Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 04/20/05 12:52pm
Since something cannot arise spontaneously from nothing, then we know that there must be something or things that have always existed.
First I must commend you for acknowledging ex nihilo nhil fit. However, I must point out that the last half of your sentence is a non sequitur.
My own belief is that the universe has existed for a finite period of time, say 15-20 billion years, and that an outside agency transcending space-time created the universe. This agency I believe to be God. Under my worldview, God exists outside time. Outside of time there would be no change, only being and nonbeing. While the concept of a timeless entity may seem weird, it is not logically impossible.
Why resort to it in the first place? An infinite past is metaphysically impossible. The details why are for another thread (I’ll post it later), but for now let me say it has something to do with being able to completely traverse an infinite region via successive finite steps (quick example: count 1, 2, 3, 4…you’ll never reach “infinity”).
Scientists dealing with string theory have proposed the idea that the universe (or universes) might be in some sort of infinite loop which has no beginning or end.
Nonetheless, the big-bang theory and the current age of the universe are overwhelmingly accepted. String theory is interesting but has weak experimental support and has issues with falsifiability.
Another possibility is that someone out there created the universe. However, and this is crucial to my argument, this entity, if it exists, could not have had a beginning either, since something cannot arise from nothing.
Quite correct.
This is the Christian concept of God, always existing, perhaps even “existing outside time,” whatever that means. But, as the title of my article states, we come to the question “who made God?” Since everything we know has a beginning, when did God begin? I always find it very interesting that when I suggest that maybe the universe and the matter in it has just always existed, many Christians will scoff at this idea. But if I then say that perhaps God has always existed, this idea seems perfectly rational to them.
Not to me. God being atemporally timeless is different from God existing for an infinite period of time. In any infinite past (theistic or not) time would have to traverse an impenetrable infinite distance to reach the present.
Why is this? It seems that the idea of “always existing” itself is not the problem, since they judge God to fit this category.
And I think that’s your mistake. The current philosophical worldview among theistic philosophers is that God exists outside of time, that he is atemporally timeless instead of temporally everlasting.
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