have a cause, it could not have popped into existence out of nothing, and it has not existed from eternity past.
Many skeptics have tried minimizing the significance of this argument by saying that although they don’t know what caused the universe to come into existence, neither do Christians.
However, when you look at the evidence, one can simply use an inference to the best explanation to figure out what this First Cause is.
We know that whatever caused space, matter, and time to come into existence, by definition, cannot itself be made of space, matter, and time. Therefore, the First Cause that caused the universe to begin to exist is spaceless, immaterial and timeless. This Cause transcends our physical universe.
Additionally, this Cause would have to be extremely powerful to create such a universe, and the Cause must be personal in order to make a choice to create our existence. Since a choice was exercised by this Cause to bring about A from non-A, then it follows that intentionality was involved which can only belong to a personal agent.
The only things we know that are spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and personal are minds. Because God is a spirit, he fits these categories and would possess the freedom to create. Craig states,
“Because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. So the cause is eternal, but the effect is not. In this way, then, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator.”[26]
Therefore, inference to the best explanation suggests that a mind caused the universe to come into existence. Either mind came from matter, or matter came from mind. Now, remember, it’s important to understand that nobody is saying that whatever exists must have a cause, rather, it’s that whatever BEGINS to exist has a cause. We know the universe began to exist.
So, if the atheist asks the age-old question that we’ve all thought of as children: who created God? (Or what is the cause of God?), the answer is nothing. God cannot have a cause, because something that exists necessarily and eternally without a beginning would not need to have a cause. Craig states,
“This is not special pleading for God, since the atheist has always maintained the same thing about the universe: it is beginningless and uncaused.”[27]
The only difference between the two is that the atheistic view of the origin of the universe seems to be falsified by contemporary philosophy and cosmology.
God never began to exist, rather, he is eternal and a metaphysically necessary being to which our existence is contingent upon. He never came into existence, and he can never cease to exist. God must exist in order for our universe to exist.
There has to be some uncaused First Cause, and God is the best explanation for this category and for how our universe came into existence. As the renowned philosopher Richard Swinburne summarized it,
“It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused.”[28]
What Does the Bible Say?
The Bible clearly teaches that the universe began to exist, and that God is the creator and sustainer of it, and that God has existed eternally as God. Scripture harmonizes well with the contemporary philosophical and scientific evidence which suggests that our universe had a beginning, and that its existence came into being ex nihilo (out of nothing).
As the agnostic and renowned astrophysicist Robert Jastrow said,
“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. All the details differ, but the essential element in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis is the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”[29]
Here are just a few examples of Scripture written thousands of years prior, supporting the evidence I’ve provided in this article:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1, ESV).[30]
“I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24b).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3).
“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8:6).
“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).
“He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3).
We can confidently say that the universe had a beginning, and that God was the First Cause to bring about its existence.[31] Thank you for reading.
Blessings,
Andrew Drinkard
[1] See William Lane Craig and James D. Sinclair, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (Blackwell Publishing, 2012), 101-102.
[2] J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 2nd ed (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 480. Note that this argument is assuming an A-theory of time, rather than a B-theory of time. Craig explains that “by presupposing a dynamic or so-called A-theory of time, according to which temporal becoming is real, the proponent of the kalam cosmological argument justifiably assumes that the universe’s existing at a first moment of time represents the moment at which the universe came into being. Thus the real issue separating the proponent of the kalam cosmological argument and critics of the first premise is the objectivity of tense and temporal becoming” (481). The B-theory of time says that all moments of time are equally existent and that “the universe does not come into being or become actual at the big bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction” (481). However, it seems that if this four-dimensional space-time block has its own ontological nature, then it would have to be created or brought into existence by something else, namely God. So, even on a B-theory of time, it could be argued that our universe would still be contingent and reliant upon the existence of God for its own existence.
[3] See Garrett J. DeWeese and J. P. Moreland, Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult: A Beginner’s Guide to Life’s Big Questions (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2005), 14. I also want to clarify that this argument is not merely an analytic truth, that is to say, an argument that is true based solely on how it’s logically structured or the terms used. Rather, this is a synthetic a priori truth, that is to say, not only is this particular argument logically true in terms, but it’s also a universal truth in which the premises can be evaluated because of how the world is, despite not having direct experience with the initial event itself, i.e., the moment the universe began to exist.
[4] See William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed (Wheaton: Crossway Publishing, 2008), 114.
[5] See Moreland and Craig (2017), 80; Craig (2008), 114.
[6] See Moreland and Craig (2017), 480; Craig (2008), 114-115.
[7] Moreland and Craig, (2017), 480.
[8] See Craig and Sinclair (2012), 103; Moreland and Craig, (2017), 481.
[9] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 116.
[10] See Craig, Reasonable Faith, 117.
[11] See Roy Jackson, The God of Philosophy: An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 19. See also Craig, Reasonable Faith, 117; Moreland and Craig (2017), 482.
[12] Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 5th ed (NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 87
[13] See Rob Koons, “New Evidence that the Universe Began to Exist (with Dr. Rob Koons),” Capturing Christianity, September 20, 2019, accessed July 16, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X6ism4-KKw; See Rob C. Koons, “The Grim Reaper Kalam Argument: From Temporal and Causal Finitism to God,” https://robkoons.net/uploads/1/3/5/2/135276253/grim_reaper_kalam_argument.pdf; Craig and Sinclair, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 103; Peterson et al., Reason and Religious Belief, 87; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 118-119.
[14] Craig and Sinclair, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 103.
[15] Again, this is presupposing an A-theory of time; see Moreland and Craig (2017), 483; Craig and Sinclair (2012), 117-124.
[16] William Lane Craig, God, Time, and Eternity: The Coherence of Theism II: Eternity (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2001), 266.
[17] See Moreland and Craig (2017), 486; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 122-123.
[18] Craig and Sinclair, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 118.
[19] See William Bynum, “The Big Bang.” In A Little History of Science, (Yale University Press, 2012), 245. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bh50.41; See Steven Ball, “A Christian Physicist Examines the Big Bang Theory,” September 2003, accessed August 2, 2021, 9. https://www.letu.edu/academics/arts-and-sciences/files/big-bang.pdf.
[20] See John D. Barrow, “The Evolution of the Universe.” New Literary History 22, no. 4 (1991): 836; See Ram Brustein and Judy Kupferman. “The Creation of the World – According to Science.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 34, no. 3 (2012): 363. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43831417.
[21] Brustein and Kupferman. “The Creation of the World – According to Science,” 363.
[22] John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, (Oxford University Press, 1986), 442 quoted in William Lane Craig, God, Time, and Eternity: The Coherence of Theism II: Eternity (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2001), 256.
[23] Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 124 cited in Craig, Reasonable Faith, 128.
[24] Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, 176, quoted in William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Crossway Publishing, Wheaton, IL), 2008, 140.
[25] See Moreland and Craig (2017), 489; Craig, Reasonable Faith, 140-141. For countering objections made by skeptics against this argument, see responses in Reasonable Faith, 142-150.
[26] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 154.
[27] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 155.
[28] Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God, 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 152.
[29] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (United States: W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 2000), 14.
[30] Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are in the English Standard Version.
[31] Even if our universe was eternal and did not have a beginning, it would still require God as the Ultimate Reality upon which it relies for its own existence. The universe does not exist by the necessity of its own nature; rather, it is contingent and could fail to exist despite its eternality. Moreover, God could have chosen to do nothing with the underlying quantum information (if there even is such a thing) and left it in a state of static rest or inactive condition. Because it’s possible for a different universe to exist than the one we see today (different number of atoms or physical laws), that means the universe does not exist necessarily.
