Missing the Beginning
The first word in the Hebrew text of Genesis is Reshith translated into English as In the beginning. It is
ironic that
the question of the existence of God becomes an issue one word into the
Hebrew text. For at least the last 1,000 years, atheists have
tried to
dispute the notion that there was a beginning. The problem is
that if a
person admits that there was a beginning they are faced with the issue
of what the cause of that beginning was. It is much simpler to
just
deny that there was a beginning and maintain that everything has always
been--not necessarily as it is today, but in a form that could change
into what we see today.
In the 2004 version of the Humanist
Declaration the statement is clearly made, "The universe is self
existing and not created." Older versions had the word eternal in the statement, but as
one thinks about the phrase self
existing, it is obvious that the question of origins is evaded
by the use of self existing
so the word eternal is not needed. Atheists will usually respond
to
this point by saying that religious people claim God is self existing,
so there is no reason why atheists cannot make the same claim.
Carl
Sagan in his book (Carl Sagan, Cosmos,
[New York: Random House, Inc., 1980],
page 257) said "Why is it anymore reasonable to say that God has always
been, than to say that the cosmos has always been?"
The answer to this challenge lies in the nature of God
and the
nature of the cosmos. Carl Sagan was also fond of saying, "The
laws of
chemistry and physics are the same everywhere in the cosmos."
This
statement of faith (which is probably true) maintains that the
processes of nature are consistent and universal. All of our
observations in astronomy verify this, but it is also important to
notice that all of our observations are based upon certain assumptions
about space and time. When we measure light, we measure its
frequency
in cycles per second. When we measure speed in space, we measure
it in
meters per second. Force, mass, acceleration, energy, momentum,
and
inertia are all measured in similar units. Time is involved in
all of
these quantities in one way or another, and space is assumed to have
certain qualities which fit the descriptions of our mathematics.
All of these scientific tools, which measure what we have described,
have agreed to the fact that there was a beginning to time and to
space. The cosmos is expanding at an ever-increasing rate.
This
acceleration is not well understood by science at the moment, but the
fact that it is accelerating strongly suggests that it has accelerated
away from a place where it was at rest. This beginning point has
all of
the cosmos moving away from it. There is no indication that the
acceleration is a property of space and time.
As researchers from all areas of human endeavor work with the
observations and data about the cosmos, it has become increasingly
obvious that no explanation of how the cosmos came into being is going
to be possible by the methods and understandings of the twentieth
century. The laws of physics are quite limiting as to what is
possible
as far as matter, space, and time are concerned.
The result of all this is that scientific theories are being
proposed that do not depend on Newtonian physics. String theory,
for
example, proposes quantities that exist in multiple dimensions beyond
our own. When theories that operate in ten dimensions are
proposed,
they are not easy to test. Nearly all theories in quantum
mechanics
have similar problems. We are not only limited by our inability
to
devise experiments to test these theories, but we are also limited by
our ability to understand them. It is also important to
understand that
even if one accepts a theory involving 10th dimension strings of
energy, the origin of the strings and the energy remain
unapproached.
Multiple universe theories face the same problem. The biblical
term, In the beginning,
refers to the
origin of all of reality. Whether God did the creating process by
creating strings or parallel universes or inflations or bangs is not
relevant.
The atheist challenge to this will still be that the origin of
strings, universes, etc., being unexplained or unexplainable does not
necessarily mean that God did it--and that is true. We are not
proposing a God-of-the-Gaps
argument in which we say "God did it" because we have no other
explanation. What we are saying is that the biblical description
of God
as the creator offers a large body of support for God as the creator of
the cosmos. First of all the Bible makes it clear that God is
outside
of all other dimensions. God is described as the creator of time
and
space and as a being having no spacial dimension properties (see 1 John 1:5; 4:8, 12, 16; 2 Peter 3:10;
and Colossians
1:16-17). Secondly, the descriptions given of God offer a
number of
properties that are clearly seen in the cosmos and which blind chance
would not produce. This includes love, care, design, patience,
personality, purpose, wisdom, and planning. Debates about the
various
versions of the anthropic principle and Intelligence Design (I.D.) have
not changed the fact that more and more evidence is coming to light
concerning the fact that our universe seems designed to sustain carbon
based life. Atheists and skeptics may try to counter this
evidence, but
they have no real alternative to offer.
--John
N. Clayton
12/10/2008
Back to Contents
Does God Exist?, NovDec04.