The Cosmological argument – This was originally argued by Aristotle. It was later revived by Jewish theologian Maimonides, Muslim Ibn Russhd and Catholic scholar Thomas Aquinas. So it was used by the big three theologians of monotheism – Judaism, Islam and Christianity. This is articulated today by William Lane Craig with the following argument:
Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
Premise 2: The universe began to exist.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.
Atheists would counter-argue with:
Dr Craig deals with the first contention. If the universe came into being by a finite event, then what caused that finite being to come into being? And what then caused that being or event to come into being? And so, and so on. You cannot have and infinite regress. Eventually you have come to square one. So what created square one?
Atheists would come back with the argument that the same can be said of God. They say that God is an infinite regress as well. As Bertram Russell’s mother told him, when he was a child, that God created everything. He then asked “So who created God?” Since she had no answer, he became an atheist (it is amazing how many famous atheists made their decision that there is no God when they were still children or adolescents).
But Russell and other atheists do not understand is that God is eternal, He had no beginning. A being with no beginning is not an infinite regress. He is just infinite. Deep down atheists realize this. They show this by their second argument, the world being eternal. Something or someone that is eternal, with no beginning, needs no explanation for its existence. If the world had always existed, there would be no explanation for its existence. It is just there, and it has always been there. So if an eternal world would need no explanation for its existence, then neither would an eternal God. So the question that Bertram Russell gave to his mother as a child is totally absurd (it is cute when children ask the most absurd questions, but it is not so cute when they ask the same absurd questions as adults and think they are being profound). Since an eternal God always existed, it is absurd to ask “So who created God?” God by definition is eternal. If God does exist, He would need not explanation for His existence. God revealed to Moses that “I AM WHO I AM”. He is the I AM. He exists and has always existed. I am not trying here to use the Bible here to prove God. I am merely showing that the Bible is far more sophisticated philosophically than an atheist like Russell. The Bible understands that God by definition is simply a Being who is.
Then we come to the atheist counter-argument #2 – the universe is eternal. Basically, the atheist makes the universe into God (in this way, atheism resembles much like pantheism). The universe is infinite and eternal. The universe is itself the object that is. The universe itself is the I AM. It always existed, and therefore there is no need to explain what or who caused it to come into existence.
But science is making this position very difficult to believe. This is why Anthony Flew, one of the greatest atheistic thinkers in the ‘70’s and 80’s, has now admitted that there has to be a God. Atheists try to explain his conversion to theism by saying that he is old now and has alzheimers, or that he is afraid of dying so he has now caught religion. But in his book, There is a God, Flew comes across perfectly lucid – there is no sign of him having alzheimers. And it cannot be argued that he was afraid of death. He has not become a Christian, and he still does not believe in a heaven or a hell. His argument for the existence of God is strictly intellectuall– of looking at the evidence scientifically.
Based on recent scientific evidence, Flew realized that the argument for an eternal universe is untenable. The Big Bang theory is no longer just a theory. Astronomers have been able to observe that stars are gradually separating from each other, which means that the universe is expanding. If the universe is expanding, then that means that there was a point that the universe started as a tiny speck. Also, astronomers have detected gases in the universe to indicate an explosion. The universe was once a heavy, dense speck – and then BANG! The speck exploded, and the particles of stars and planets shot out from the center, and even after these billions of years are still shooting outward.
This is a huge problem for the atheist. This means the universe did have a beginning. There was a bang! But what caused this bang? What was there before the bang to cause the bang to happen?
Atheists try to still hold onto the idea of the eternal universe in order to get around this problem. Some say that the universe is like an accordion. It expands, until it contracts. Then it contracts until it becomes a speck. Then the speck has another bang and expands again. This goes on and on for infinity.
But there are huge problems with this explanation. First, atheists pride themselves of being men of science. They criticize us for being people of faith rather than people of science. They say we should not believe anything that cannot be proven scientifically. And yet that is exactly what they are doing themselves! There is no evidence at all that the universe behaves like an accordion. That is something that the atheist is accepting only by faith. Second, not only is no evidence, but the theory contradicts what we know of the physics. The idea that the universe expands and then contracts goes against what we know of momentum. Even an accordion only shifts from contraction to expansion by an intelligent being who is playing the accordion. It would not behave this way on its own.
So the cosmological argument still stands, and science is making this a stronger argument today than ever before. The universe had a beginning. It had a big bang. Someone had to have caused this bang to happen. This Someone would have to be apart from the universe, and is Himself eternal, otherwise you would then need to find His creator, and wind up with an infinite regress. Everything that came into existence must have a Cause to its existence. And this Cause would be what we call God.
