How Did the Universe Begin? (The Kalam Cosmological Argument by William Lane Craig)

thank you very much it is just a delight to be here with you sharing in this apologetics weekend at Saddleback this is Jan and my first visit to Saddleback so you can imagine how excited I am to have the privilege of standing behind this podium where Rick Warren preaches it's just great to be here and I I can't resist commenting on this marvelous thingamajig here this camera booth I've never seen anything like this in church it reminds me of something from Jurassic Park in fact I have got a great idea why doesn't somebody to get Steven Spielberg to donate to the church a leftover Brachiosaurus head and neck that you could put around this thing wouldn't that be cool in fact it would be very useful if the guest speaker went overtime Dino could just kind of sweep down and whiskey the way but seriously it really is extraordinary that Ric would devote the weekend services to the exploration of the relationship between faith and science and to exploring some of the deepest questions that we human beings can ask I think that it is vitally important that we as Christians be able to understand and interact with a modern scientific view of the world or otherwise we're going to be simply culturally irrelevant in the 21st century of Western society the topic that I've been asked to speak on today is one of the hottest topics in contemporary cosmology how did the universe begin and what I want to do in our time together this morning is to show that we have very good grounds for accepting the biblical worldview that the universe was created out of nothing by God at some point in the finite past and I'll introduce our topic by first saying a word about the historical background of the debate over the origin of the universe then I'll share a classic argument for creation and unfold some of the philosophical and scientific support for its premises and finally I'll wrap up by reflecting a bit theologically on the significance of this conclusion as a boy I used to wonder about the existence of the universe I wondered about how big it is I wondered about how it began I remember lying in bed at night trying to think of a beginningless universe every event would be preceded by another event back and back and back into the past with no stopping point or rather no starting point an infinite past with no beginning my mind just reeled at the prospect it just seemed inconceivable to me it seemed to me that there had to be a beginning at some point in the past in order for everything to get started well little did I realize that for centuries millennia really men had grappled with the idea of an infinite past and the question of the absolute beginning of the universe ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believed that matter was necessary and uncreated and therefore eternal God may be responsible for introducing order into the cosmos but he didn't create the universe itself this Greek view was in contrast to even more ancient Jewish thought about the subject Hebrew writers held that God created the universe out of nothing at some point in the finite past as the first verse of the Bible states in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth now ancient Hebrew in which the book of Genesis was written had no word for the universe when an ancient Hebrew speaker wanted to refer to the universe he would use the expression the heavens and the earth so Genesis 1:1 states in effect in the beginning God created the universe it therefore implies that God created everything that exists without any pre-existing materials now some scholars have tried to deny this fact by translating Genesis 1:1 as a subordinate clause when God created the universe in the beginning the earth was without form and void which might make it sound as if the earth was already there but most scholars today recognize this to be a mistranslation of the Hebrew in the Hebrew there is a conjunction and between verses 1 & 2 and when you have a grammatical construction like this what you have is two main clauses with the first one providing background information for the second so verse 1 states in the beginning God created the universe and then in verse 2 the focus radically narrows and the earth was without form and void so in contrast to the Greek view the Hebrew world view was that matter and energy are not eternal but were created at some time in the finite past by God this was also the worldview of New Testament Christians the Gospel of John opens with words that are very reminiscent of Genesis 1:1 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God all things were made through him and without him was not anything made Joan one versus one and three eventually these two competing traditions began to interact there arose a debate in Western philosophy that lasted for well over a thousand years on whether or not the universe had a beginning although the debate began between Greek pagans and Christians it eventually pulled in Jews and Muslims as well as Christians both Catholic and Protestant it finally sputtered to something of an inconclusive end in the thought of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century Kant held ironically that there are rationally compelling arguments for both sides so that the problem is insoluble and exposes the bankruptcy of Reason itself what were some of the arguments for the beginning of the universe well let's let one of the greatest medieval champions of the doctrine of creation speak for himself Alfa's Ollie was a 12th century Muslim theologian from Persia or modern-day Iran and he was concerned that Muslim philosophers of his day were being influenced by Greek philosophy to deny the beginning of the universe they held that the universe flows necessarily out of God and is therefore beginningless after thoroughly studying the teachings of these philosophers al-ghazali wrote a devastating critique of their views called the incoherence of the philosophers and in this fascinating book he argues that it is impossible that the universe be beginningless the universe must have a beginning he argues and since nothing begins to exist without a cause there must therefore be a transcendent creator of the universe cazali frames his argument very simply let me quote him he says every being which begins has a cause for its beginning now the world is a being which begins therefore it possesses a cause for its beginning and we can summarize huzzah Lee's reasoning in three simple steps one whatever begins to exist has a cause to the universe began to exist three therefore the universe has a cause this argument is so marvelously simple that it's easy to memorize and share with another person moreover this is a logically airtight argument if the two premises are true then the conclusion follows necessarily so I'd like to look at this argument with you this morning more closely starting with the second premise that the universe began to exist during the middle ages before the rise of modern science people had no scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe but Cazale presented some ingenious philosophical arguments for why the past has to be finite for example Casali points out that if the universe never began to exist then the number of past events in the history of the universe is infinite think about it if the universe never began to exist and the number of past events is infinite but Alfa's Olli argued this is impossible because an actually infinite number of things cannot exist the way in which Cazale shows the impossibility of an actually infinite number of things is by imagining what it would be like if such a collection could exist and then drawing out the absurd consequences from it let me share with you one of my favorite illustrations called Hilbert's hotel which is the brainchild of the great german mathematician David Hilbert now as a warm up Hilbert first invites us to imagine an ordinary hotel with a finite number of rooms and let's suppose that all the rooms are full if a new guest shows up at the front desk asking for a room the manager apologizes sorry all the rooms are full and the guest has to be turned away but now Hilbert said let's imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and let's suppose once again that all the rooms are full now this fact has to be clearly appreciated there is not a single vacancy throughout the entire infinite hotel every room already has a guest in it okay now stay with me here suppose a new guest shows up at the front desk asking for a room what will the manager say no problem he says and he moves the guest who was staying in room one in the room - he moves the guest who was in room two in the room three he moves the guest who was in room three into room four and so on out to infinity so that everybody moves into the room number next highest to his own as a result room number one now becomes vacant and the new guest is easily accommodated and yet before he arrived all the rooms were already full now if that seems weird hang on to your hat because it gets even worse let's suppose Hilbert says that an infinity of new guests shows up at the front desk asking for rooms no problem no problem says the manager and he moves the guest staying in room 1 into room 2 he moves the guest who was in room 2 into room 4 he moves the guest who was in room 3 into room 6 putting each guest into the room number twice his own 1 into 2 2 into 4 3 into 6 4 and 8 and so on out to infinity now think about that since any number multiplied by 2 is always an even number all of the guests wind up in the even-numbered rooms 2 4 6 8 10 and so forth as a result all of the odd-numbered rooms become vacant and the infinity of new guests gratefully checks in and yet before they arrived all the rooms were already full in fact the proprietor could do this an infinite number of times and always be able to accommodate more guests as one student remarked to me after class Hilbert's hotel if it could exist would have to have a sign posted outside no vacancy guests welcome Hilbert's hotel is absurd mind you it's logically correct for the mathematician but it's impossible for something like Hilbert's hotel to really exist you can describe it on paper but it cannot exist in reality illustrations like these showed that the existence of an actually infinite number of things is impossible now sometimes people react to Hilbert's hotel by saying that these paradoxes result because we can't understand the infinite that it's it's just beyond us but this reaction is in fact mistaken and naive infinite set theory is a highly developed and well understood branch of modern mathematics these absurdities result not because we do not understand the infinite but because we do understand the nature of the actual infinite Hilbert was a smart guy and he knew well how to illustrate the bizarre consequences of an actually infinite number of things now what are the implications of all this well if you can't have an actually infinite number of things then you can't have an actually infinite number of past events that means that the number of past events in the history of the universe must be finite but in that case the past is finite and therefore the universe began to exist just as al cazali claimed so I think that alpha Sally's argument is a good one I think that it shows that the number of past events must be finite and that therefore the universe must have had a beginning al-ghazali had philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe but in one of the most startling developments of modern science which alphas Ollie could never have anticipated we now have pretty good sign Tiff's against that the universe began to exist the evidence of observational astronomy indicates that the entire universe is expanding in the sense that the distances between the galaxies grows greater and greater and greater as time goes on this has the startling implications that as you trace the expansion back in time the universe gets denser and denser and denser until it finally collapses down to a point before which the universe literally did not exist and that initial event has come to be known as the Big Bang what makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing for all matter and energy even physical space and time themselves come into being at the moment of the Big Bang as the British physicist PC W Davies explains the coming into being of the universe as discussed in modern science is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization upon a previous incoherent state but literally the coming into being of all physical things from nothing the standard Big Bang model thus predicts an absolute beginning of the universe if this model is correct then we have amazing scientific confirmation of the second premise of alphas ollies cosmological argument so the question is is the standard model correct or more accurately is it correct in predicting an absolute beginning of the universe well although there's a good deal of evidence in favor of the standard Big Bang model we know that it will need to be modified in certain ways the standard model is based upon Albert Einstein general theory of relativity but Einstein's theory breaks down when the universe is shrunk down to subatomic proportions at that point we'll need to introduce subatomic physics in order to describe the universe and nobody knows how this is to be done moreover the expansion of the universe is probably not constant as it is in the standard model it's probably accelerating and may have had a brief period of super rapid expansion in the past but none of these adjustments need affect the fundamental prediction of an absolute beginning to the universe ever since the standard model was first proposed back in the 1920s scientists have proposed scores of alternative models over the decades and those that do not have an absolute beginning have been repeatedly shown to be unworkable to put it more positively the only viable non standard models gar those that involve an absolute beginning to the universe now that beginning may or may not have a beginning point but on theories like Stephen Hawking's where the universe does not have a sharply defined point at which it originates nevertheless the past is still finite not infinite the universe has not existed forever according to such models but it came into existence even if it didn't do so at a sharply defined point so in a sense the history of 20th century cosmology can be seen as a history of one failed attempt after another to avert the prediction of the beginning of the universe predicted by the standard Big Bang model unfortunately the impression arises as a result in the minds of lane that the field of cosmology is in constant turnover with no lasting results what the layperson doesn't appreciate is that this parade of failed theories simply goes to confirm the prediction of the standard model that the universe began to exist that prediction has now stood for well over 80 years throughout a period of enormous advances in observational astronomy and creative theoretical work in astrophysics in fact something of a watershed appears to have been reached in the year 2003 in that year three scientists Arvind borde Alexander Vilenkin and Alan Guth were able to prove that any universe which is on average expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary and what makes their proof so powerful is that it holds independently of any physical description of the early universe because we can't yet provide a physical description of the very early universe this has been fertile ground for speculations this early region has been compared by some scientists to the regions on ancient maps labeled here there be dragons it could be just filled with all sorts of fantasies but the board guthe the Lankin theorem is independent of any physical description of that early beginning of the universe their theorem implies that even if the universe is just part of a wider multiverse of many universes even then the multiverse itself must have an absolute beginning the Lincoln is blunt about the implications I quote it is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable man 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 now we can fully expect that new theories of the universe will be proposed attempting to avoid the universe's absolute beginning such proposals are to be welcomed and we have no reason to expect that there'll be any more successful in averting the absolute beginning of the universe than their failed predecessors now of course scientific results are always provisional nevertheless I think it seems pretty clear in this case which way the evidence points today the proponent of alphas Ali's argument stands solidly within mainstream science in accepting that the universe began to exist on the basis then of both philosophical argument and scientific evidence I think we have good grounds for believing the second premise of alphas Ali's argument that the universe began to exist but that takes us back to the first premise of Cazalas argument that whatever begins to exist has a cause I think that this principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause is so obvious that it is virtually undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth for something to begin to exist without any cause of any sort would be to come into being from nothing and that is surely impossible let me give three reasons in support of this premise first something cannot come from nothing to claim that some can come into being from nothing is literally worse than magic I mean think about it when the magician pulls a rabbit out of the Hat at least you've got the magician not to speak of the Hat but if you deny this premise then you've got to think that the whole universe just appeared at some point in the finite past for no reason whatsoever but nobody sincerely believes that things say a horse or an Eskimo village could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing nobody here this morning is worried that while you're listening to this lecture a horse may have popped into being uncaused back in your living room right now and is there defiling the carpet as we speak now sometimes skeptics will respond to this argument that by saying that in modern physics subatomic particles so-called virtual particles can come into being from nothing or against certain theories of the origin of the universe have been touted as showing that you can get something from nothing because the universe comes into being out of the vacuum so that the universe is the exception to the proverb there ain't no free lunch now this skeptical response represents a deliberate abuse of science the theories in question have to do with particles or the universes coming into being as a fluctuation of the energy contained in the vacuum and the vacuum in physics is not what the layman means by vacuum nothing rather for physics the vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy a scene of violent physical activity having a physical structure and governed by physical laws to tell laypeople that on such theories something comes into being from nothing is a deliberate distortion of those theories properly understood nothing does not mean just empty space rather nothing is the absence of anything whatsoever even the absence of empty space and as such nothingness literally has no properties at all because there isn't anything to have any properties so how silly it is when popularizers say things like nothingness is unstable - vacuum fluctuations or the universe tunneled into being out of nothingness secondly if something can come into being from nothing then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing think about it why don't bicycles or Beethoven or root beer just pop into being uncaused out of nothing there can't be anything about nothingness that favors universes because nothingness has no properties so what makes nothing is so discriminatory that only universes can pop into being from nothingness nothing cannot be constrained by anything either because there's nothing to be constrained now at this point the Atheist is likely to retort okay then what is God's cause if everything has to have a cause I'm always amazed at the self-congratulatory attitude of people who posed this question they've imagined that they said something really profound or important here when all they've done is simply misunderstand the premise premise one does not say that everything has a cause it says everything that begins to exist has a cause something that is eternal and never began to exist wouldn't have a cause and so al cazali would say that God is simp eternal and uncaused and notice this isn't special pleading for God because this is what the Atheist has always said about the universe the universe is eternal and uncaused the only problem is we now have good evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning and therefore the Atheist is backed into the corner of having to affirm that for no reason whatsoever the universe just popped into being uncaused out of absolutely nothing which is absurd thirdly common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise one premise one is constantly verified and never falsified it's hard to understand how any atheist committed to the truth of modern science could deny in light of the evidence the premise one is plausibly true so I think that the first premise of aussolas Ali's argument is clearly true that everything that begins to exist has a cause when I first published my work on the cosmological argument I figured that atheists would attack the second premise that the universe began to exist but I never dreamt that they would go after the first premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause for to do so would expose them as people not sincerely looking for truth but just looking for an academic refutation of the argument just looking for loopholes what a surprise it was then to hear atheists denying premise one in order to escape the conclusion of the argument for example my collaborator Quentin Smith an atheist philosopher at the University of Western Michigan has responded that the most rational position to hold is that the universe came from nothing by nothing for nothing a good conclusion to a Gettysburg Address of atheism perhaps this is simply the faith of an atheist in fact I think it takes a greater leap of faith to believe this than to believe in the existence of God for it is I repeat literally worse than magic if this is the alternative to belief in God then unbelievers can never denounce believers as irrational for what could be more irrational than this well it follows from the two premises of the argument that therefore the universe has a cause what then is the theological significance of this conclusion the prominent atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett denies that it has any theological importance Dennett agrees that the universe has a cause but he thinks that the cause of the universe is itself yes he's serious he thinks that in the ultimate bootstrapping trick those are his words the universe created itself now somebody needs to say that the Emperor is wearing no clothes then it's view is patent nonsense notice he's not saying that the universe is self caused in the sense that it is eternal and beginningless now he's saying that at some point in the finite past the universe brought itself into existence but this is clearly impossible for in order to create itself the universe would have to already exist it would have to exist before it existed which is a self-contradiction so the Dennett's view is patent nonsense it is logically incoherent the cause of the universe must therefore be a transcendent cause beyond the universe this cause must itself be uncaused because we've seen there cannot be an infinite regress of causes it is therefore the first uncaused cause what properties then must this first uncaused cause of the universe possess first it must transcend space and time because it created space and time since it is not in time it must therefore be change less since it is not in space it must therefore be in material or non-physical it must be unimaginably powerful since it brought all matter and energy into being finally this first uncaused cause plausibly must be a personal being as al-ghazali argued this is the only way to explain how a timeless cause can give rise to a temporal effect with a beginning like the universe here's the problem if a cause is sufficient to produce its effect then if the cause is there the effect must be there as well for example the cause of waters freezing is the temperatures being below zero degrees centigrade if the temperature has been below zero degrees from eternity past then any water that was around would be frozen from eternity past it would be impossible for the water just to begin to freeze a finite time ago once the cause is given its effect must be given as well now the cause of the universe never began to exist since it is timeless so why isn't the universe beginningless as well why did the universe come into only about 13 billion years ago why isn't it as a beginning less as its cause alphas ollie maintained that the only answer to this problem is that the cause must be a personal being who has freedom of the will his creating the universe is a free act of the will independent of any prior conditions and thus his creating of the universe can be something spontaneous and new so the effect can exist or pardon me the cause can exist eternally but a finite time ago freely will to create a new effect and bring the universe into being and thus we are brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to its personal creator alpha Sally's argument thus gives us I think good grounds for believing in the existence of a beginningless uncaused timeless spaceless changeless immaterial enormous ly powerful personal creator of the universe i've already told you how daniel dennett response to this argument would you like to hear how Richard Dawkins responds light Dennett Dawkins doesn't deny either premise of the argument instead he merely questions the theological significance of the arguments conclusion he writes even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name there is absolutely no reason to endow that Terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God omnipotence omniscience goodness creativity of design to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers for sins and reading innermost thoughts now notice that Dawkins doesn't dispute that the argument proves the existence of a beginningless uncaused timeless spaceless change less in material enormous ly powerful personal creator of the universe he merely complains that this creator hasn't also been shown to be omnipotent omniscient creative of design listening to prayers forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts to which I say so what the argument doesn't aspire to prove such things it would be a bizarre form of atheism indeed one not worth the name that believed that there exists a beginningless uncaused timeless spaceless changeless immaterial enormous ly powerful personal creator of the universe who may also for all we know possess the properties listed by Dawkins if al Cazalas argument is right then Dawkins atheism is philosophically bankrupt by contrast Jews Christians Muslims and all who believe in the biblical doctrine of creation have solid grounds indeed philosophically and scientifically for believing that God created the universe a finite time ago out of nothing the blessing in heaven are said to sing you are worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they were created and exist a mess and ah man

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Keywords: William, Lane, Craig, Kalam, Cosmological, Argument, First, Cause, God, Existence, Evidence, Science, Religion, Philosophy, Al, Ghazali, Christianity

Id: N80AjfHTvQY

Length: 40min 51sec (2451 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2012