The Uncaused First Cause
A few weeks ago, as I was talking to an agnostic friend about the origin of the universe, it didn't take long before she ran into the problem of the uncaused first cause. Having started the conversation as an advocate of the Big Bang Theory, she soon realized that this put her in a difficult position. Because everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the Big Bang Theory holds that the universe began to exist, she was left with the inevitable conclusion that the universe must have a cause. This rationale is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument.1
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
Premise one - everything that begins to exist has a cause - is known as the Law of Causality. It is the fundamental principle of science. Hardly anyone disputes this because it is universally verified by scientific evidence and common experience, and it has never been falsified.2 Even the great skeptic David Hume wrote, "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause."3 The Law of Causality is as certain as anything.
Premise two - the universe began to exist - is supported by the Big Bang Theory and all its evidence, which has led scientists to accept the unwelcomed conclusion that all matter came into existence through a massive explosion and before that there was nothing (not even space or time).4 Since my friend had already indicated she was certain of the veracity of the Big Bang, she had conceded premise two. Therefore, according to her view, the universe must have a cause.
"What do you think that cause was?" I asked her curiously, knowing that even the most brilliant scientists in the world struggle with this question.5
"Well, even if I give an answer, then I'll still have to come up with what caused that to exist?", she said thoughtfully.
"Yes", I said, "so something had to be the uncaused first cause. Something that has always existed (and therefore never 'began to exist') must be the first cause. But that first cause can't possibly be the universe because, according to the Big Bang Theory, the universe isn't eternal."
Suddenly willing to abandon her support for the Big Bang Theory, she said, "Well, maybe the Big Bang Theory is wrong and the universe is eternal."
Over the next few minutes I briefly summarized five reasons (there are more) why scientists are convinced the universe is not eternal, after which my friend decided that perhaps belief in God wasn't as foolish as she had supposed.
So what are those five reasons that are so compelling that scientists have almost universally abandoned the much-loved Steady State Theory that held to an eternal universe? They can be remembered with the acrostic SURGE:6
1. Second Law of Thermodynamics - This undisputed law of nature informs us that the universe is running out of usable energy. Given that the universe has a finite amount of usable energy, if the universe were eternal it would be out of usable energy by now.
2. Universe is Expanding - This discovery by Edwin Hubble tells us that if we could go backward in time to the beginning, we would see all matter collapsing back to a point "not even the size of a pinhead, but mathematically and logically to a point that is actually nothing (i.e. no space, no time, no matter)."7 Therefore, the universe had a beginning and cannot be eternal.
3. Radiation from the Big Bang - This afterglow of light and heat from the initial Big Bang explosion was accidentally discovered by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965. Their discovery laid to rest any suggestion that the universe may be in an eternal steady state,8 upsetting many non-religious and agnostic scientists, including Albert Einstein, who had held out hope that the universe did not have a beginning and thus a Beginner.9
4. Great Galaxy Seeds - These slight temperature variations that allowed matter to congregate into galaxies by gravitational attraction were expected to exist if the Big Bang had occurred. In 1992, NASA announced that the ripples had not only been discovered, but that these ripples showed that the explosion and expansion of the universe were precisely tweaked to cause just enough matter to congregate to allow galaxy formation, but not enough to cause the universe to collapse back on itself.10
5. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity - This theory, which has been verified to five decimal places, demands an absolute beginning for space, matter, and time. They are co-relative, so one cannot exist without the other two.11
Each of these five reasons alone is extremely powerful evidence for a finite universe. When combined together, there is little to no doubt that the universe had a beginning. Therefore, the universe must have a cause. Putting together all of this information, the uncaused cause had to be timeless, non-spatial, immaterial, eternal, self-existent, personal, indescribably powerful, and incomprehensibly intelligent. Does that remind you of anyone?
Having lived during most of these discoveries, astronomer, physicist, cosmologist, and agnostic Robert Jastrow, Founder of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, concluded:
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself up over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."12
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[1] For a short video presentation by William Lane Craig, author of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CulBuMCLg0; for another short video by Ravi Zacharias Ministries, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR0IzZ657jE
[2] For additional explanation, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN1kutBBoMM
[3] David Hume, in J.Y.T. Greig, ed., The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols. (New York: Garland, 1983), 1:187.
[4] Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 73-94.
[5] Ibid. [Answers ranging from magic, to swirling mathematical points (which are not nothing and do not create), to laws of nature (which describe what we see; they don't create what we see) have all been offered by scientists as the eternal, uncaused cause of the universe. There is absolutely no evidence for any of these.]
[6] Ibid. (Both the acrostic and the explanations are borrowed from Geisler and Turek.)
[7] Ibid., p. 78
[8] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 15-16.
[9] Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 73-74, 88
[10] Ibid., p. 82
[11] Ibid., p. 83
[12] Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 116.