Relativity Theory Changed The Playing Field
The standard argument secularism makes against religion is that it is irrational, delusional, anti-science, and without any evidenciary support. Despite the fact that reductive naturalism only allows for evidence which confirms their presupposed conclusions, despite the fact that there is significant and beneficial dialogue between science and faith, and despite the fact that science itself eventually turns to unscientific faith-based claims, theism also stands on its own merit as a reasonable conclusion of logical inference derived from modern scientific discoveries.
Science
Science is, fundamentally, the quest for causes. The universe, assumed to be rational, is therefore made up of the complex interplay between cause and effect, like a million strings of dominoes tumbling into each other over the course of billions of years. Scientific inquiry is essentially the attempt to trace this line of dominoes back to the original ‘push’ which set them into motion. As the dominoes are traced back, we are left with one of two options: either the universe is eternal, with the dominoes stretching back ad infinitum; or the universe had an originating cause. Carl Sagan argued for the eternal universe, offering up the following question in Pale Blue Dot, “If we must say that God created the universe, then where did God come from? And if we say that God is eternal, why not just skip a step, and say the universe is eternal?” (paraphrase mine)
The problem, however, is that scientists are fully convinced that the universe is NOT eternal, that there was a singularity from whence matter and energy exploded into being. This, most commonly referred to as the Big Bang, was further expanded upon by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Albert Einstein identified an indisputable link between matter, energy, and time – a “fabric” we now refer to as space-time. Stephen Hawking further elaborated on this, demonstrating mathematically how matter and time are not only linked, they are mutually dependent. The implications of this are profound… not only was matter and energy somehow caused to come into being, but so was time itself.
The Cosmological Argument
This leaves us with some interesting inferences that can be drawn from this. At the heart of this is the realization that there was a beginning, and a beginning in our rational universe necessitates a cause. For the purposes of our argument, however, let us suspend judgment as to the nature of this cause, and simply search out what qualities such a cause could logically be assumed to have.
- This cause, since it initiated all matter, must be powerful. This is especially true if matter and time did not exist until this cause triggered them to come into being.
- This cause, since it initiated time, must be timeless. That is, it must be capable of existing and operating in a state where there is no before, no after, no cause, no effect, until it triggers such a state which allows for time itself to become a variable.
- This cause, being timeless, has no preceding cause, as cause and effect do not exist apart from time.
- This cause, since it initiated both time and matter, must also be capable of operating within time, so as to ‘tip the domino’ initiating the cause-effect relationship which permeates all existence.
- This cause, since it has no preceding cause, is not a reaction to a preceding trigger, and is therefore self-contained.
- This cause, being self-contained, must therefore be capable of acting autonomously. The only framework we have which makes sense for spontaneous, autonomous action is that of choice. If this cause is capable of choice, it must bear a will; if it bears a will, it must have a mind.
Thus, we are left with a cause which bears certain qualities: it is powerful, timeless, causeless, both immanent and transcendent, and an autonomous, willful, mindful entity.
This is what we call God.
[EDIT] Edited for clarity on 4/15/12
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Holly Michael April 14, 2012 at 12:16 pm
Great stuff again!
Roy Fredrickson April 14, 2012 at 1:25 pm
Brilliant! We often say that God is eternal, but I think “timeless” is far mote accurate. God could not exist “before” time began because you can’t have a “before” unless time already exists. I wonder what it will be like to live “forever” in heaven, but then I realize that that also implies a timeline. If time had a beginning, it could well have an end. There will not be any “forever;” there will just “be!”
T. E. Hanna April 14, 2012 at 2:00 pm
“Timeless” also has implications for omniscience, as a timeless being can stand apart from time, and view all of time from that vantage point.
Boethius, a Christian philosopher in the 6th century, described time as a river, and God as the timeless being sitting on the shore, viewing the river in its entirety. The idea that god is timeless rather than eternal is an aspect of Christian orthodoxy with a long, long history.
Roy Fredrickson April 14, 2012 at 2:54 pm
I’ve heard that analogy before, but I didn’t know it was ascribed to Boethius. It’s exciting to think that God knows we are going to pray even before we do, and He has ALREADY answered that prayer “in the future!”
Mind boggling!
mcdministries April 14, 2012 at 2:00 pm
You did a great job on this one. Keep up the good work!
eliezer40 April 14, 2012 at 4:31 pm
Excellently said!
Shirley Anne April 14, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Love it!
Shirley Anne x
Alex April 14, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Of course Atheists will argue that matter simply popped into existence out of nothing. Apparently there’s been some theoretical maths done on this. But in the end, as you’ve pointed out in this and your previous post, they come down to an unsubstantiated, non-evidentiary faith statement.
Alex April 14, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Reblogged this on Some Random Bloke and commented:
I’ve really been enjoying TE Hanna’s blog the last couple of days. More good thoughts.
John H. Harbison April 14, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Well done, T.E.
eliezer40 April 14, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Reblogged this on eliezer40 and commented:
A very good post by ofDustAndKings. Enjoy, as I did.
slklesko April 14, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Hi there, I have nominated you for The Versatile Blogger Award! You can find the details here: http://truthletsandthoughtbits.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/the-versatile-blogger-award/
Life on the Potter's Wheel April 14, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Reblogged this on Life on the Potter's Wheel.
rabidmongoose April 14, 2012 at 9:55 pm
I really enjoyed reading this article! The way you walked your audience through your observations and conclusions was easy to follow, and interesting. Here is the thought I was left with at the conclusion of this piece: I agree with your descriptive statements about the being we call God, and it saddens me that we have done such a poor job describing and representing Him to the world.
Life on the Potter's Wheel April 14, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Wonderful article!! I saw a documentary a while back on Stephen Hawking and was actually quite surprised by what seemed to me to be a fundamental lack of logic in his argument for science negating the need for God and his use of multiple circular arguments, something Christians are accused of regularly and you would think would be considered very “unscientific.” I felt like he was trying to put the pieces together to make them fit but knew he really had failed to do so. It seems to me that he, for whatever reason, wants to believe God doesn’t exist and so tries to come at it from every angle to prove himself right, but in the end deep down he knows he’s wrong. Perhaps it was the flatness of the language interpretation software he uses, but he seemed almost despondent that his research led him to the conclusion there’s no need for a Creator, as if he was hoping for a different outcome. I think his brilliance and giftedness as a scientist overpower his own spirit, something that happens all too often in the scientific realm. You would think with recent discoveries that long-held scientific principles may, in fact, be false, along with past ones that haven’t stood the test of time and scientific scrutiny, that our most intelligent scientists would be at least open to the idea that science and its principles are not immutable. They are, in fact, fluid, which will always leave the door open for a Creator even from the most unyielding scientific perspective. What we know today is vastly superior to what we knew a century or even a decade ago and at the same time vastly inferior to what we will know a decade or a century from now. Nothing else can explain this phenomenon but an immutable God!
reverendhellfire April 14, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Amusing Sophistry, you should be a jesuit! Or a rabbi. But there’s a lot of presumptions made here that on examination break down (too many ifs that I would challenge eg “if it has no preceeding cause” Well what if there is a preceeding cause for that matter.)
and science that quote “eventually turns to unscientific faith based claims” is not science.
T. E. Hanna April 15, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Logical corollaries build on each other, rather than standing in isolation. That is how logic works. In this case, we identify that time has a beginning (as per relativity theory). Thus, whatever initiated time is, itself, timeless. A preceding cause necessitates the distance of time, as cause, effect, before, and after are all time dependent. If the cause which initiated the universe is timeless, then a preceding cause cannot logically exist.
In reference to science, multiverse theory (and its variants, such as string theory) are generally accepted theories whose very nature makes observation, evidence, data collection, and experimentation impossible. This is the principle criticism the scientific community levels against it, despite its general acceptance.
I would, nevertheless, agree with your claim that this is not science. This is precisely my point. Science is fantastic at doing what it is supposed to do, but it has limits. Eventually, science has to look beyond itself
dchristopherspears April 15, 2012 at 11:14 am
This is an awesome post Sir. I have never taken the time to study what science says about how the world came into existence. All I have ever known and ever been taught is God. Now after reading your post, I still know the end result after all the science is…God! Thank you for sharing this!
laurensheil April 15, 2012 at 12:25 pm
I’ve had the argument a number of occations. What I find it comes down to is that most athiests (and theoretic physicists are the worst kind of athiest) refuse to accept that their must be a cause to the universe. All science hangs on a cause and effect relationship. The universe as we know it is obviously the effect of something but beyond the big bang itself they refuse to acknowledge even a need for anything resembling a cause.
Hawking himself said as much and left room for a God in his seminole work on the subject “A Brief History of Time” when he wrote;
“Correspondingly, if, as is the case, we know only what has happened since the big bang, we cannot determine what happened beforehand. As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences and so should not form part of a scientific model of the universe. We should therefore cut them out of the model and say that the big bang was the beginning of time. This means that questions such as who set up the conditions for the big bang are not questions that science addresses.”
The distinction that most refuse to accept is that by not addressing the quesiton, you are not therefore answering it! You are just admitting that you don’t know the answer and that you acknowledge the fact that you working from ignorance.
T. E. Hanna April 15, 2012 at 2:17 pm
It is intriguing how in his most recent work he attempts to show how multiverse theory answers the question of “what came before” which in “Brief History of Time” he dismisses. I tend to think he dismisses that which he can find no scientific explanation for without God. I love his physics, but his philosophy leaves much to be desired.
laurensheil April 15, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Agreed, science and philosphy are not good bedfellows.
jelillie April 15, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Thank you TE I am forwarding this to one of our pastor’s who is getting ready to teach a class on Genesis 1 and 2!
snowgood April 15, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Since I was small boy I always believed there was a God. no matter how we try to understand the universe it all comes down to FAITH. We either believe it came from God, or we choose to believe it just happened (whether in an instant or over a huge time span doesn’t matter). To me the latter is a bigger statement of faith than the former, the human mind that “thinks”they have understanding is surely deluded, we may be made in the image of God BUT, we’re nowhere near as smart. Good post even so.
jritterbrunson April 15, 2012 at 6:26 pm
I am not a scientist by any means. Because of the simple, yet logical progression of ideas, I understand your blog. It left me with this thought. When God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and it it divide the waters from the waters.”
Don’t you think God heard a “Big Bang?”
creationscience4kids April 16, 2012 at 11:19 am
I’m going to repost this at my site (for the grown-ups!). What you describe is very much what I remember puzzling through when I got old enough to start imagining eternity backwards. My dad loves this kind of thinking and was a good guide like you to help us realize that God, in some form, must BE.
kylebarton April 17, 2012 at 1:18 am
Great post. I especially enjoyed bullet points 2 &3, on there not being a cause to a first-cause that produced time in which the relationship of cause and effect exists.
Of course the cosmological argument has been around and received various treatment and criticism. In “How to Think about God” Mortimer Adler proves the necessary existence of a first cause.
Recently I have been reading Hans Kung’s “On Being a Christian.” In part II, “The Other Dimension”, he approaches the argument for the reality of God through a moral lens with nihilism as his counterpoint. It’s really amazing although equally really dense, so beware!
Science is not concerned with the ultimate questions, nor is it equipped to answer them. It is more concerned with testing, technical hypotheses, with tinkering with the physical creation. A big handicap is that there are no tools available to scientists to access and tinker with the new creation. “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” – John 3:3
Freeman Dyson said this about science, “All of science is uncertain and subject to revision. The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove.”