The Universe Points to God

by Gregory E. Ganssle –

Suppose someone has died and we think that a murder may have been committed. The detective examines the scene and begins a long investigation. She seeks to identify the responsible person by gathering facts at the scene and determining in which direction these facts point. Some of the evidence will point to the fact that the death was caused by some person without identifying who the person is. Other lines of evidence may go far towards identifying the person. Sometimes what first appears to be a promising line of evidence turns out to be a dead end. Other times, some fact that appears to be insignificant at first winds up providing the key.

It is unusual for a detective to find a single piece of evidence that will provide absolute certainty about the identity of the criminal. Rather, detectives try to build what can be called a cumulative case. The various lines of evidence work together to make it more and more reasonable to think that a particular suspect is guilty. If the cumulative case is strong enough, the suspect may be convicted of the crime. The evidence needs to establish his identity beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not need to provide absolute certainty.

There is a great deal of similarity between the strategy of the detective and the strategy we pursue as apologists. We do not expect one line of evidence by itself to be strong enough to prove that God exists or to make the case undeniably strong. Rather, different lines work together to strengthen or weaken the case for God’s existence. We try to assess all of the evidence to see in which direction it points. In this article, I will look at two lines of evidence that provide good reason to think God exists. The existence of the universe is the first line of evidence. The second is the nature of the universe.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSE POINTS TO GOD

If the universe came into existence, then we have to think about what caused it to come into existence. This may be a clue to the question of whether or not God exists. I want to put this hunch into an argument:

Whatever comes into existence is caused to exist by something
If the series of past causes is not infinite, then the series of past causes came into existence.
There cannot be an infinite series of past
Therefore, the series of past causes came into
Therefore, there exists a cause for the series of past causes and this cause did not itself come into

This is a valid argument. If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Are the premises true? Let us take them one at a time. What of premise one? It seems as though things that come into existence are caused to exist by something else. After all, nothing can cause itself to come into existence. So it looks like premise one turns out to be true.

Premise two seems to be true as well. If the series of past causes is not infinite, then the series of past causes came into existence. What it means to say that the series of past causes is not infinite is that it began somewhere along the way. If it never came into existence, then it always was and it is infinite.

This leaves us with premise three. There cannot be an infinite series of past causes. Is this statement true? Can the universe have an infinite past? There are both philosophical and scientific reasons to think that the past cannot be infinite.

Philosophical Reasons to Think the Past is Finite Why can’t the past be infinite? The answer is that it is impossible to complete an infinite series by successive addition. What does this claim mean? Think of this mathematical question. Why is it impossible to count to infinity? The problem is not that you get bored with the count ing procedure or that you eventually grow old and die.

It is impossible because, no matter how long you count, you will always be at a finite number. It is impossible to count to infinity even if you count by tens or by thousands. It is impossible to complete the task of counting to infinity. Once we get this in our minds, we can see two things, I think. We can see what I mean when I say that it is impossible to complete an infinite series by successive addition and we can see that there are good reasons to think that it is actually impossible to complete an infinite series in this way.

One thing we must notice about the past is that it is complete. The series of past events is complete. This claim means that the entire series of past events ends today. Tomorrow is not part of the series of past events. (It will be part of the past series, of course, but it is not yet part of it.) If it is impossible to complete an infinite series by successive addition, the past cannot be infinite. If the past is finite, that is, if it had a beginning, then the universe had a beginning. We can see that we have good philosophical reason to think the universe began to exist.

Scientific Reasons to Think the Past is Finite

There are some scientific reasons as well as philosophical reasons to think that the series of past causes is not infinite. I will not develop these. Rather, I will simply point them out. First, the Big Bang theory seems to support the claim that the universe began to exist. If the origin of the universe was anything like what cur rent theories in physics claim, the universe is not infinitely old. Rather, it had a beginning. The second scientific reason is the second law of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics is the claim that the amount of usable energy in any closed system always decreases. Another way to state this law is that the disorder in any system always increases. The total amount of usable energy in a closed system always decreases. A closed system is one that does not get any extra energy from outside it. Since the universe is a closed system (at least if there is no God, it is a closed system), it cannot be infinitely old. The fact that there still is usable energy in the universe shows that disorder is not complete. Therefore, these physical processes must have begun some finite amount of time ago.

We can see that we have good philosophical and scientific reasons to reject the idea that the universe has always existed. As a result, we have good philosophical and scientific reasons to think that the premise we are discussing (“There cannot be an infinite series of past causes”) is true. If it is true, then it looks as though the argument is a good one. Remember, we already agreed that the first two premises are true. So we have given a good argument for the claim that the universe was caused to exist by something outside it and that this thing itself did not itself come into existence. It must have existed forever or outside time altogether.

Is there a weak spot in the argument? I will tell you that I think the weakest spot is the first premise. That is, the claim that whatever comes into existence is caused to exist by something else might not be true. We saw that nothing can cause itself to come into existence. Maybe it is possible for something to come into existence from nothing without any cause whatsoever. Can a thing just pop into existence with absolutely no cause? I think it is safe to say that we do not expect to encounter things that have popped into existence without any cause whatsoever.

Every time we encounter some object that has come into existence, we think there was a cause of its exist ing. This expectation is pretty deep and constant.

It turns out that there very well may be exceptions to this expectation. Physicists tell us that quantum events can occur without being caused. Current quantum the ory indicates that some particles can jump from one quantum level to another in a way that is uncaused and not otherwise determined. The discovery of quantum theory overthrew the view of the universe that most people held throughout the first three hundred years of modern science. Some things can happen without

being caused. If the physicists are right about quantum theory, the claim that everything that comes into existence is caused to exist by something else is false. There are states that come into existence without being caused to do so. It still remains to be seen what these facts about quantum physics have to do with whether the universe itself can come into existence without a cause. The universe, after all, is not very like the quantum states of sub-atomic particles. They are typically quite small and the universe is a very big thing. Simply point ing out that some event does not require a cause will not give us reason to suppose that we do not need a cause for the universe.

I will tell you how I assess the situation. You can agree or not. First, I think that it is possible that the universe popped into existence without a cause. I can’t see strong enough reason to make the claim that such a thing would be either impossible or so unlikely that it is wildly irrational to believe. Second, I think that it is still more reasonable to hold that the universe was caused to exist than that it popped into existence without a cause. Let me tell you why. First, I think that the universe as a whole is a physical object that is pretty big and has lots of different properties. Even though it began quite small, apparently all of the matter and energy present in the universe today was concentrated in that small object it is not much like quantum particle. Even if it is possible that the universe came into existence without a cause, it seems difficult to believe that it actually was uncaused unless you have a some reason to think that this is what happened. So unless there are reasons to think the universe in particular is one of those things that popped into existence with no cause at all, it is more likely that it is like almost every other type of thing in that it comes into existence due to something else.

About the universe, then, there are only three alternatives:

The universe has always It has an infinite past.
The universe popped into existence from nothing with absolutely no
The universe was caused to exist by something outside

We have seen that we have strong reasons to reject the first alternative. I have argued that we cannot rule out the second alternative decisively. It is possible that the universe was not caused at all. I have suggested, how ever, that it is more reasonable to reject this alternative than to accept it. If we do so, this position leaves us with the third as the more reasonable alternative. The universe was caused to exist by something outside it. There was a first cause. This cause existed eternally. It initiated the big bang and caused the universe to come into existence.

THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE POINTS TO GOD

Not only does the existence of the universe point to God, the nature of the universe does so as well. Historically, one of the most influential arguments for God’s exis tence has been the design argument. Design arguments begin with a hunch that things that appear to be designed probably are designed. Many things we find

in nature appear to be designed. The human eye per- forms complicated functions that aim at purposes that are good not only for the eye but for the whole organism.

Since the time of Darwin, however, such arguments have fallen out of favor. Darwin’s theory provided a plausible story for how things like the human eye can appear to be designed even if they might not be the products of design. Many have thought that Darwin had lais to the rest the design argument for God’s existence. Recently, however, new versions of the design argument have gained currency. Darwin’s theory concerns only things that reproduce. If we can find non-living things that look as though they are designed, we may be able to put forward a version of the design argument that is immune from Darwin’s challenge.

Physicists have recently discovered that it is extremely improbable that our universe would come into existence. Lots of the conditions around the time of the Big Bang had to be delicately balanced in order to get a universe that could have even simple elements such as Carbon or Oxygen. Apparently, there are a great many different and seemingly independent equations describing various laws and conditions at the beginning of the universe. Many of these have constants that are such that their values have to be specified quite precisely. For example, if the value of one of the constants was only slightly different, the universe would have expanded so quickly that stars would not have formed and heavy elements would never be synthesized. If the value var ied slightly in the other direction, the universe would have collapsed in the first few seconds, thus ruling out the existence of planets, ice cream and polar bears.

I do not know much about the actual equations but I can tell you that it has become very well established that there are many of these equations and the values have to be set with utmost precision to get a universe with any thing interesting in it. Some scientists and philosophers have argued that the odds against the universe having all of the values set so that the universe would be able to sustain life are astronomically great. As a result, it seems impossible that our universe came into being by chance. It had to have been designed. Rather than pointing to the eye, this argument points to the conditions necessary for the universe to come into existence as being the thing that bears the marks of design.

The question remains as to whether there is a story – that is, a plausible story that can explain this case of apparent design without having to admit that it was, in fact, designed. Several stories have been given. I can explain the best of these stories by beginning with an analogy. Suppose you enter the lottery with a one in a trillion chance and you win. You would be surprised. I don’t think you would suspect anyone of cheating, however. What makes it reasonable to think you won the lottery by chance is that you know that most of the people lost the lottery. Someone had to win, after all. Stop and think about this last sentence. In a lottery someone has to win. What is unlikely is that you will be the person to win. There is nothing strange about the fact that someone wins. In fact we would expect that someone will win.

Let’s think again about the emergence of the universe. What if our universe is the lucky one that got the constants right to allow it to thrive but that a trillion or more other universes failed to survive? In other words, what if ours is not the only universe? Suppose there are or have been trillions of different universes and each is generated by the same processes that can be described by all those mathematical equations and that the values of the constants in those equations are randomly set. In this case, it is not surprising that one of the universes is such that it can sustain life. In fact, we would expect that eventually one would pop out that can do so.

If this story is plausible, it does make it reasonable to think that our universe could have arisen by chance. If a trillion universes emerge and the values for the mathematical constants are set randomly, sooner or later one will emerge that can sustain life and thinking beings and philosophers to ask the questions. While we might still be surprised that we are lucky enough to be in the winning universe, it is no longer surprising that there is some universe or another that has the properties necessary to sustain life.

Is the many universe story plausible? I want to raise a few doubts about it. First of all, although it sounds like it is a scientific theory, I do not think it is one. The many universe story claims that lots of universe actually existed. These other universes would be completely inaccessible to us. None of our scientific ways of investigating things can reach them. There is no causal relation between those universes and our own. Since science explains things largely in terms of causal relations and laws, there can be no scientific theory about those universes. All we can do is conjecture about them. So the story is not quite scientific in the way that we normally understand what it takes for something to be scientific.

I have another related concern about the many universe story. These universes are given as an explanation for our universe instead of a supernatural explanation God. These universes, I will argue, are themselves (in some sense) supernatural. It might be more accurate to say that these universes are a non-natural rather than that they are supernatural. So by adopting the many universe story, we are trading one sort of non-natural explanation for another.

Why do I think the many universes are non-natural? Naturalism is often described as being the view that everything can be explained by the methods of the nat ural sciences. Something is a natural thing if it can be so explained. Notice that the many universe story is an explanation that appeals to things outside our physical space-time universe. It might be that these things themselves are spatial and temporal and physical but they are not in our space-time universe. Whatever methods of science there are (and it may be that this is a very loose concept in reality), there does not seem to be strong reason to think that these methods will apply to the various universes with all of their differences regarding physical laws and the nature of matter. The methods of science, as we have them, cannot really explain the many universes. So the many universe story is not quite a naturalistic alternative to God’s existence.

If I am right about the many universes being non-natural, then the design argument we are considering is quite significant. It shows that either a designer exists or there exists many universes which are outside the domain of science and which are non-natural things. In either case, naturalism is not a tenable position. Now I think that a view like naturalism is actually a fairly pliable view. What counts as the criterion for determining what is natural will change over time. An analogous case is true for what counts as scientific. As new discoveries are added, the boundaries of what counts as scientific are expanded. It is possible that the methods of science will expand in such a way as to include the many universes in their domain. I am skeptical about this possibility, however. Unless we can know something about the nature of these universes, the actual methods we use in science cannot be adapt ed to accommodate these universes.

If the many universe story is plausible, then our new design argument is weakened considerably. I think that it is possible that the many universe story is true. I do not think we can prove that it is false. I also think that we have only weak reasons for thinking it to be true. In fact, without a presumption that no supernatural explanation for the universe is acceptable, I see little evidence in its favor. New evidence may be forthcoming and, if it turns up, it will have to be evaluated accordingly.

Given the state of the discussion to this point, I think the argument from the nature of the universe provides some good reason to think that some kind of designer for the universe probably exists. This argument, together with the argument from the existence of the universe, points in the direction of a cause of the universe that is eternal. The next question is why we ought think that this cause and designer is God.

I will be able to say only a few things here. First the designer is not part of the universe. Nor is he in space and time. He is intelligent and purposeful. The design argument leads us to think that this being designed the world with some purpose in mind. This indicates the marks of personhood. The designer thinks, evaluates, wills and acts. Both of these arguments indicate that the designer is very powerful person who acts for rea sons. We have not shown that the designer is the God who is reflected in the Scriptures but, as the detective might say, “The game is afoot! We are hot on his trail!”

Gregory E. Ganssle ispart-time lecturer in the philosophy department at Yale University and is a research fellow with the Rivendell Institute. This article is adapted from his book, Thinking about God: First Steps in Philosophy (InterVarsity Press, 2004).