My Cosmological Argument

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
"[We] understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible" (Hebrews 11:3b)

1. Matter and energy exist
2. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy can be exchanged, but neither can be created nor destroyed [1]
3. Therefore either
     a) Matter and energy have always existed, or
     b) Matter and energy had a beginning
4. It is impossible to transgress an infinite amount of time
5. Therefore (3a) is false
6. Therefore (3b) is true [entailed by (3), (4), and (5)] [2]
7. Therefore either
     a) Matter and energy caused themselves to come into being, or
     b) Matter and energy were caused to come into being by something that was neither matter nor energy
10. For an object to cause something, that object must exist
11. Before matter and energy existed, matter and energy did not exist
12. Therefore, matter and energy did not cause their own existence [entailed by (10) and (11)] [4]
12. Therefore (7a) is false
13. Therefore (7b) is true [entailed by (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), and (12)]

Conclusion: Matter and energy were caused to come into being by something that was not matter or energy. Let's restate this. The online Princeton dictionary defines the verb "create" as "to bring into existence" [5]. It also defines "physical" as "dealing with matter and energy" [6].

Therefore, the conclusion of the cosmological argument is that the physical universe was created by something nonphysical. Let's use "nonphysical creator" as the beginning of our definition of "God". I will not make any claims as to other attributes that God has under the cosmological argument.

Objection 1: "Where did God come from?"

Answer: All of the empirical facts that imply that the universe cannot have always existed are based on scientific observation of matter and energy. Our argument concluded that God is neither matter nor energy. Therefore, premise (4), that matter and energy cannot have always existed, does not mean that God cannot have always existed, as He does not fit into the category "matter and energy".

Consider Einstein's theories and the space-time model [7]. Without ruling out the possibility of other dimensions, the extant scientific model of space-time combines space and time into a single manifold. As God is neither matter nor energy - He is not physical - He is not bound by time, and does not need to be described in temporal terms like matter and energy do. Thus, the question "where did God come from" or "when did God come into existence" is a categorical fallacy (cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_machine#Category_mistakes], although I must admit disagreement with Ryle on other counts, the principle of his objection to dualism is correct - it does not make sense to ask how long the color red is, or how much the idea of love weighs, or in this case, when God came into existence).

So imagining God's existence is not like picturing Achilles running on a racetrack without beginning or end (cf. note [2D]). God's existence is of an atemporal nature, and He cannot be thought of in spacial-temporal terms. Nowhere in my cosmological argument did I claim that everything has a beginning, but that matter and energy had a beginning.

Objection 2: "Premise (2), or the first law of thermodynamics, says that matter and energy can be exchanged, but neither can be created nor destroyed. Doesn't (12) contradict this? First you say it can't be created, then you say that it was created. Which is it?"

Answer: Wikipedia defines "physical law" as "a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior" [8]. The first law of thermodynamics is merely descriptive of what we have observed. It is really just the discovery that we cannot create or destroy matter and energy, and a statement that we have not observed matter and energy being created or destroyed. This does not entail that they have not been created at some time in the past. This Wikipedia entry also says that physical laws are "[typically] theoretically reversible in time", which lends credibility to footnote [2Aiii].

It may at first appear that I am two-faced, because I am arguing that our universe had beginning, by making inferences through reversing physical laws. But then I say that once we get back to the beginning, at least one of the laws gets broken (or created - however you want to look at it). This is vindicated because physical laws are reliable for making predications within the physical universe. So as long as we are doing science inside the confines of the physical universe, we can trust these physical laws. But the universe itself may not be subject to all the same laws that govern the matter and energy inside it. If we say that the entire universe is subject to something greater than itself, then we are supposing that there is a governing force outside of our known universe. This force cannot be made up of matter and energy, or else "universe" would encompass it. To say this is to concede the very conclusion of my cosmological argument.

It is also interesting to note here that Lord Kelvin himself, a man central to our entire understanding of thermodynamics, did not see a contradiction in these laws with the belief in a creator:

"Lord Kelvin's [William Thomson] (1824-1907) second law of thermodynamics, that the dissipation of energy is a universal feature, was directly related to his theology. Here he unified two of his deepest commitments: universal natural law is created and governed by divine power, and the world is progressively developing toward an inevitable end. He summarized his belief by quoting Psalm 102:26, "all of them shall wax old like a garment". He believed that God alone could restore the original distribution or arrangement of energy in the created universe. (Smith/Wise, p. 317, 331, 332, 497; Clark, p. 14) Related to this, Kelvin objected to evolution by blind chance. He believed that life proceeds only from life, that it is a mystery and a miracle, and was designed and guided by a Creator. However, he accepted long times for an evolution guided by a Creator. (Albritton, p. 184, 185)" [http://www.grisda.org/bclausen/papers/aid.htm] (also cf. footnote [2D] regarding the second law)

Objection 3: "Opponents also point to the semantic difficulty that the cosmological argument seems to apply temporal concepts to situations where time does not exist. For example, in physics, "cause" is a temporal concept that requires time; things which exist outside of time do not have to be caused. Since time is merely a property of our universe, the laws of time (i.e. cause) are not applicable to our universe considered as a whole. Similarly, time can begin, but not require a cause, since all human concepts of a caused beginning have something before that beginning (including the cause); this is not true of time itself. This class of counterargument assumes that causality is necessarily temporal, which itself is a point of dispute." [9]

Answer: It seems that this objection is arguing that because time is a property of objects inside our universe, then reversing it to find the beginning of our universe is illogical, because our universe considered as a whole does not have to be subject to the laws of its internal components. Or perhaps it is saying that time itself is an eternal property of this empty space that the physical universe is now residing in, and it therefore makes no sense for a cosmological argument to claim that it was all created, merely because the physical universe may have had a beginning.

My first question is, what do you consider to be our universe as a whole? Is it the collection of all the matter and energy in existence? Should we give this collection an identity of its own, or should we just let it be a reference to everything physically and spatially related to each other? Even if "universe" referenced some other abstract object ("the empty space", governed by inherent, eternal rules, in which every physical object now happens to reside, maybe), inside which matter and energy themselves once had a beginning, the challenge of the cosmological argument still stands. How did that matter and energy come to be? Moreover, what is this "universe"? What is the giver of such order?

This objection may be reconfigured to work against a cosmological argument that claims that time itself was created, however my cosmological argument does not claim that and is therefore unaltered. In comment, I see at least two possibilities on the matter. The first possibility is that Einstein is right, and time is actually the fourth dimension, in which case it actually does make some sense to say that when matter and energy were created, time was as well; either as a byproduct of the physical creation act, or as an abstract creation act in itself.

The other possibility is that time is in fact uncreated. Actually many cosmological scientists and theoretical physicists today hold that time has always existed, even if matter and energy have had a beginning. If time is uncreated, then I have a starting point for another argument for God's existence. One version of this shall be treated under a future "Argument from Universals".

The objection is correct in implying that things which exist outside of time do not have to be chronologically caused (cf. answers to objections one and four). But it is uninteresting to note that things outside of time are outside of time. To say that in physics causation is a temporal concept requiring time is also uninteresting, because physics studies physical objects, which are necessarily time-bound. The study of physical objects alone cannot make claims about whether nonphysical objects do or do not require logical causation. Moreover, to concede that causation is a physical and chronological notion allows its application to our physical universe, which is precisely what the argument does.

But this objection may be reexamined from another angle, and it could be perceived to be arguing that because "universe" encapsulates not just physical objects but time as well, this allows our universe itself to escape the need for causation (causation being allowed to be defined here as a sheerly temporal notion). Then my answer is that it will take an enormous amount of work to support the claim that some physical things (even considered as a whole and inextricably linked to presumably nonphysical things, like time) do not require causation at all, because causation is a foundational assumption of the scientific method.

Also note Wikipedia's comment on this objection, "[this] class of counterargument assumes that causality is necessarily temporal, which itself is a point of dispute" [9]. It would seem to me that for timelike substances like our universe, causality would have to be temporal, and it would have to be. But for atemporal substances like God, causality would be able to be "simultaneous", which brings me to the next objection...

Objection 4: "Where did God come from?" (part deuce)

Answer: There is a second sense in which God's existence requires explanation. The first arises out of a temporal objection: "at what time did God come into existence?", which was treated under objection one. This second kind of objection can be stated "how is it that God exists" or "what causes God's existence?". So, while the first objection deals with what is temporally prior to God, the second objection deals with what is logically prior to God. This objection is especially called for in light of my argument against the possibility of the causa sui [4].

The reality is that temporal objects cannot cause themselves to come into existence because a physical agent must first exist in order to commit an act like creation (cf. answer to objection three). Causa sui is irrational for matter and energy, and/or in a temporal environment. However, God escapes these confines, because He does not experience a succession of moments. In His case it is acceptable to say that He is the eternal cause of Himself, or self-existent. The term "eternal" in this case is only used to say that there is never a "moment" whereby God is not the source of Himself, it is not to invoke physical-temporal language and categories all over again. God is the source of existence (even His own) and can therefore be self-existent. Although it is necessary for a time-bound object to first exist before it commits an act (e.g. creation), an object who experiences no progression of moments does not need to exist prior to causation (indeed, even "prior" already begins to imply time). Interestingly enough, this is also how the second Person of the trinity can be begotten without having a beginning, but this is not a work on the Trinity and I am not making any claims about God under this argument but that He exists and is not physical.

Wikipedia agrees with me on this by stating "things which exist outside of time do not have to be caused" [9].

Objection 5: "Quantum mechanics has shown that 'subatomic particles such as electrons, positrons, and photons, can come into existence, and perish, by virtue of spontaneous energy fluctuations in a vacuum'" [9].

Answer: Quantum Mechanics is very important in theoretical physics, and helps string theory get off the ground. However, science has a lot of ground work to do in terms of reconciling it with General Relativity. Just as Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise asks the reader to comprehend how something that is finite and obviously possible (running a mile) is made up of something infinite and logically impossible to cross (infinitesimal measurements of the mile), quantum mechanics asks us to comprehend how matter and energy, which are empirically known to be unable to be created or destroyed, could be made up of subatomic particles whose existence fluctuates.

This objection is a type of argument from ignorance. It should be restated as "we don't know what creates and destroys subatomic particles, therefore your claim that things cannot come into existence without cause is irrational". Or even "we don't know what creates and destroys subatomic particles, therefore it is not God and God does not exist". This is worse than the theist who says "we don't know what caused the Big Bang, therefore it was God". Science might one day discover what is causing the fluctuation of existence of subatomic particles, and that day would scientifically destroy this objection.

This objection is also question begging. Even if someone demonstrates precisely why we know that subatomic particles genuinely randomly come into existence without cause, my cosmological argument is not undermined. My cosmological argument handles matter and energy in their whole states, not separated into subatomic particles. To say that subatomic particles can come into existence spontaneously begs the question of how the matter itself came into existence in the first place. Before there can be material to examine the pieces of, that material must exist (and its existence demands explanation).

Lastly and fatally, the objection itself acknowledges the fact that subatomic particles "come into existence, and perish, by virtue of spontaneous energy fluctuations". In this case subatomic particles themselves are not actually even being created in the brute sense, they are being formed out of energy [cf. premise (2)]. Forming matter out of energy is not actually interesting in the slightest, because we can take measurements of the net gain or loss of matter and energy in the system, and find that it comes out to a big zero. Matter and energy are always conserved. The fact that some energy gets rolled into little balls called subatomic particles is uninteresting and irrelevant.

If one wants to say that the case with our universe was similar, that energy was floating around and then BAM! or should I say BANG!, our universe popped out, then it begs the question yet again. My argument says that matter AND energy had to have had a beginning. So I childishly say to you "yeah, but where'd the lighter fluid come from?", I mean "where did the energy come from?". There had to have been a beginning, and it had to have been caused by an external agent.

Objection 6: "(2) rests on a physical law that may not have been in operation before the Planck Epoch"

Answer: I am regularly amazed at the volume of science and reason that atheists throw out the door before they accept that it is rational to believe in God. Isn't it convenient that because we don't know very much about what our universe was like moments after its explosion, some are willing to use that period of time as a trash can to throw out every law of science and logic so that they are exempted from submission to God? Sounds like an emotional problem with theism, not an intellectual one. This is a catch-all, such that even if irrefutable proof of God's existence was furnished, an atheist could say that Modus Tollens itself didn't operate before that damn Planck Epoch. When you can demonstrate to me that we have exhaustive knowledge of the nature and substance of our universe as it existed throughout the Planck Epoch, and that it necessarily entails that God does not exist, then I will start taking this objection seriously.

By the way, Max Planck himself announced, during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this minute solar system of the atom together... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind."

Objection 7: "Indeed the supposed singularity from which our universe is said to have originated in the classic Big Bang picture is actually a physical paradox - an indication that current theory is not an adequate description [of]." [9]

Answer: Again, that fact that current theory is not an adequate description of what is supposed to have been the first term of our universe says nothing about whether it was created by God or not. Would you like to borrow my book of logical paradoxes that have been solved since their conception? Can I buy you a book full of empirical facts that did not make sense at their discovery, but that we have since come to understand? Maybe the fact that modern theory has posited something that it cannot account for empirically should make modern theorists turn to at least consider potential nonphysical factors involved when our universe was but a singularity.

Objection 8: "The Big Bang is said to be the start of both space and time, so the question "What was there before our universe?" makes no sense; the concept of "before" becomes meaningless when considering a situation without time." [9]

Answer: This objection does assume that time had a beginning, which needs more work to be established. However I do consider the temporality of time possible (pardon the pun). What I like about this objection is that it acknowledges that it makes no sense to apply terms like "before" to situations without time, lending support for my answer to objection one.

To consider this objection the threat has to be understood. It seems to be proposing that a cause of our universe was not necessary if nothing - not even time - existed just prior to the existence of the singularity. For, during that situation, time itself did not exist and therefore the popping into existence of time and matter and energy requires no explanation.

A problem with this objection is that it begs the question yet again. Although a situation without time (or matter and energy) seems to require no explanation, we are inquiring about a situation with all of those things. The coming into existence of the singularity (plus time) still needs explanation. Just because you suppose that right before its existence there existed nothing, doesn't exempt the singularity itself from requiring explanation. In other words, rather than explaining the cause of our universe, the objection is saying that the state prior to the existence of our universe does not require explanation.

I can't help but note here that objections like these also lend support to (6), that our universe had a beginning.

Objection 9: "Isn't this all one big argument from ignorance?"

Answer: What keeps my cosmological argument from being one from ignorance is that I am not concluding that God exists because it has not been disproved, because we don't know what caused our universe, or because it seems to me that He did so. Rather, I am giving all logical possibilities a fair trial. I am not merely regarding the lack of evidence for possibilities in alternate to theism, but I put forth specific reasons to disbelieve them. Even further evidence specifically in favor of theism, which will also help to further define "God", will be presented in the future.

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NOTES
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics#First_law

[2] Regarding (4), and its entailed premises, (5) & (6), I expect some opposition. An objection may be made by one who claims to be able to conceive of, or have evidence for, an infinite regression of matter and energy into the past. To strengthen (4) and therefore (5) & (6), I would like to offer four considerations.

     A) Consider the following implication:
          i. The second law of thermodynamics states that our universe is in an increasing state of entropy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics#Second_law]
          ii. This entails that the total entropy of our universe is increasing over time
          iii. This implies that there was a time of minimum entropy, or a time of maximum order
          iv. This implies that matter and energy had a beginning point, from which entropy began

My syllogism above is also assented to by self-proclaimed agnostic Robert Jastrow:

"And concurrently there was a great deal of discussion about the fact that the second law of thermodynamics, applied to the Cosmos, indicates that our universe is running down like a clock. If it is running down, there must have been a time when it was fully wound up. Arthur Eddington, the most distinguished astronomer of his day, wrote: 'If our views are right, somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the winding up of our universe.' When that occurred, and Who or what wound up our universe, were questions that bemused theologians, physicists and astronomers, particularly in the 1920’s and 1930’s" [Jastrow, Robert (1978), God and the Astronomers. New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 48-49]

     B) Here I am going to talk about a couple things that are a little over my head, but hopefully reliance on more credible sources will suffice. At any rate, I am only offering this as one of four considerations.

Consider the fact that Big Bang cosmology itself is based on principles that imply that there was a singularity which constituted the beginning of our universe and the earliest time. Weingard, on page 199 of his 1979 "Some Philosophical Aspects of Black Holes" in Synthese elaborates on this. He explains that the singularity is a geodesic, which can only be finitely extendible into the past. It seems then that we have reason to believe that the singularity was timelike (bibligraphic information for this publication can be found here [http://www.metapress.com/], and cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelike] for information about what it means to be "timelike"). Steven Hawking seems to believe that this implies finiteness in his 1980 "Theoretical Advances in General Relativity", in Some Strangeness in the Proportion. It seems that if Einstein was right about General Relativity, then our universe has a finite past.

Permit another quotation of Jastrow on the matter:

"Only as a result of the most recent discoveries can we say with a fair degree of confidence that the world has not existed forever;... The lingering decline predicted by astronomers for the end of the world differs from the explosive conditions they have calculated for its birth, but the impact is the same; modern science denies an eternal existence to our universe, either in the past or in the future." [Jastrow, Robert (1977), Until the Sun Dies. New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 19, 30]

     C) Consider a source specifically hostile to my goal, to advance the argument that God exists, who says the following in a paper attempting to argue for an uncaused universe:

"Models of an oscillating universe usually predict that with each new cycle there is an increase in the size of the radius of our universe, amount of radiation present, and entropy. Radiation from previous cycles accumulates in each new cycle, and the accompanying increase in pressure causes the new cycle to be longer than the last one; our universe expands to a greater radius and takes a longer time to complete the cycle. This disallows an infinite regress into the past, for a regress will eventually arrive at a cycle that is infinitely short and a radius that is infinitely small; this cycle, or the beginning of some cycle with values approaching the values of this cycle, will count as the beginning of the oscillating universe.

The inference to a finite past can also be made from a measure of the amount of radiation present in our universe; if there were an infinite number of previous cycles, an infinite amount of radiation would be present in the current cycle, but the amount measured is finite. Joseph Silk calculates that the amount of radiation observed in the present expansion allows there to be "about 100 previous expansion and collapse cycles of our universe" (Silk 1980, p. 311).

The conclusion that the past is finite also follows from facts about entropy; if an infinite number of previous cycles have elapsed, each with increasing entropy, then the present cycle would be in a state of maximum entropy—but in fact it is in a state of relatively low entropy.

John Wheeler sweeps away these objections to an infinitely oscillating universe by supposing that at the end of each contracting phase all the constants and laws of that cycle disappear and our universe is "reprocessed probabilistically" (Misner, Thorne and Wheeler 1973, p. 1214) so as to acquire new constants and laws in the next cycle. No information about a previous cycle is passed on to the next cycle. Accordingly, no inference to a finite past can be made on the basis of present observations and the laws and constants that hold in the current cycle.

Now there is no reason to think that such a universe is logically impossible, but that is not germane to our present concern, which is to establish probabilist grounds for a belief in the finitude or infinitude of our universe's past. It is logically possible that at the point of onset of each new cycle all laws and constants are transformed, but since these occurrences cannot be predicted according to any known physical law, there is no reason to think that these transformations occur.

Indeed, there is a theoretical reason to prefer the finite oscillatory models to Wheeler's model (supposing that we must choose among oscillating models). The finite models, through being constructed in accordance with the known physical laws and constants, obey a principle related to the principle of induction; the related principle is that physical laws and constants originally inductively established for one domain of physical events should be applied to other domains of physical events if there is no observational evidence that events in these other domains differ in the relevant respects from those in the original domain. In the present context, the domains are cycles; since there is no observational evidence that events in past cycles differ relevantly from those in our cycle, we are not justified in supposing that the laws and constants inductively established in our cycle do not apply to the events in previous cycles. " [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/uncaused.html]

I suppose that if one, such as John Wheeler, wants to step outside the bounds of science, he can choose to believe that, previous to our universe, there existed a universe that operated under completely alien constants and laws. There are two problems with this. The first is that the entire oscillatory model is itself a patterned structure that would have to endure through each oscillation, which undermines Wheeler's objection. The second problem is that science has to stay within the bounds of what can be tested, such that a hypothesis can be supported and predictions about the future can be made. If one wants to be scientific about his search for information about the origin of our universe, he must handle the facts that we have available to us. I will not condemn one who wishes to abandon science during his quest to find out about our universe, but I cannot be expected to assent to a proposition without warrant.

After writing this paragraph, I came across an acclaimed astrophysicist who shares my critiques of infinite oscillatory models and M-theory:

"First of all, quantum fluctuations are a key ingredient of inflation theories that attempt to address how our universe, and a myriad of others, came into being. The problem is that quantum fluctuations presuppose the existence of quantum laws. If there truly were no quantum laws or any other laws whatsoever, nothing could happen. No laws, no action. The origin of universes as a result of quantum laws, inflation fields, or other arcane properties of string theory depends upon the preexistence of those laws or fields. And so even the skeptical scientist cannot avoid taking that on faith.

The second problem is that none of the other universes can ever be observed, not even in principle, since trying to measure across universes with different fundamental laws would be like using a microphone to observe the moon or using a telescope to record a rock band. So yet a second article of faith is required of the modern scientist: the existence of an infinite number of unseen universes." [Haisch, Bernard. The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, And What's Behind It All. Preface.]

There are other means to acquire knowledge than modern science, which actually brings me to my fourth consideration...

     D) Although I have presented three pieces of empirical evidence that support my premise that matter and energy had a beginning, I would also like to offer some logical support. Even if an infinite oscillatory model is produced that makes sense of the scientific facts that usually support a finite universe, it ultimately begs the philosophical question of (6). If there was a universe before ours it incites the query, 'where did that universe come from?', and these questions would go on for eternity.

That an infinity cannot be transgressed is demonstrated by Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. The traditional text of the paradox, along with an explanation can be found at [http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/]. The reason the paradox is so tricky is because it brings out in us the intuition that infinity cannot be transgressed. It then artificially divides up a finite distance into infinite parts. We know that a finite distance can be transgressed, and so our mind has to sort through the language to find the trick. If one claims that paradoxes such as Zeno's prove that infinity can be transgressed, I would again accuse such a one of begging the question. Achilles is still only transgressing a finite distance, even though it is described with infinite language. When Zeno can make Achilles finish an infinitely long race, then he'll have something.

Indulge me for one more moment whilst I explore this possibility. Imagine such a racetrack. You are sitting on the sideline and a line on the racetrack in front of you is painted red. The racetrack extends without limit in either direction. Achilles is running toward the red line, but has not yet gotten to it. In fact, he as an infinite amount of distance to cross before he reaches it. Will he ever reach it? In the original race against the tortoise, the racetrack was finite, but measured with infinitely small measurements. In this new race track, the distance he has to traverse is infinite, and no matter how fast Achilles is, he always has more ground to cover. In the first race the limit could be calculated, but in this new race the limit is (infinity). In other words, Achilles will never reach the limit.

The red line on the racetrack represents today. Achilles represents the cursor of history. Today will never come to pass, if the matter and energy in our universe have an infinite number of days to pass before they get to today. The first race is a paradox because we know that Achilles can overtake the tortoise based on the empirical fact that people complete races all the time, but the argument says that he can't. The second race is not a paradox because we don't start with the knowledge that the infinite can be transgressed - this is what we are trying to find out. The results are in, and the conclusion is that it cannot. The second race then, is a contradiction.

One more point must be made in regards to Achilles on the new, infinite racetrack. It might be possible to imagine Achilles as being about one mile behind the red line and running toward it. In this case he will definitely cross the line, and continue running forever. However, this is still question begging, because Achilles must have had to travel across the entire preceding length of the racetrack. He cannot start the race mid-way. If he does, his staring point is his starting point, and a beginning is conceded.

It is seen then, that the thought experiment does not even allow for Achilles to be placed on the track at all, because the racetrack has no starting line. The scenario of Achilles running on an infinite racetrack is itself incoherent, for he has no place to start. Similarly, the concept of a universe whose physical past extends infinitely is inconceivable.

[4] Nowhere has science ever observed a physical object create itself where there was previously nothing, not even raw materials (such as energy). Causa sui hypotheses would be hard pressed to make testable predictions about the future, for it could be anywhere, at any time, that any object imaginable could suddenly bring itself into existence and pop out of nowhere and nothingness. If a causa sui is possible, then gods of all types can randomly bring themselves into existence. If they haven't yet, no worries - they may soon enough. This concept also violates the first law of thermodynamics, for both matter and energy would have to be created during a causa sui - but not just created: created by nothing from nothing. Then the created something would in turn have to somehow retroactively have been the creator of itself. But don't take my word for it.

Nietzsche himself, in section 21 of "Beyond Good and Evil", states that the "causa sui [to be the cause of oneself] is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic... to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness." In context he is discussing freedom of the will, in which case I should be honest here and note that I happen to hold to a libertarian model of human freedom, which disagrees with Nietzsche's ultimate point. However, the principle that he plainly rejects is that something can be the very cause of it's own existence. The fact that he is hostile to the advancement of the argument that God exists positions him in a good place to affirm one of my premises. An online translation of "Beyond Good and Evil" can be found at [http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil_tofc.htm]. Section 21 is found in "Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers".

But consider a skeptic on the matter:

"The problem emerges in science when scientists leave the realm of science and enter that of philosophy and metaphysics, too often grandiose names for mere personal opinion, untrammeled by empirical evidence or logical analysis, and wearing the mask of deep wisdom. And so they conjure us an entire Cosmos, or myriads of cosmoses, suddenly, inexplicably, causelessly leaping into being out of—out of Nothing Whatsoever, for no reason at all, and thereafter expanding faster than light into more Nothing Whatsoever.... They then intone equations and other ritual mathematical formulae and look upon it and pronounce it good. I do not think that what these cosmologists, these quantum theorists, these universe-makers, are doing is science. I can’t help feeling that universes are notoriously disinclined to spring into being, ready-made, out of nothing" [Estling, Ralph (1994), “The Scalp-Tinglin’, Mind-Blowin’, Eye-Poppin’, Heart-Wrenchin’, Stomach-Churnin’, Foot-Stumpin’, Great Big Doodley Science Show!!!” Skeptical Inquirer, 18[4]:428-430, Summer. 18[4]:430 (an online version of this can be found at {http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_n4_v18/ai_16139350})]

And allow the citation of a theologian:

What an atheist or agnostic "...deems possible for the world to do—come into being without a cause—is something no judicious philosopher would grant that even God could do. It is as formally and rationally impossible for God to come into being without a cause as it is for the world to do so.... For something to bring itself into being it must have the power of being within itself. It must at least have enough causal power to cause its own being. If it derives its being from some other source, then it clearly would not be either self-existent or self-created. It would be, plainly and simply, an effect. Of course, the problem is complicated by the other necessity we’ve labored so painstakingly to establish: It would have to have the causal power of being before it was. It would have to have the power of being before it had any being with which to exercise that power" [Sproul, R.C. (1994), Not A Chance. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. pp. 179,180]

Even British astrophysicist Steven Hawking confesses of this theory:

“The new inflationary model [aka "Steady State Theory", or "The Cosmological Casua Sui"] is now dead as a scientific theory, although a lot of people do not seem to have heard of its demise and are still writing papers on it as if it were viable” [Hawking, Stephen W. (1988), A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam. p. 132]

[5] [http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=create]

[6] [http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=physical]

[7] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime]

[8] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_law]

[9] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Counterarguments_and_objections]

Tags: Kalam cosmological argument, cosmological argument, existence of God