Jastrow concluded his presentation with the comment, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story [of the big bang] ends like a bad dream. For the past three hundred years, scientists have scaled the mountain of ignorance and as they pull themselves over the final rock, they are greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."[Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. NewYork, W.W. Norton, p. 116.]
 
 
 
 
 
 

A. It is more reasonable to assume that God is the ultiamte cause of the universe.
 
 

1) The Universe has a begining along with space/time

2) Therefore the universe is contingent.

3) Infinite causal regress is illogical

4) Arbitrary necessities are ilogical

5) Therefore the ultimate origin of the uiverse must be non-contingent, (2) eternal, (1-2) and logically necessary

6) Since infinite regress and arbitrary necessity are illogical, the ultiamte cause of the universe must be a final cause where all the chain of causality begins in reality.

7) Since the Theistic model of God fits the necessary descritpion for the ultimate origin of the universe and since no other viable alternative is offered (as all others reduce to either infinite causal regress or arbitrary necessity) God is the only logical alterantive.
 
 

Most of the reaming evidence below is aimed at proving the content of p7, the faliure of alterantive views.
 
 

B. The Universe is not Eternal

 
 
 

1)Big Bang is the moment of creation, begining of universe and of time itself.
 
 
 
 

 "Science and religion" Chris Stamper, from World Magazine, quoted from Origns http://www.origins.org/science/stamper.html (june of 99)

 

Scientific evidence for the "Big Bang" becomes more and more theological. According to "cosmic inflation" cosmology, as Mr. Easterbrook explains it, "the entire universe popped out of a point with no content and no dimensions, essentially expanding instantaneously to cosmological size. Now being taught at Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top schools, this explanation of the beginning of the universe bears haunting similarity to the traditional theological notion of creation ex nihilo, 'out of nothing.'"
 
 

Mr. Easterbrook quotes one of the world's top astronomers, Allan Sandage of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution, as saying that the Big Bang can only be understood as "a miracle." One might add that science and religion have in common a belief in objective truth, and thus are natural allies in the intellectual battle against the radical subjectivity of postmodernism.

 
 
 
 

2) The Notion of an Eternal Universe--steady state

This notion can take two forms, either steady state, that it has just always been here, the energy converting into matter sustained by the vast amounts of Hydrogin that are everywhere in the Universe. Or the second alternative dealt with in 2, cyclical universe.
 
 

a) Almost no scientists take this theory seriously because the evidence just doesn't support it

Astronomer Robert Wilson, in an interview with science writer Fred Heeren, writes: "Over the years, there were several attempts to reconcile this--the existence of the background radiation in the steady state universe--all of which failed...If you ask Fred Hoyle, he would probably say right now that, no, there's an easy explanation, because he still believes--I think he has come back to believing the steady state and that he knows how to generate microwave background radiation...no one believes that his mechanism can match the precise thermal spectrum that COBE observed. He may still, but I don't think anyone else who has seriously looked at it does."[ Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 233.]
 
 

According to Hawking in his most recent book, "almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang." [Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20]

 
 
 

 b) No experimental verifaction--aurthors motivated by anti-Theological bias

 
 

According to astronomer S. L. Jaki, the steady state theory had not "a single piece of experimental verification." Jaki states that proponents of this model were motivated by "openly anti-theological, or rather anti-Christian motivations."[Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974), p. 347.]
 
 

 Christepher Southgate, God Humanity and The Cosmos, (T and T Clark 1999)

"Interestingly, one of Hoyle's motivations was aversion to the Genesis-like connotations of the Big Bang. He wrote: 'Unlike the modern school of cosmologists, who in conformity with Judaeo-Christian theologians believe the whole universe to have been created out of nothing, my beliefs accord with those of Democritus who remarked "Nothing is created out of nothing"' Here, then, we have an important example, albeit a negative one, of theory selection in science being influenced by theological stance!"
 
 
 
 

c) Empirical Data Rules out Steady State

According to Ivan King, "The steady state theory has now been laid to rest, as a result of clearcut observations of how things have changed systematically with time." It serves now as "an example of the lengths to which a philosophical system can stretch itself, in the absence of a sufficiently clear factual picture."[Ivan R. King, "The Universe Unfolding" (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976), 462]
 
 

 

Christepher Southgate, God Humanity and The Cosmos, (T and T Clark 1999)

 

"One popular way to evade the suggestion of an absolute beginning has been to argue that the universe must be closed. If it will eventually return to a singular point, why should it not then 'bounce'? This is the so-called cyclic universe. Other astronomers opposed to the Big Bang, proposed instead a steady state theory. Fred Hoyle took a lead in this proposal. ...The steady-state theory argued that, in spite of appearances, the universe was infinitely old and did not evolve over time. Although defended by some very able scientists, this theory suffered a number of major setbacks which led to its demise:
 
 

In order to maintain a steady state in the face of universal expansion it was necessary to postulate the continuous creation of matter from negative energy - ingenious, but contrived. ...There was the embarrassment of Hoyle's failed attempt to show that the Big Bang could not account for the chemical composition of the universe....Finally, the steady state theory was not able to accommodate the new data that appeared - on the microwave background. See evidence for a Big Bang?"
 
 
 
 

d) Holye's Own data supports Big Bang

 
 

Stars convert hydrogen into helium by means of nuclear fusion. Hoyle himself demonstrated that the amount of excess helium in the universe bolsters the idea of an initial explosion in which converted all that hydrogen, and this became one of the best evidences for the BB:
 
 

"We found ourselves convinced that all the matter in the Universe must have emerged from a state of high density and high pressure....Our results, together with further developments by William Fowler, Robert Wagoner and myself, became what even to this day is pretty well the strongest evidence for the big bang, particularly as the arguments were produced by members of what was seen as the steady state camp."[Fred Hoyle, "The Intelligent Universe" (New York: Holt, Rinehard and Winston, 1983), p. 176.]
 
 
 
 

3) Cyclial Universe
 
 

The concept that the universe is eternallay ocillating between big bangs and big crunches. When the matter from the explosion of a Big Bang reaches a certain point the gravitational pull draws it back, it callapses into superdense black hole and pops back out again. This notion does not require an initial cause, the cyclical universe is just always there always going through its cycles.

 
 
 

a) Universe continuing to expand
 
 

Evidence from three recent studies reveals that the final fate of the universe will be to drift apart and cease all useful functions capable of supporting life due to missing mass, which can't produce gravitational pull to bring it all back together and start again, and heat death in which case energy is useless for work. Several major studies show this to be the case.

 

[New Scientist Magazine, archive 11, April 98, archive; originally Oct. 96] you should be able to click here, but here's the url just in case)

[http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980411/features1.html]
 
 

"ON THE night of 5 March last year, the huge telescope of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile intercepted a message from deepest space. Transmitted a billion years before the Earth was born, its contents have proved to be of truly cosmic significance.

The message was barely readable after its journey halfway across the Universe, and an international team of experts laboured for months to decode it. In January, Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California and his colleagues revealed to the world what they believe to be its gist: "The Universe will never end." A month later, a team led by Brian Schmidt of the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories near Canberra in Australia published the decoded contents of more of these cosmic missives, which arrive as bursts of light from supernova explosions in far-flung galaxies. The message was the same. Now Chris Kochanek and his colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are about to publish more evidence, this time from light that has been bent and sculpted by the gravity of unseen galaxies."
 
 

a1) Omega force = Continued expansion forever (no Big Cruch)

"These three sets of cosmic missives all suggest that instead of collapsing in on itself in a big crunch, our Universe will go on expanding forever. And that's not all. They also hint that the expanding Universe is in the grip of a mysterious force that is fighting against gravity--a force that pervades the entire cosmos and springs literally from nothing." [mysterious force = "omega" ie the equasion of gravitational force vs. mass needed to close the universe; omega must = 1 to close]
 
 
 
 

a2) Missing Mass.
 
 

[New Scinentist article April 1999]

"If it [the universe] contains enough matter, gravity will eventually slow its expansion, stop it, and reverse it--producing a cataclysmic big crunch billions of years hence. But if there is too little matter--or if there is an extra source of "oomph" at work in the cosmos--then the Universe will expand forever.... Cosmologists call the ratio of the actual density of matter in our Universe to this critical density 'Omega.' And whole armies of astronomers have spent decades trying to work out if Omega is less than, more than or equal to 1.,... "Studies of the gravitational effects of clusters of galaxies have revealed that there must be at least 10 times as much mass tied up in invisible "dark matter" in the Universe as there is in the familiar form of luminous stars and gas. Yet even when all this dark matter is thrown into the equation, it still doesn't make the theorists happy. Despite searching every cosmic nook and cranny, astronomers have never found anything like the amount needed to make Omega equal to 1."
 
 

 

"So the take-home message looks the same as that now emerging from the supernova and quasar surveys: the Universe is going to expand forever, and it may yet prove to be flat. Certainly the idea of the big crunch seems to have gone for good, but the exact values of Lambda and Omega, and the fate of the cosmologists' theories, are still up for grabs. These values may finally be nailed early in the next century, with the launch of NASA's Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) and the European Space Agency's PLANCK missions. These will use the heat left over from the big bang to try yet another way of measuring Omega and Lambda, which may lay the question to rest for good ("Genesis to Exodus", New Scientist," 19

October 1996, p 30).
 
 

 b) Flat Universe

 
 
 

George Messuer, Scientific American, Sept 1997

"A second trouble spot is the flatness of space. General relativity suggests that space may be very curved, with a typical radius on the order of the Planck length, or 10^-33 centimeter. We see however, that our universe is just about flat on a scale of 10^28 centimeters, the radius of the observable part of the universe. This result of our observation differs from theoretical expectations by more than 60 orders of magnitude." [Messuer is a leading physicist and one of the first to invent the inflationary universe theory]

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_729000/729750.stm

ABC News.com: Scientists: Universe is Flat

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/universe000426.html
 
 

(www.physics.ucsb.edu)

Wayne Hu of the Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Natural Sciences in New Jersey said "temperature maps of the CMB form a snapshot image of the Universe when it was extremely young."

    "The...result supports a flat universe, which means that the total mass and energy density of the universe is equal to the so-called critical density," Wu wrote.

    "A perfectly flat universe will remain at the critical density and keep on expanding forever, because there is not enough matter to make it recollapse in a 'big crunch.'"
 
 
 
 

 

c) Heat death is the end result

Energy of the universe is being expended, as it burns up,it becomes useless for work. The fate of the universe will be eventual death in ciy darkness as all of its suns burn out and their energy disipates.[New Scientist April 1999]

[New Scientist, April 1999, oct. 96]

"But even if the Universe lives forever, its inhabitants will not be so lucky. A mere thousand billion years from now, all the stars will have used up their fuel and fizzled out. There will still be occasional flashes in the perpetual night: the death throes of stars so large that they have collapsed in on themselves to form black holes. Even these will eventually evaporate in a blast of radiation. For the next 10122 years, this Hawking radiation will be the only show in town. By then even the most massive black holes will evaporate, leaving the Universe with nothing to do for an unimaginable 10 to the power of 1026 years. Quantum theory then predicts that atoms of iron--the most stable of all elements--will undergo "tunnelling" and disappear into tiny black holes, which will themselves end in a final fizz of Hawking radiation. In the beginning there may have been light, but in the end, it seems, there will be nothing but darkness. "

 

d) End reveals begining--universe would have already ceased.

 

Given infintie time and possibility all potentialities would have already come to fruition, the chain would have already been broken before our universe came into being. This just illustrates the impossibility of an infinte series of events. (being a series of events it would be "in time" so it's really redundant to say "an infinite series of events in time.") In other words, if this universe drifts apart because it lacks mass to produce omega, than the last universe would have too because energy and matter would be the same amount, just formulated differenlty (energy cannot be created or destroyed). The absurdity of the notion of an infinite series of big bang/cruches is driven home; how could there be an "infinite" series if one of the links in the chain can't make it? It can't "already be infifinte" and then stop because infinite means no begining and no end.
 
 

Note: If the Skeptic does not agree to this principle, that given infinite time every possibility comes to fruition than he can neither argue infinite chances nor multiple universes against the Antrhopic argument.

 

 e) Universe contains finite stock of order, connot be eternal
 
 
 
 
 
 

e1) Firstly, because scientists who study these thing say so:

Paul Davies, in his article, "Space-time Singularities and Cosmology," says,"If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme,we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of space-time, through such an extremity. For this reason, most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view, the Big Bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the MATTER and ENERGY in the universe, but also of space-time itself."[ P. C. W.Davies, "Space-time Singularities in Cosmology," in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1978), pp. 78-79.]

 e2) Laws of Physics break down at singularity

The laws of physics break down at the singularity. 1st Thermo. would apply after the Big Bang, then the fixed amount of energy that is "put in" to the universe (as Davies puts it) would be finite (in quantity) and subject to 1st and 2nd Thermo.
 
 

e3) 1 LTD applies to matter also.

Thirdly, the 1st Law of Thermo. applies to matter ALSO. If you argue that energy is eternal, you've got to argue that matter is eternal, which goes against all the empirical evidence we have for the Big Bang.
 
 

e4) 2 LTD Energy burn to heat death

Fourthly, if you opt for 1st Thermo. before the Big Bang, try being consistent and applying 2nd Thermo. as well. If the energy (AND matter) of the universe is eternal, it would have reached MAXIMUM heat death an INFINITE amount of time ago.
 
 

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies, in his book God and the New Physics, states:
 
 

"If the universe has a finite stock of order, and is changing irreversibly towards disorder - ultimately to thermodynamic equilibrium - two very deep inferences follow immediately. The first is that the universe will eventually die, wallowing, as it were, in its own entropy. This is known among physicists as the 'heat death' of the universe. The second is that the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would have reached its equilibrium end state an infinite time ago. Conclusion: the universe did not always exist."
 
 

If you deny that the universe has a finite stock of order, you are essentially denying the 1st law of thermodynmics, as it requires a fixed finite amount of matter and energy. (check your Encyc. Britannica)
 
 

In your wider universe, does the 1st law of Thermodynamics apply WITHOUT the second? What reversed the entropy of this eternally existent universe? As we saw above, a universe containing eternal matter and energy would have reached maximum entropy an INFINITE amount of time ago. What organizing principle intervened 11-15 billion years ago and organized all that energy and matter that was no longer available for work? What or who (or Who) woundthe universe up?
 
 

Fifthly, we observe that the universe is expanding uniformly in all directions. Had the universe existed for an infinite period of time, the density of matter would have become zero. (Koons) How do you explain the observable expansion of the universe? We measure the recession velocity of distant galaxies by using Cepheid variables, type Ia supernovas, and now Red Clumps as standard candles. And the microwave background radiation and

redshift (doppler effect that skews the red portion of thespectrum of starlight in proportion to the distance of the star) confirm this expansion also. Futhermore, within the very field equations of General Relativity, is embedded the fact of the expansion and decceleration of the universe. There are now 19 proofs of General Relativity in 12 isolated areas of Physics,making it the most exhaustively proven principle. Are you saying that

General Relativity does not apply to our universe as a whole?!! It is accurate to better than a trillionth of a percent precision. Where is your scientific evidence for A) seperate portions of the universe which General Relativity does not describe B) seperate universes? If its not falsifiable, and there's no evidence for it, then its just not a threat to the standardBB model as it is not scientific.

 
 
 

 St. Thomas Aquians: major advocate of cosmological argument

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

C) The Faliure of Theories that Postulate "no cause" for the Universe

 

1) Qumantum Theory
 
 
 
 

A notion which laymen (like me) find simliar to that of Hawking, but which is actually a different argument, that of quantum theory. In quantum theory particals seem to "pop" into existance from out of nothing, if particals can do so, why not whole unvierses? The univrese is not suppossed to be coming out of the vacuum fluxuation, but this is used as an example of the notion that not evertying requires a cause. Stephen Barr handels this notion easily by saying that a quantum state is still not nothing. Take the analogy of a bank account (which Barr uses) a bank account with no money in it is still a bank account, as oppossed to no bank account at all. A quantum state is still a universal system with laws of it's own, it is a fallacy to assume that universes are only collections of space-times. Quantum states are unvierses too, and the existance of a quantum state in which something can pop out of nothing still requies an explaination as to its origin.

 

a) Several Differnt Versions of The Theory
 
 

a1) quantum tunneling

 
 

Hugh Ross, Ph.D. found at http://www.superb.com/astroevoi.htmlfrom original at Reasons to Believe website.
 
 

"British astrophysicist Paul Davies in his book God and the New Physics locks all cause-and-effect phenomena into the time dimension of the universe. Because the act of creating represents cause and effect, and thus a time-bound activity, the evidence for the origin of time, says Davies, argues against God's agency in the creation of the universe. Apparently, Davies is (or was) unaware that the Bible speaks of God's causing effects even before the beginning of time. As indicated in Table 5, the Bible also speaks of the existence of dimensions beyond our time and space, extra dimensions in which God exists and operates. "
 
 

 

(In addition it might be pointed out that poping out of another universe is nothing more than a fancy infinite regress and is no explaination at all--where did the universe in that dimension come form? ect.)

 

a2) infinite chances

 Modern astrophysicists can probe the universe back to within 10-34 second of the age of the universe. Before that there is a total lack of infomration.

American astrophysicist Richard Gott proposes that this lack of information offers the possibility of an infinite number of possibilities (Ross). This, Ross points out, is merely an argument from the gaps. The skeptic stil has the burden of proof to demonstate that physical laws were different.
 
 

Ross states:
 
 

"This question remains, however: If the universe had zero information before 10-43 seconds, how did it acquire its subsequent high information state without the input of an intelligent, personal Creator? A personal Creator is required, too, to explain the existence of the primeval radiation field."
 
 

a3) deniel of singularity is not proof of something from nothing

 Ross again:

"As far back as 1973 Ed Tryon suggested that a quantum mechanical fluctuation in "the vacuum" created the universe.77 Later he was joined by several other American and Russian theoreticians,78-82 all of whom have posited that by the laws of physics "nothing is unstable." While one of this group's members, the inventor of the inflationary big bang model, Alan Guth, concedes that "such ideas are speculation squared," all of their models do circumvent the big bang singularity. They do not, however, circumvent the beginning of space-time-matter-energy. Thus, agreement with the Biblical doctrine of creation still stands."
 
 

b) Other problems with quantum theories

b1) Quantum fluctuations micro not macro level

Ross:

 "Quantum mechanical limitations apply only to micro, not to macro, systems. The relative uncertainty approaches zero as the number of quantum particles in the system increases. Therefore, what is true for a quantum particle would not be true for the universe as a whole."
 
 

b2) Quantum time frame does not apply

"The time separation between a quantum event and its observed result is always a relatively short one (at least for the analogies under discussion). The multi-billion-year time separation between creation of the universe and of man hardly fits the picture." [Hugh Ross]
 
 

" ...Quantum mechanics is founded on the concept that quantum events occur according to finite probabilities within finite time intervals. The larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a quantum event will occur. Outside of time, however, no quantum event is possible.g Therefore, the origin of time (coincident with that of space, matter, and energy) eliminates quantum tunneling as "creator."(Hugh Ross)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

c) vacum fluxuation is not something from nothing --still requires a cause
 
 

 

William Lane Craig says:

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/cosmos172.htm
 
 

"The recent use of such vacuum fluctuations is highly misleading. For virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. As John Barrow and Frank Tipler comment, ". . . the modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. . . . The quantum vacuum (or vacuua, as there can exist many) states . . . are defined simply as local, or global, energy minima (V'(O)= O, V"(O)>O)" ([1986], p. 440). The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause."
 
 

"In the case of quantum events, there are any number of physically necessary conditions that must obtain for such an event to occur, and yet these conditions are not jointly sufficient for the occurrence of the event. (They are jointly sufficient in the sense that they are all the conditions one needs for the event's occurrence, but they are not sufficient in the sense that they guarantee the occurrence of the event.) The appearance of a particle in a quantum vacuum may thus be said to be spontaneous, but cannot be properly said to be absolutely uncaused, since it has many physically necessary conditions. To be uncaused in the relevant sense of an absolute beginning, an existent must lack any non-logical necessary or sufficient conditions whatsoever."
 
 

"As Barrow and Tipler comment, "It is, of course, somewhat inappropriate to call the origin of a bubble Universe in a fluctuation of the vacuum 'creation ex nihilo,' for the quantum mechanical vacuum state has a rich structure which resides in a previously existing substratum of space-time, either Minkowski or de Sitter space-time. Clearly, a true 'creation ex nihilo' would be the spontaneous generation of everything--space-time, the quantum mechanical vacuum, matter--at some time in the past."([1986], p. 441)."
 
 

"The 'vacuum' of modern particle physics, whose 'fluctuation' supposedly brings our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is only nothing like our present universe, but it is still something. How else could 'it' fluctuate?"[William Carroll,Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology]
 
 

Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between actual nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."[ Joseph yciski, "Metaphysics and Epistemology in Stephen Hawking's Theory of the Creation of the Universe," Zygon, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1996), p. 272.]
 
 

 Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)

"Others have used the creation of virtual particles from the vacuum as evidence that things can begin to exist without a cause. If the energy involved is small enough, and the period of existence is short enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows particles to emerge from "nothing" and to disappear shortly thereafter. However, this argument fails to distinguish between something containing no energy or particles and sheer nothingness. In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not a nothing. It is the indeterministic cause of the temporary existence of the virtual particles."[Robert C. Koons http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec5.html]
 
 

 

William Carroll: , of the Jacques Maritian Center: Thomistic Institute "Thomas Aqunias and Big Bang Cosmology" [http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritian/ti/carroll.htm, explains:

"Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between metaphysical nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."(35) In attempting to describe the significance of Hawking's discussion of creation, C.J. Isham claims that we can identify the mathematical concept of any empty set with the absolute nothing in the traditional understanding of creation out of nothing: "The initial space from which the universe 'emerged' can be defined to be that part of the boundary of four-dimensional space which is not part of the (later) three-surface. But this is the empty set, which gives a precise mathematical definition of the concept of 'nothing'!"(36)
 
 

"yciski correctly observes that the empty mathematical set, to which Isham refers, is subject to the principles of logic and to the laws of quantum cosmology and, as such, cannot be identified with absolute nothing. The various accounts of an initial singularity embrace physical and mathematical principles necessary to account for the emergence of the universe.(37) "The alleged nothing [discussed in contemporary cosmology by Hawking and others] turns out to be a complex reality of ordering principles without which there would be no uniformity in nature and no scientific study of natural phenomena would be possible."(38)Thus, the nothing of contemporary cosmological theories turns out to be really something. "
 
 

>>Stenger, as usual, is wrong. This kook is known for his obfusctation and wild speculations. He cannot provide one example of the "spontaneous self organization" he thinks brought the universe into existence in his "Free Inquiry" article "The Face of Chaos". That's why his speculations remain on his web-site and not in peer-reviewed astrophysical journals. They are just there to cloud the issues, and to comfort the atheist drones who visit the Secular Web.

 

We DO NOT have a counter-example to the first premise of Kalam. We don't EVEN have something coming out of nothing. Ugh, I CONSTANTLY see atheists snipping this stuff from Stenger's crappy little web-page linked to from the Secular Web. As I will show, once again, he/you are DEAD WRONG.

 

And this is also the fallacy of equivocation. The quantum vacuum is not to be confused with nothingness (i.e., no time, no space, no energy, no matter), as these fluctuations are TIME-BOUND phenomena, and occur WITHIN space, nor are they uncaused in the sense that they require no physical antecedent conditions.
 
 

The primordial vacuum is a physical state existing IN space and time. As Kanitscheider notes: "The violent microstructure of the vacuum has been used in attempts to explain the origin of the universe as a long-lived vacuum fluctuation. But some authors have connected with this legitimate speculations [sic] far-reaching metaphysical claims, or at most they couched their mathematics in a highly misleading language, when they maintained 'creation of the universe out of nothing.' "From the philosophical point of view it is essential to note that the foregoing is far from being a spontaneous generation of everything from naught, but the origin of that embryonic bubble is really a causal process leading from a primordial substratum with a rich physical structure to a materialized substratum of the vacuum. Admittedly this process is not deterministic; it includes that weak kind of causal dependence peculiar to every quantum mechanical process."[Kanitscheider, B. 1990 "Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?" In Studies on Mario Bunge's "Treatise", ed. P. Weingartner and G.J.W. Dorn, p. 346-47. Amsterdam: Rodopi.]
 
 

So there ARE causal conditions of a quantum vacuum fluctuation though they are not fully deterministic, and we do not have something from nothing.
 
 
 
 

Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between actual nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."[ Joseph yciski, "Metaphysics and Epistemology in Stephen Hawking's Theory of the Creation of the Universe," Zygon, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1996), p. 272.]
 
 

"A quantum mechanical vacuum spawning material particles is far from the ordinary idea of a "vacuum" (meaning nothing). Rather, a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. This is not "nothing," and hence, material particles do not come into being out of nothing. Popular presentations of these models often do not explain that they require a specially fine-tuned, background space-time on the analogy of a quantum mechanical vacuum. The origin of the observable universe from this wider space-time is not a free lunch at all. It requires an elaborately set table, which must be paid for."[William L. Craig, Cosmos and Creator, "Origins & Design", Vol. 17, No. 2, 1996]
 
 

"…use of such vacuum fluctuations is highly misleading. For virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. As John Barrow and Frank Tipler comment, ". . . the modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. . . . The quantum vacuum (or vacuua, as there can exist many) states . . . are defined simply as local, or global, energy minima (V'(O)= O, V"(O)>O)" ([1986], p. 440). The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause."[William L. Craig, "The Caused Beginning of the Universe: a Response to Quentin Smith." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993): 623-639.]
 
 
 
 

"The 'vacuum' of modern particle physics, whose 'fluctuation' supposedly brings our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is only no thing like our present universe, but it is still something. How else could 'it' fluctuate?"[William Carroll,Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology]
 
 

"Others have used the creation of virtual particles from the vacuum as evidence that things can begin to exist without a cause. If the energy involved is small enough, and the period of existence is short enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows particles to emerge from "nothing" and to disappear shortly thereafter. However, this argument fails to distinguish between something containing no energy or particles and sheer nothingness. In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not a nothing. It is the indeterministic cause of the temporary existence of the virtual particles."[Robert C. Koons http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec5.html]
 
 

"A quantum vacuum is a physically necessary condition of a virtual particle coming into existence and, in this 'physically necessary' sense of causation, virtual particles may be said to have causes. A probabilistic definition of causality would also enable us to say that virtual particles have causes, for given a quantum vacuum there is a certain probability that virtual particles will be emitted by it."[Quentin Smith, "Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology," Essay VI., p. 179.]
 
 

So quantum vacuum fluctuations DO NOT get something out of nothing, and they are NOT uncaused.And all of that is really beside the point. The original proponents of these models have abandoned them, and chastised others for reviving them. They posit all sorts of metaphysical entities that can never be observed and are not falsifiable (i.e., a wider background space AND time). They have ZERO empirical evidence in their favor. And finally, they CONTRADICT observation.

 

 

2) Hawking's No Singularity Model--The "Big Pop"
 
 
 
 

a) An explaination of the model
 
 

Robert Koons, University of Texas

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking presented a new model of a beginningless universe. Hawking does not challenge the idea that the universe is finite in space and time. Consequently, there is no time earlier than 16-10 billion years ago. Nonetheless, if the univese does eventually collapse back into a infinitesimal point, and if we use a mathematical technique known as "imaginary time", we can model space-time as a smooth, uneventful surface, with the Big Bang as the North Pole and the Big Crunch as the South Pole. Hawking's model involves "spatializing" time -- turning time into a spatial dimension, no different from the familiar three dimensions of space. Hence, his model involves a radical rejection of change and becoming: the universe is an unchanging, multi-dimensional whole, given once for all. Change is merely variation along a static dimension.
 
 

b) Hawking's unbounded condition.

The problem with this argument in the recent work by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time in which he preports to prove that the universe had an "unbounded condition," in other words, there is no origin to time. Imagine that time is like a cone and as we move back toward the original point at which time began we move in toward the point of the cone. Hawkings view would say that the end of the come is smooth, or that it has no end. Actually, he says that as we move toward the ultimate moment of origin time fragments and become four seperate coordinates, just as there are four dimension coordinates, in three spacial and one temporal dimension. in this case the one temporal dimension becomes four, making it impossible to say that time has a begining. The practical upshot of all of this is that a universe in which there is no origin to time is essentially a universe that always was, or that has no real begining. In other ways this is expressed by saying that the universe "poped" into exitance with no prior cuase (the big "pop"?).

 

c) Problems With Hawking's Theory

c1) Evidence against big Cruch spoils symetry of model

"Hawking's model is highly speculative, based on what Hawking believes a quantum theory of gravity (which does not yet exist) must be like. In addition, mounting evidence against the eventuality of the Big Crunch spoils the symmetry of Hawking's model." [Robert Koons,Univerity of Texas, ]
 
 

c2) Imaginary time incorporates metahpysical absurdity

However, the main problem with Hawking's model is its incorporation of an unbelievable view of time and change. When using physical theory in metaphysical investigation, one must be aware of a GIGO principle: garbage in, garbage out. When using a physical theory in metaphysics, one must be careful not to incorporate metaphysical absurdities in one's interpretation of that theory. Otherwise, any metaphysical conclusions one bases on this interpretation will be vitiated by these prior absurdities. In Hawking's case, he uses the technique of imaginary time, and interprets this technique as reflecting the true nature of the world. This means that Hawking starts out by assuming that time is no different from a spatial dimension, that there is no real becoming in the world. This is obviously false: physics can tell us many surprising things, but if a physicist tells us that there is no such thing as the passage of time, we have good grounds for concluding that a serious mistake has been made. As soon as we interpret Hawking's model in a way that treats time in a credible way, we find (as Hawking himself admits) that the initial singularity re-appears.[Ibid]
 
 

 
 

c3) Re-imposing real time singularity reapears

There are, however, several problems with this approach. First, Hawking's theory relys upon imaginary time, it does not take place in the real world that we live in. When we understand the situtation from the perspective of real time, the universe still begins as a singularity and time still requies a begining. Fritz Shafer, University of Georgia, "In Hawking and Hartle's no doubndy proposal, the notion that the universe has neither begining nor end is something that exists in mathematical terms only. In real time, which is what we as human biengs are confined to...there will always be a singularity, a begining of time. Among his contradictory statements in A Brief History of Time, Hawking actually concedes this. 'When one goes back to real time in which we live there will still appear to be singularities...in real time the Universe has a begining.'" (Shaffer lecture, Website, Leadership University http://leadership.com/bingbang2.com/html)
 
 

c4) Unbounded condition imposes its own bounded condition--requires eternal source
 
 
 
 

Secondly, "The sufficient answer to the no boundry boundry condition [Hawking rather than eleminating boundry conditions has actually impossed one, that there is no boundary] as an argument against God has been well expressed by the physicist Don Page, a friend and collaborator of Stephen Hawking, as it happens a born again Christian: 'God creates and sustains the entire universe rather than just the begining. Wheather or not the unvierse has a begining has no relevance to the question of its creation just as wheather an artist's line has a begining and end or forms a circle has no relevance to the quesiton of it's being drawn.'" This is the response by Stephen M. Barr, phyicist at the University of Delaware (in review of book by Kitty Fergesson, "Fire in the Equasions." Pulished in First Things 65 August/Sept. 1996, 54-57.) In other words, the issue is not merely the "beginig" of the universe but the source of it. That it couldn't pop into existance out of nothing is a proof of God, that it couldn't exist on its own with no cause is a proof of God, that it may have always existed with no actual begining is beside the point because it still has to have a source of origin even if it has no starting point in time. In other words this talk of boundry condiditions and no begining in time is just a paradox of language created by the fact that time would start up with the universe. The universe still has to have a source or a sustaining source of its existance.[Ibid]
 
 
 
 

Robert J. Russell.

found Center for Theology and the natural scienceshttp://www.counterbalance.net/physics/bbang-frame.html
 
 
 
 

"Though highly speculative, the Hawking/Hartle model of the "quantum creation of the universe" is an example of the kind of challenge presented by quantum cosmology to the relation between theology and cosmology. If there is not "t=0" in the Hawking/Hartle model, does this 'disprove' the theological claim that the universe is created? Actually the interaction method produces a more nuanced result than this. Recall that, according the Hawking, the universe has a finite past but no past singularity at "t=0;" the universe is temporally past finite but unbounded. If we had too narrowly reduced the theological meaning of creation to the occurrence of "t=0" in standard cosmology we might well have a problem here! (Certainly not the problem Carl Sagan tries to raise in his Preface to Hawking's book - namely that there is nothing left for God to do. Deism like this is not even remotely presupposed by those theologians who do take t=0 as direct evidence for God. For them, as for all contemporary theology in one way or another, God acts everywhere in the universe, and not just at its beginning.) Yet if we kept the two worlds separate, we would have nothing to learn either."

"But the interaction model provides a surprising new result: The move from the Big Bang to Hawking's model changes the empirical meaning of the philosophical category of finitude; it does not render it meaningless. With Hawking/Hartle the universe is still temporally finite (in the past) but it does not have an initial singularity. Hence the shift in models changes the form of consonance between theology and science from one of bounded temporal past finitude (found with the Big Bang model) to one of unbounded temporal past finitude (found in the Hawking proposal). Thus, as we theologize about creatio ex nihilo we should separate out the element of past temporal finitude from the additional issue of the boundedness of the past. What the Hawking proposal teaches us is that in principle one need not have a bounded finite past to have a finite past. This result stands whether or not Hawking's proposal lasts scientifically."[Robert J. Russell. founder Center for Theology and the natural sciences scienceshttp://www.counterbalance.net/physics/bbang-frame.html]
 
 
 
 

c5) Evidence of Temporal Begining.
 
 

Moreover, Barr goes on, "The evidence that our universe has a temporal begining is now enourmously strong. In the 'classical discription of the big bang (one that leaves quantum effect of account) the universe has a first instant of time...t=0. As one goes back toward the first instant various physical quantities (such as temporature) grow without limit. A theis point t=0, if it existed, the quantities would have been infintie and one could no longer make sense of the equasions such singular points are looked upon with suspicion by physicists...t=0 looks unpleaslty like a moment of creation....There is a belief among physicists that by banishing this point they will have struck a blow against religion...the point of there being no boundaries is itself just a special kind of boundry condition among many other.." [Stephen M. Barr, phyicist at the University of Delaware (in review of book by Kitty Fergesson, "Fire in the Equasions." Pulished in First Things 65 August/Sept. 1996, 54-57]

 
 
 
 

D) More resaonble to posit an Eternal Cause

 

1) No phyisics can explain getting something from nothing
 
 
 
 

John Mather, NASA's principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's spectral curve with the COBE satellite, stated:
 
 

"We have equations that describe the transformation of one thing into another, but we have no equations whatever for creating space and time. And the concept doesn't even make sense, in English. So I don't think we have words or concepts to even think about creating something from nothing. And I certainly don't know of any work that seriously would explain it when it can't even state the concept."[John Mather, interview with Fred Heeren on May 11, 1994, cited in his book Show Me God (1998), Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 119-120.]
 
 
 
 

In a recent article by Tom Ulsman, he cites Cambridge University Professor

Neil Turok who says:
 
 

"The problem we have is that every particle in the universe originated inthe singularity . . . That's unacceptable because there are no laws ofphysics that tell you how they came out of it" ("Give Peas a Chance,"Astronomy Magazine, September 1999, p. 38).
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2) One might here appeal to the 1st law of thermodynamics as to why things are not now popping into existence out of nothing.
 
 

Craig notes that,".this explanation is inadequate because insofar as natural laws are inductive generalizations, they are merely descriptions of what does or does not happen in the universe; and insofar as they are invested with nomic necessity, such necessity derives solely from the causal powers and dispositions of things that actually exist. In neither case is any sort of constraint placed on things' springing uncaused out of nothingness into being. After all, there is nothing there to be constrained. So does it not strike one as peculiar that it is only the universe which comes magically into being out of nothing rather than all sorts of other things as well?"[ "Graham Oppy on the Kalam Cosmological Argument." Sophia 32 (1993): 1-11.]
 
 
 
 

3) Starting from nothing no chance for potentiality
 
 
 
 

Craig writes: "...It is unreasonable to hold that the first event popped into existence out of nothing without a cause. A little reflection makes this clear. In absolute nothingness, not even potentialities exist, since potentialities are always lodged in something that is actual. For example, my wife and I have a potential third child; but where does this potentiality lie? Not in the child himself, who is simply nonexistent, but in the reproductive capacities of our actual bodies. But that means that if there was absolute nothingness--no matter, no energy, no space, no time, no God--then nothing could come to exist. There would not exist even the potentiality for the universe. Hence, it is metaphysically absurd to claim that something literally came out of nothing."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4) Poping from nothing = Ultimate irrationality
 
 
 
 

Elsewhere Craig writes, "The principle ex nihilo nihil fit seems to me to be a sort of metaphysical first principle, one of the most obvious truths we intuit when we reflect seriously. If the denial of this principle is the alternative to a theistic metaphysic, then let those who decry the irrationality of theism be henceforth forever silent!" ["The Caused Beginning of the Universe: a Response to Quentin Smith." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993): 623-639.]
 
 

Now, ex nihilo nihil fit does not contradict creatio ex nihilo. The theist maintains that though the universe has no material cause, it has an efficient cause-God's bringing the universe into being.
 
 
 
 

5) 0 x 0 = 0/ 0 + 0 = 0
 
 
 
 

6) Contradicts causal prinicple which is fundamental and obvious
 
 
 
 

He writes: "I think that one could produce arguments for the principle, but that since the principle is so intuitively obvious in itself, it would he perhaps unwise to do so, for one ought not to try to prove the obvious via the less obvious. After all, does anyone sincerely think that things can pop into existence uncaused out of nothing? Does he believe that it is really possible that, say, a raging tiger should suddenly come into existence uncaused out of nothing in the room in which he is now reading this article? How much the same would this seem to apply to the entire universe! If there were originally absolute nothingness-- no God, no space, no time-- how could the universe possibly come to exist?"[ "Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological Argument." Religious Studies 20 (1985): 367-375.]
 
 

 a) Cinfirming Causal principle

Metaphysics and Epistemology of Causation

Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec10.html

Can timeless facts cause timebound facts?
 
 
 
 

Traditionally, there have been three answers to this question:

1. Empirical support -- we know the principle by induction upon observed instances of caused facts.

2. Indispensable presupposition of all empirical enquiry -- if we do not assume the causal principle, we cannot know anything on the basis of observation or induction.

3. Natural light of reason -- we know the principle naturally and directly, without need for any further reason or evidence.
 
 

These three answers are not mutually exclusive. The strongest case for the principle of causality makes use of all three. We could take the combination of (2) and (3) to give some slight or weak support for the principle. These two considerations alone might not put us in a position to know that the causal principle is true, but they might make it reasonable for us to believe and use the principle. Once we have given the principle some positive status, however weak, we can use the existence of empirical support (answer 1) to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. That is, once we can justify some reliance on causation, we can start a "virtuous spiral" to boost the status of the principle to higher and higher levels, finally reaching full-blown knowledge.

The main objection to making use of empirical evidence in support of the causal principle comes from Hume. In both his Treatise concerning Human Nature and his Enquiry into Human Understanding, Hume argues that any appeal to empirical evidence in support of the causal principle is viciously circular or question-begging, given (2) above, namely, the fact that all empirical enquiry presupposes and relies upon the causal principle. As I have argued above, the most promising reply to Hume is to attempt to turn this vicious circle into a virtuous spiral. If we can argue that the natural light of reason, or the requirements of engaging in empirical inquiry, are sufficient to give some warrant or support to the causal principle, then we can use our actual success in finding causes as a reason for repeatedly upgrading the warrant, until we reach a state of rational certainty.

This virtuous-spiral move depends on the fact that we can break the causal principle up into a variety of sub-principles, narrow or restricted versions of the principle. For example, we could use the principle that all of our memories have causes in one instance, and in another instance use the principle that all historical records have causes. In this way, we can, without circularity, use one sub-principle in gathering empirical support for other sub-principles. So long as all the sub-principles can begin with some positive status, and so long as the actual results of empirical investigation cooperate, we can gradually raise the status of each of the constituent sub-principles, without ever reasoning in a circle.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

b) Causal principle constantly confirmed in all experience

 
 

Even the late atheist philosopher J. L. Mackie, who also argued against the causal principle, in his critique of theological creationism conceded that "this principle . . . is constantly confirmed in our experience (and also used, reasonably, in interpreting our experience)" [Mackie, J.L. [1982]. The Miracle of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 89].
 
 
 
 
 
 

c) Why don't we see causal principle violated all the time?

When asking whether the whole of being could come out of non-being uncaused, a negative answer seems obvious.
 
 

Jonathan Edwards's made an argument on behalf of the causal principle in his On The Freedom of the Will 2.3: if something can come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it is inexplicable why anything and everything does not do so.It cannot then be said that only things of a certain nature come into existence uncaused because prior to their existence they have no nature which could control their coming to be.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

7) science does not and cannot assume something from nothing and that's why they invented the singularity in the first place.
 
 

Andrei Linde, Scientific American, sept 99
 
 
 
 

"The first, and main problem is the very existence of the big bang. One may wonder, what came before? If space-time did not exist then, how could everything appear from nothing? What arose first: the universe or the laws determining its evolution? Explaining this initial singularity-where and when it all beganstill remains the most intractable problem of modern cosmology."
 
 
 
 
 
 

Physicist Barry Parker writes:
 
 

"Unfortunately, a very critical event had happened--creation itself. And without a theory to explain this event we can only guess what happened..How do we contemplate such a situation?.The only reasonable answer to this question is: we do not. Indeed, we cannot even make calculations describing it."[Barry Parker, Creation--the Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe (New York & London: Plenum Press, 1988), p. 10]
 
 
 
 
 
 

George Smoot, principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's ripples with the COBE satellite, states:
 
 

".it is possible to envision creation of the universe from almost nothing--not nothing, but practically nothing. Almost creation ex nihilo, but not quite."[George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993), p. 292.]
 
 

Even Ed Tryon, the physicist who first proposed the fluctuation/creation model, recognizes that science cannot explain creation from true nothingness. When asked how creation could begin from TRUE nothingness, he stated:
 
 

"It may well be that we will never have a confident answer."[Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 32]
 
 
 
 

8) The notion of something from nothing voilates basic assumptions of materialism
 
 

a. Materailism based upon cause and effect (dependent upon Mater)

Dictonary of Philosphy Anthony Flew, article on "Materialism"

"...the belief that everything that exists is ethier matter or entirely dependent upon matter for its existence."
 
 
 
 

Center For Theology and the Natural Sciences Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)

http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html

Is the Big Bang a Moment of Creation?
 
 
 
 

"...Beyond the Christian community there was even greater unease. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern science is that every physical event can be sufficiently explained solely in terms of preceding physical causes. Quite apart from its possible status as the moment of creation, the Big Bang singularity is an offence to this basic assumption. Thus some philosophers of science have opposed the very idea of the Big Bang as irrational and untestable."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

b) Something from nothing contradiction at heart of materialism

Science and The Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead.

NY: free Press, 1925, (1953) p.76
 
 
 
 

"We are content with superficial orderings form diverse arbitrary starting points. ... sciene which is employed in their deveopment [modern thought] is based upon a philosophy which asserts that physical casation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell upon the absolute contradiction here involved."
 
 

[Whitehead was an atheist]

 c) Causality was the basis upon which God was expelled from Modern Science
 
 

It was La Plase's famous line "I have no need of that Hypothosis" [meaning God] Which turned the scientific world form beliving (along with Newton and assuming that order in nature proved design) to unbelief on the principle that we dont' need God to explain the univrese because we have independent naturalistic cause and effet. [Numbers, God and Nature]

 

9) Hume's chagre of fallacy of composition does not mean that he supported no cause at all (he didnt' believe in something from nothing)
 
 

In 1754 Hume, who argued against the causal principle, wrote to John Stewart, "But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that anything might arise without a cause: I only maintain'd, that our Certainty of the Falshood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration, but from another Source."[David Hume to John Stewart, February 1754, in The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. T. Grieg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 1, 187.]
 
 
 
 
 
 

10) BB is denial of causal principle on Natural level, therefore, requires supernatural causal agent.
 
 

a) BB = no physical cause

 
 

John Barrow, professor of astronomy at the University of Sussex in England, states that the traditional Big Bang picture, with its initial singularity of infinite density "is, strictly speaking, . . . creation out of absolutely nothing."[ John Barrow, The Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1994), p. 113.]
 
 
 
 
 
 

b) There can be no physical cause in the standard model.

Quentin Smith, a philosopher of science at the University of Western Michigan, says in Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993): "It belongs analytically to the concept of the cosmological singularity that it is not the effect of prior physical events. The definition of a singularity entails that it is impossible to extend the space-time manifold beyond the singularity. This effectively rules out the idea that the singularity is the effect of some prior natural process."
 
 
 
 
 
 

c) Therefore, it can only be the result of a supernatural or non-physical cause.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Davies reports, "When giving lectures on cosmology, I am often asked what happened before the big bang. The answer, that there was no 'before,' because the big bang represented the appearance of time itself, is regarded with suspicion--'Something must have caused it.'" (Davies, 1983, p. 39; cf. p. 44)
 
 
 
 
 
 

"Consider the enormity of the problem. Science has proven that the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It asks, What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into the Universe?" [Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. NewYork, W.W. Norton,p. 114)
 
 

The British Cosmologist Edward Milne concluded his mathematical treatise on relativity by saying,"As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him."[ Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 166-167.]
 
 
 
 

11) Must be eternal
 
 

As Quentin Smith, a prominent atheist philosopher of science at the University of Western Michigan, says in Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993):
 
 

"It belongs analytically to the concept of the cosmological singularity that it is not the effect of prior physical events. The definition of a singularity entails that it is impossible to extend the space-time manifold beyond the singularity. This effectively rules out the idea that the singularity is the effect of some prior natural process."
 
 

Therefore, whatever produces space/time (the universe) must of necessity be beyond time, and therefore, etermanl.

 

12) The Skeptic must justify abandonment of causality

 Since all of our expereinces confirms the causal principle, there are no examples, not one, of something poping into existence frm nothing, and in fact it is undermining the entire materialist project to deny this, we must assume the universe has to have a cause and that this cause must be eternal. It is terefore, the skeptics burden or proof now to show that the contradiction of this principle is justified.
 
 
 
 
 
 

E. God is the Most Reasonable Explaination

 

1) Only God Can explain Creation ex nihilo

"The potentiality for the existence of the universe could not therefore have lain in itself, since it did not exist prior to the singularity. On the theistic hypothesis, the potentiality of the universe's existence lay in the power of God to create it. On the atheistic hypothesis, there did not even exist the potentiality for the existence of the universe. But then it seems inconceivable that the universe should become actual if there did not exist any potentiality for its existence. It seems to me therefore that a little reflection leads us to the conclusion that the origin of the universe had a cause."
 
 

[William Lane Craig, "Creation and Big Bang Cosmology." Philosophia Naturalis 31 (1994): 217-224]
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Discovery that the universe began to exist out of nothing was a) unexpected on the naturalistic hypothesis b) science cannot explain it and c) many scientists have conceded that it has theistic implications and this has motivated them to seek for alternative models despite a lack of evidence:
 
 
 
 
 
 

a) The Creation of the Universe from nothing is Expected/Predicted and Explainable on the Theistic Hypothesis-

Everyone is familiar with "In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth." The Bible explicitly speaks of God existing and even acting before time:
 
 

"No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." (1 Corinthians 2:7)
 
 
 
 

"This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time." (2 Timothy 1:9)
 
 
 
 

"To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen."(Jude 1:25)
 
 

"If we go back to Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed--it's a traditional, Jewish text, which says.I think it's, "Do not trust the words of any man.,for it is the foundation of our faith that God created the universe from nothing, and that time did not exist before." [Interview with Arno Penzias, in Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 372.]
 
 

The creation of the universe from nothing is explainable on the theistic hypothesis as the result, not of a physical cause, but of an efficient cause. The universe is created by an act of agent causation on the part of God.
 
 

Concerning agent causation, J.P. Moreland writes: "This type of causation occurs when a person acts, say when I raise my arm or speak. The cause is a substance or thing (a self), not a temporally prior event or state inside a thing, and the effect (the raising of the arm) is produced immediately, directly and spontaneously as the self simply exercises and actualizes its causal powers to raise its arm. This type of causal relationship does not require an earlier temporal event to be the cause of an effect that exists a moment later, and thus is a good model for how a first event could have been generated."[J.P. Moreland, "The Creation Hypothesis"(Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 23.]
 
 

b) Theism is arguably a simpler hypothesis-

As Duns Scotus put it, there is an infinite distance between being and non-being, and theism posits the origin of being by being, whereas atheism posits the origin of being from non-being.
 
 

Edmund Whitaker, a British physicist, wrote a book entitled The Beginning and End of the World, in which he said, "There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity?" Whitaker concluded, "It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo--Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness." [cited in Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. New York, W.W. Norton, p. 111-12.]
 
 

Physicist Barry Parker agrees: "We do, of course, have an alternative. We could say that there was no creation, and that the universe has always been here. But this is even more difficult to accept than creation."[Barry Parker, Creation--The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe (New York & London: Plenum Press, 1988) p. 202.]
 
 

Singularity not physical cause!
 
 

Quentin Smith, philosopher of science at the University of Western Michigan, writes in Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993): "It belongs analytically to the concept of the cosmological singularity that it is not the effect of prior physical events. The definition of a singularity entails that it is impossible to extend the space-time manifold beyond the singularity. This effectively rules out the idea that the singularity is the effect of some prior natural process."
 
 
 
 

 c) Scientists Conceed Theological Implications of Big Bang--Main factor in pursuing other models.

 
 
 
 
 
 

In his address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1977, Robert Jastrow, Professor at Columbia University and Founder and Director of the Goddard Space Center, made a presentation in which he argued that the evidence for the Big Bang had been far superior to that of alternative models and that many scientists rejected it because they did not like the philosophical implications. This presentation was later published as a book entitled God and the Astronomers.
 
 

Jastrow writes: "Around this time [after outward-moving galaxies had been discovered], signs of irritation began to appear among the scientists. Einstein was the first to complain. He was disturbed by the idea of a Universe that blows up, because it implied that the world had a beginning. In a letter to de Sitter--discovered in a box of old records in Leiden a few years ago--Einstein wrote "This circumstance [of an expanding Universe] irritates me," and in another letter about the expanding Universe, "To admit such possibilities seems senseless.
 
 

"This is curiously emotional language for a discussion of some mathematical formulas. I suppose that the idea of a beginning in time annoyed Einstein because of its theological implications. We know he had well-defined feelings about God, but not as the Creator or the Prime Mover." [ Jastrow, R. 1978. God and the Astronomers. NewYork, W.W. Norton, p. 27-28.]
 
 

Sir Arthur Eddington commenting on the Big Bang in the 1950s noted, "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant . . . I should like to find a genuine loophole."[Arthur S. Eddington, "The End of the World: From the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics," Nature, vol. 127 (1931), p. 450.]
 
 

By the 1970's, after the discovery of the background radiation in 1965, John Gribbin in Nature said,
 
 

"The biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe is philosophical-perhaps even theological-what was there before the bang? This problem alone was sufficient to give a great impetus to the Steady State theory; but with that theory now sadly in conflict with the observations, the best way around this initial difficulty is provided by a model in which the universe expands from a singularity, collapses back again, and repeats the cycle indefinitely."
 
 

[Later articles published in 1984 in Nature by Guth and by Bludman clearly demonstrate the impossibility of a "bouncing" universe.]
 
 

The banner headline in Nature magazine (1989) read "Down with the Big Bang." The editor, John Maddox, was agitated with the leading cosmological theory, because it was "philosophically unacceptable". "The origin of the Big Bang is not susceptible to discussion," fumed Maddox. And besides that "Creationists . . . have ample justification in the doctrine of the Big Bang." So, for Maddox, a scientific theory that is only rivaled in acceptance by evolution is "thoroughly unsatisfactory" because it says that scientists cannot know everything and the theory might encourage belief in a creator. But materialists like Maddox are not alone. [Nature, John Maddox, 340:425 (10 August 1989).]
 
 

Sir Fred Hoyle, proponent of the Steady State theory, makes it clear that alternatives to the Big Bang were held onto for more than scientific reasons: "This possibility [of a steady state universe] seemed attractive, especially when taken in conjunction with the aesthetic objections to the creation of the universe in the remote past."[ Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God (Orange, Calif.: Promise Publishing, 1989), 76.]
 
 
 
 

Because Hoyle disliked the idea that the universe might have been "created" sometime in the past, perhaps by God, he would seek to develop another theory that avoids that possibility. Hoyle admitted "The big bang theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation."[Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), p. 237.]
 
 

According to S. L. Jaki, the steady state theory had not "a single piece of experimental verification." Jaki states that proponents of this model were motivated by "openly anti-theological, or rather anti-Christian motivations."[Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1974), p. 347.]
 
 

Physicist Barry Parker states that, "If we accept the big bang theory, and most cosmologists now do, then a 'creation' of some sort is forced upon us."[Barry Parker, Creation--The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe (New York & London: Plenum Press, 1988) p. 202.]
 
 

Science writer John Boslough, who denounced the big bang at first (though he has now come to accept it), called it the "the scientific model of Genesis."[John Boslough, Masters of Time--Cosmology at the End of Innocence (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992) p. 56.]
 
 

He wrote:
 
 

"For the time being, the big bang remains a scientific paradigm wrapped inside a metaphor for biblical genesis, a compelling although simplistic pseudoscientific creation myth embodying a Judeo-Christian tradition of linear time that led to Western ideas about cultural and scientific progress and which ordained an absolute beginning." [John Boslough, Masters of Time--Cosmology at the End of Innocence (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992) p. 223.]
 
 

Stephen Hawking admits that a number of attempts to avoid the Big Bang were probably motivated by the feeling that a beginning of time "smacks of divine intervention."[Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p. 46]
 
 

Hawking himself has proposed a highly speculative model which seeks to avoid the singularity, and hence, a beginning of time. Although Hawking does not state that this was a motivation, he certainly makes it clear that a benefit of his model would be that, since there is no edge of space-time, one would not "have to appeal to God."[Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988),p. 136.]
 
 
 
 
 
 

As physicist Hubert Reeves remarks, the Big Bang "involves a certain metaphysical aspect which may be either appealing or revolting."[Hubert Reeves, Jean Andouze, William A. Fowler, and David N. Schramm, "On the Origin of the Light Elements," Astrophysical Journal 179 (1973): p. 912. ]
 
 

Christopher Isham remarks:
 
 

"Perhaps the best argument in favor of the thesis that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas, such as continuous creation [steady state] or an oscillating universe, being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his/her theory."[ Christopher Isham, "Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, A Common Quest for Understanding, eds. R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and G. V. Coyne (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988), p. 378.]
 
 

More and more astronomers are coming to grips with the philosophical implications of these discoveries, and many are drawing theistic or deistic conclusions. Geoffrey Burbidge, of the University of California at San Diego, complains that his fellow astronomers are rushing off to join "The First Church of the Big Bang."[Stephen Strauss, "An Innocent's Guide to the Big Bang Theory: Fingerprint in Space left by the Universe as a Baby Still Has Doubters Hurling Stones," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 25 April 1992, page 1.]
 
 
 
 

d) Moves physics into the realm of Metaphysics

The famous Chinese astrophysicist Fang Li Zhi and his coauthor, physicist Li Shu Xian, wrote, "A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics."[Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), p. 173]
 
 

"The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[ Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 115.]
 
 

He states that "The development is unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time." [ Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 106-7.]
 
 

>>Well there's a problem. If you are an atheist, you can't BELIEVE in a cause AT ALL. You must accept that the universe popped into existence UNCAUSED out of nothing. There can be No physical antecedent of a singularity.

 
 
 

If there is a cause for the Big Bang, it can only be the result of an efficient cause. This cause MUST be non-physical. The big bang singularity is the first physical event (thought it is not even considered an event by some).
 
 

Smith actually goes on to quote Anthony Kenny of Oxford:
 
 

"According to the big bang theory, the whole matter of the universe began to exist at a particular time in the remote past. A proponent of such a theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the matter of the universe came from nothing and by nothing."
 
 

Not only this, the atheist/naturalist now must believe that the universe popped into existence, uncaused, from nothing, for no reason, with the physical constants that allow for life to form balanced on a razor's edge-a literal blueprint for life fine-tuned RIGHT FROM THE FIRST INSTANT to a precision billions of times greater than anything currently designed by the brains of humans (the most complex organization of matter in the known universe which took billions of years to evolve). We are expected to believe mere hydrogen gas (!) evolved purposelessly into conscious beings with 5 senses who are able to look back and reflect on the whole process. This is naturalistic metaphysics, and, IMO (no offense to you intended), it is absurd. This dogma persists only because the obvious alternative is philosophically unacceptable to the naturalist/atheist.

 
 
 

>>Well I think they are dead wrong. I don't think you can prove God. I think you can provide evidence for God. And I think the Kalam cosmological argument does provide evidence for God. It IS a deductive argument, but ultimately it rests on the first premise: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. I would just maintain that it is more probable that this is a true premise than not, and I see the beginning of the matter/energy/time/space of the universe as explainable on the theistic hypothesis, and not

so explainable on the naturalistic hypothesis.

 
 
 
 
 

"Theists, on the other hand, especially Judeo-Christian theists have believed in a beginning of TIME itself for 1000s of years. Moses Maimonides was declaring that no matter what science tells us, we must believe the Bible's revelation that time itself has a beginning. So at the very least, Big Bang cosmology bolsters Christian Theism "[Ibid]

Self proclaimed agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow declares:
 
 

"The scientist's pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[ Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 115.]
 
 

"The famous Chinese astrophysicist Fang Li Zhi and his coauthor, physicist Li Shu Xian, recently wrote, "A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics."[Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), p. 173]
 
 

The British Cosmologist Edward Milne concluded his mathematical treatise on relativity by saying,"As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him."[ Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 166-167.]
 
 

I'd have to say its reasonable to infer an efficient cause of the universe. That cause, by its very nature, must be non-physical. It must TRANSCEND space, matter, time and energy, and must be AT LEAST as powerful as all of the energy in the universe. It must be timeless, to exist before time, and therefore eternal and UNCAUSED [as formerly the atheist thought the universe was eternal and therefore, uncaused]. I'd infer its personhood by pointing out that if the causal conditions for the effect of the universe existed from eternity, then the universe should have also. In order for an eternal cause to create a temporal effect, agent causality (in this case-God's deciding to create), must be involved. I'd argue for the intelligence and personality of the Cause further in the Teleogical argument.

 

2) The Nature of the Creater

Robert Koons

University of Texas
 
 
 
 
 
 

As I mentioned above, some defenders of Kalam have argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal creator, endowed with free will, since otherwise it would be impossible to explain how the universe could have come into existence when it did, rather than earlier. These thinkers introduced the concept of "determination" to describe this indeterministic relation between God and the beginning of the universe.

William Lane Craig argues that only a personal, omnipotent being could, acting from a timeless eternity, bring into being a world of time. Craig imagines a divine act of fiat ("Let there be time..") occurring contingently in the realm of timelessness, thereby bringing about the dimension of time. He concludes that we can best explain the universe by postulating a personal creator.

Does the idea of a creation ex nihilo, the contingent bringing-into-existence of a world, entail that the world have a beginning in time? Some have thought so -- Maimonides and Hawking, to mention two we have discussed. Hawking clearly assumes that if there is no beginning of the world, then the world could not have been created by a personal God. Aquinas, in contrast, disagreed. He contended that God's act of freely creating occurs in eternity. The world resulting from this free act could have a beginning or not, as God chose. As it happens, it seems to have had a beginning, but this is not a necessary condition of creation.
 
 

 F. Objection no. 1: If everything needs a cause why doesn't God need a cause?

 First check to see if the Skeptic has managed to disagree with line A.6 becasue the answer to this objection is built into the argument there. If that premise has been granted than essentially the skeptic has granted this point. Since there must be a final cause which begins the chain of cause and effect, logically the final cuase itself is not subject to it. So God is that point and therefore does not require a cause. There essentially five answers to this argument:

1) God is the final cause and by defintion does not need a cause himself.

The internet atheist will argue until dooms day that if "everything must have a cause" than God must have one too. This is of course illogical. God does not require a cause for several reasons:

This is merely a priori, if there must be a place where the chain stops, logically that place is the final cause of all things, which is what we say God is. Therefore God cannot need a Cause.

 

a) Everything but God needs cause

 

We are arguing that everything has to have a cause, except one this, that is the "final cause" or "first cause," the cause of all causes. Trying to the turn the words of the argument against itself wont work because we specify "everything but one needs a cause." Now this is not circular becasue the proof of the hypothosis is that no other alternative works, not that we merely stipulate it. Since this is the only alternative that adequately explains things, it is the most logical alternative.

 

b) By Definition God is not an effect

 
 
 

By definition God is beyond the natural realm of cause and effect, if not, "He" Would not be God, because that's what God is

 

2) God is Being itself and thus trasncends The laws of Cause and effect.

 
 
 

a) God is not a thing alongside other things in creation.

 
 
 

God is by definition not a thing alongside other things in creation (ontologically speaking) but is on the order of being itself; the cause of the whole, which means God is the creator of the chain of cause and effect is therefore logically outside of it. (see also Timothy Ware The Orthodox Chruch; Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, and Dynamics of Faith, Systematic Theology, and John MacQuarrie Principles of Christian Theology).

 

b) Being itself

 

God is Being Itself (see above) Being has to be. The fact that there is anything at all indicates that there is no such thing as true nothingness. If anything is than there must have always been something. Since God is Being itself in a sense we could say that being causes God,although this is not an adeuate way to pu it.

 

3) God is Spiritual and not physical, thus does not need physical cause
 
 

4) God's essence is his existence.

 
 
 

a) The Scholastic answer:

 

God's essence is his existence. The thing that makes God what he is (essence) coincides with the fact that he is (existence).For all other things the essence of a thing is to be the particular thing that it is. But with God the essence of the divine is to to be; thus, God's being is the same as his essence and to be the certain thing that God is is to be. God cannot fail to exist and requires no cause. see Eteinne Gilson, God And Philosophy.

b) This is the only logical answer,

 

otherwise we just have an ifinite regress of the same problem; it's a logical deduction

 

5) Proper use of Ocam's Razor

 

It would be a useless multiplication of entitites to posist a cause of God; God is sufficient explaination in and of "Himself" and logically deos not requrie a cuase.

 

 

The argument proves prior existance of creative "Source" as origin of the univserse, by logical deduction as the most plausible answer. Logically it cannot be an infitine regression, cannot be subject to the same laws of cause and effect but must be "first cause." Logically it must be eternal, and must be necessary to the existance of the singularity that produced the universe, by the law of Ockum's razor cannot be multiplied to include an infintie regress. Logically than we are talking about an erternal creative agent that stands behind all existance as the cause of all that is that creates as a free creative act; "that thing," as Aquinas says, "we call God."
 
 

G. Objection 2: Eternal Cause Cannot have Time bound Effects

 
 
 
 
 

1) Can timeless facts cause timebound facts? (Yes)
 
 

Metaphysics and Epistemology of Causation

Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec10.html
 
 

First, we must admit that logical and mathematical realities, although they are certainly outside physical spacetime, can be causally efficacious. Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to have knowledge in logic and mathematics, and impossible for us to think about and refer to particular mathematical objects, like specific numbers or numerical relations.

Second, it seems plausible to suppose that space and time are themselves definable or constructible in terms of causal relations. One event is earlier than another, just in case the first is causally prior to the second, or if the first is spatially related to an event causally prior to the second. Two events are in the same spatiotemporal neighborhood just in case there are direct causal relations between the two. What we call physical or measurable time is a simple and systematic system of measurement that can be imposed on the whole network of causal relations. It is reasonable to expect that some of the causal network will lie outside of the system of measurable space-time. At least, it would be a remarkable coincidence if all of the causal network could be included in a single simple and systematic measurement system. Therefore, from this perspective, it seems reasonable to think that there might be exceptions to the general rule of causation occurring within physical spacetime.

Third, scientific realism depends on the possibility of timeless causation. Scientific realism is the thesis that we sometimes know that our scientific theories are approximately true. Philosophers and historians of science are generally agreed that the acquisition of empirical data alone does not determine which scientific theories we accept. This is known as the "indeterminacy of theory by data". In addition to data, we use considerations of simplicity, symmetry, and elegance to guide our theory choice. For example, scientists accepted Copernicus' theory despite the fact that, for over 200 years, it did not fit the astronomical data as well as Ptolemy's theory. The fit with data was less important than the fact that Copernicus's model was vastly simpler than the ramshackle, epicyle-laden Ptolemaic model.

However, if our choice of theories is guided by considerations of simplicity and elegance, then our scientific beliefs constitute knowledge only if these aesthetic preferences are a reliable guide to the truth. In order for these to be truly reliable, there must be some causal mechanism that ensures that the deep structure of the world (as describable by our theories) is, by and large, very simple, symmetrical, elegant, etc. Any such causal mechanism must be a timeless fact, since it causes the history of the world to take a certain form or shape. This is especially so in light of general relativity, which takes the form of space and time to be themselves an essential part of the structure of the world. Hence, there must be a cause that determines the spacetime structure of the universe, introducing a bias toward simplicity. Thus, there must be at least one cause that lies outside of time.
 
 

2) This is empirical

 

Since I've already showen that in any case, the singualirty is outside of time, than empirically it is the case the time bound univrese must of necessity be casue by timeless exta-temporal Cause. But to than turn around and say OK the singularity doesn't need a cause, that is the final cause is merely fiating an arbitrary necessity.
 
 

 __________________________________________________

Apendix : an excerpt from a fine and complex article by philosopher Robert Koons on causality and the coxmological article. I urge everyone to read the article.
 
 

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/defeasible.html

Defeasible Reasoning, Special Pleading and the Cosmological Argument
 
 

Robert C. Koons

Associate Professor of Philosophy

University of Texas

Austin, TX 78712

[email protected]
 
 

Abstract
 
 

The rehabilitation of causation and modal realism in recent analytic philosophy have made possible the revival of the argument from contingency to the existence of a necessary first cause. Recent work in defeasible or nonmonotonic logic means that this argument can be cast in such a way that it does not presuppose that every contingent situation, without exception, has a cause. Instead, the burden of proof is shifted to the skeptic, who must produce positive reasons for thinking that the cosmos is an exception to the defeasible law of causality. The most promising line of rebuttal open to the skeptic contradicts a plausible account of the nature of causal priority, namely, that the actuality of a token causes is necessitated by the actuality of its token effect. Several independent lines of argument in support of this account are outlined.
 
 

Introduction
 
 

The cosmological argument for God's existence has a long history, but perhaps the most enduring version of it has been the argument from contingency. This is the version that Frederick Copleston pressed upon Bertrand Russell in their debate about God's existence in 1948. In 1997 ("A New Look at the Cosmological Argument, American Philosophical Quarterly 34:193-212), I noted that all three of Russell's principal objections to the argument (viz., the unreality of modality, the unreality of causation, and the unreality of the world as a totality) have fared poorly in recent analytic philosophy. This is especially clear in the case of causation. Far from withering away (as Russell anticipated), the notions of cause and effect have never held a more central position. Causality is absolutely central to recent philosophical work in semantics, the philosophy of mind and intentionality, epistemology, and philosophy of science.
 
 
 
 

The Role of Defeasible Reasoning
 
 

Even though we have excellent empirical evidence for the generalization that wholly contingent situations have causes, it is hard to see how any amount of data could settle conclusively the question of whether or not this generalization (Axiom 8) admits of exceptions. The skeptic can always find a logically consistent position by simply restricting the scope of axiom 8 in such a way as to exclude its application to the cosmos as a whole.

The most effective response, dialectically speaking, is to insist that, at the very least, our experience warrants adopting the causal principle as a default or defeasible rule. This means that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we may infer, about any particular wholly contingent situation, that it has a cause.

This is, however, all that is needed for the cosmological argument to be rationally compelling. In place of a deductively valid, apodeictic proof of the existence of a first cause, the defender of the cosmological argument can offer instead a defeasible argument (an argument correct by the standards of nonmonotonic reasoning). The burden is then shifted to the agnostic, who must garner evidence of a positive sort for the proposition that the cosmos really is an exception to the rule. Merely pointing out the defeasible nature of the inference (i.e., the bare possibility of the cosmos's being an exception) does not constitute a cogent rebuttal.

Considerable progress has been made in recent year in developing formal systems of defeasible or nonmonotonic reasoning that satisfy certain plausible meta-logical constraints. For example, in the Commonsense Entailment system of Asher and Morreau, a defeasible version of Axiom 8 could be expressed by using a default conditional connective, >:
 
 

Axiom 8* (x)( Wx > E y (y => x))

This version of Axiom 8 can be read as: normally, a wholly contingent situation has a cause. This defeasible Axiom 8* will allow us to infer that any given wholly contingent situation has a cause unless some positive reason can be given for thinking that the situation in question is an exception to the rule, for example, by showing that the situation belongs to a category of things that typically does not have a cause.

The skeptic could refuse to accept even the defeasible generalization 8*. Like Kant or Russell, he might insist that the universality of causation be seen as a canon or prescriptive rule for reason, and not as a descriptive generalization (even a defeasible one) of mind-independent reality.

However, to give up even the defeasible version of Axiom 8 as a descriptive generalization about reality is to embrace a radical form of skepticism. All of our knowledge about the past, in history, law and natural science, depends on our inferring causes of present situations (traces, memories, records). Without the conviction that all (or nearly all) of these have causes, all of our reconstructions of the past (and therefore, nearly all of our knowledge of the present) would be groundless. Moreover, our knowledge of the future and of the probably consequences of our actions depends on the assumption that the relevant future states will not occur uncaused. The price of denying this axiom is very steep: embracing a comprehensive Pyrrhonian skepticism.