The Case for a Creator (1)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 4/7/2013
Twenty years ago, back when I was attending Algonquin Middle School in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Lee Strobel was a pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in Algonquin, just a few miles from my house. Lee was a former atheist and still had several friends who were atheists, including one in particular who was a national spokesmen for American Atheists, Inc. One day, Lee and his friend came up with the idea of holding a debate where the case for atheism and the case for Christianity could both be laid out and the audience could decide where the evidence pointed.
The atheists choose Frank Zindler, a colleague of renowned atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair and a former professor of biology and science. Representing the Christian view was author and apologist, Dr. William Lane Craig. The news media—amazed that a church was unafraid to tackle the toughest objections by skeptics—was quickly abuzz. The church started getting phone calls from radio stations all across the country, and pretty soon over a hundred 100 stations singed up to broadcast the event.
Traffic became gridlocked around the church as nearly 8000 people ran down the aisles to get a seat. When was the last time you saw people running into a church? William Lane Craig presented evidence from philosophy, cosmology, physics and history as he laid out the case for Christianity. At the end of the debate, the audience cast ballots. An overwhelming 82% of the atheists, agnostics, and other non-believers voted that the evidence for Christianity was the most compelling. And—get this—forty-seven people walked in as unbelievers, heard the arguments from both sides, and walked out as Christians! What’s more—No Christians became atheists.
It was a stunning affirmation that Christians have an unfair advantage in an intellectual shootout—we have truth on our side!
Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence that God is real, an increasing number of people in America and around the world don't believe in God. According to survey’s conducted by The Pew Research Center, 20% of Americans ages 18 to 25 identify themselves as non-religious, atheists or agnostics, which is nearly double what it was 20 years ago.
You may never debate an atheist. But in a world where best-selling book claim that God is a delusion and religion poisons everything, where many university professors seem bent on destroying the beliefs of young Christians, and where the media often portrays believers as shallow, bigoted, villainous hypocrites, it’s increasingly important for all of us to be able to able to articulate the reasons why our faith makes sense! In fact, God expects nothing less of us. The Bible says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15 NIV).
Have you ever encountered someone who dismissed God as a fair-tale or Christianity as superstition? How do you typically feel when someone challenges or makes fun of your faith? Wouldn’t you like to be able to defend your faith intelligently? Or, on the other side of that coin, maybe you’re skeptical about the Christian faith or God’s existence. Maybe you’ve got some doubts of your own.
Over the next five Sundays, using science, philosophy, history, and a little old-fashioned common sense, I want to give you five good reasons to believe in God. I want you to think of these as a series of lights that, when lit, can illuminate the path to personal faith in God. They are:
1. The Light of Cosmology
2. The Light of Creation
3. The Light of Conscience
4. The Light of Christ
5. The Light of Conversion
The light we’ll be turning on today is the light of cosmology.
Cosmology is the study of the cosmos, or universe. And cosmology tells us not only that there is a God, but it even tells us a little bit about what he’s like! The Bible says, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world” (Psalm 19:1-4 NLT).
The Hebrews didn’t have a word for universe or galaxy, so when they spoke of the cosmos they used the word heavens. The Bible, in others words, is saying that we can look to stars and learn about the glory of God without ever having to open a Bible.
So what does the cosmos teach us about God? Well, first let me put this in the form of a logical argument, with two premises and a conclusion.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a Cause.
If the first two premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. Put another way, there are only three possible explanations for the origin of the cosmos—either (1) the universe simply popped into existence out of nothing for no reason whatsoever, or (2) the universe is eternal and has always existed, or (3) the universe was created by some transcendent Cause. Now let’s explore those possibilities, starting with the first premise:
1. EVERYTHING THAT BEGINS TO EXIST HAS A CAUSE.
I think this first premise is virtually undeniable by any rational person. For something to come into being without any cause whatsoever would be for something coming from nothing. Common sense and scientific evidence tells us you cannot get something from nothing. To claim that something can come into being literally from nothing is worse than magic. When a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, at least you’ve got the magician, not to mention the hat! Nobody sincerely believes that things, say, a horse or an Eskimo village, can just pop into being without a cause.
I think Maria said it well, in The Sound of Music, when she told Captain Von Trapp, “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.” Or, put another way, there simply are no free lunches! The conditions that hold true in our universe preclude the possibility of matter springing out of nothing!
But amazingly, in order to avoid the obvious conclusion, that’s exactly what some atheists claim. Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, The Ancestor’s Tale: “The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.” Quentin Smith of Western Michigan University likewise has claimed that the most rational position to hold is that the universe came “from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing”—it sounds like a Gettysburg Address of atheism.
This sort of intellectual absurdity just verifies what G.K. Chesterton once said, “It is often supposed that when people stop believing in God, they believe in nothing. Alas, it is worse than that. When they stop believing in God, they can believe in anything.”
Ray Comfort, in his book Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution, writes, “Anyone who tries to actually justify that nothing created everything has to be insane. This is a scientific impossibility.” He continues, “There’s no way to say it kindly, but such thoughts show that the atheist doesn’t think, and proves the Bible right when it says that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God.” I think Ray Comfort is exactly right. Common sense and scientific evidence confirms that nothing comes from nothing and nothing ever could.
With that said, let’s move on to the second premise.
2. THE UNIVERSE BEGAN TO EXIST.
If the universe didn’t spring from nothing, then perhaps the universe is eternal—it’s just always existed. Prior to the 1920s this was actually a commonly held view dating as far back as Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Most people assumed that the cosmos was static, unchanging, and eternal. This was also the assumption of Albert Einstein when he began to apply his new theory of gravity, called the general theory of relativity, to the universe in 1917. But Einstein quickly realized that something didn’t add up. His equations began to describe a universe that was either blowing up like a balloon or else collapsing in on itself. Einstein had to fudge his equations to maintain the illusion of an eternal universe.
Since that time, thanks to astonishing developments in modern astronomy, we now have strong scientific evidence that the universe had an absolute beginning—commonly referred to as the Big Bang. In the 1920s a Russian mathematician, Alexander Friedman, and the Belgian astronomer, Georges Lamaitre developed models of an expanding universe based on Einstein’s equations. These predictions were confirmed in 1929 by the American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, when he observed a “red shift” in light coming from distant galaxies, which indicates that they are getting further away. As you trace the expansion of the universe back in time, everything gets closer and closer together, until the distance between any two points is zero. At that point, often called the singularity, you’ve reached the boundary of space and time. The standard Big-Bang model, which is almost universally accepted among astronomers and astrophysicists, thus predicts an absolute beginning to the universe.
As if this weren’t enough, we also have confirmation from the field of thermodynamic. The second law of thermodynamics predicts that, given enough time, all the energy in the universe will spread itself our evenly throughout the cosmos until it reaches entropy (like gas in a room). Scientists call this the “heat death” of the universe. But, if the universe was eternal, then it would have died an eternity ago! This evidence is especially impressive because thermodynamics is so well understood by physicists that it’s highly improbable these findings will ever be reversed.
So, the cosmological evidence for an absolute beginning to the universe is insurmountable. On the basis, therefore, of both scientific evidence and philosophical evidence (which I didn’t even have time to get into), we have every reason to believe that the universe began to exist.
3. THEREFORE, THE UNIVERSE HAS A CAUSE.
And, since everything that begins to exist has a cause, it follows logically and inescapably that the universe must have a Cause.
So what does cosmology tell us about the Cause of the universe?
Well, the Bible makes a remarkable claim. It says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20 NIV). I think the study of cosmology has proven this verse true!
First of all, we know that whatever caused the universe must be a transcendent Cause beyond the universe. This Cause must itself be uncaused, because an infinite series of causes is logically incoherent. It must transcend space and time, since it created space and time. Therefore, it must be timeless and spaceless or immaterial. It must also be unimaginably powerful, since it created all matter and energy. Finally, it must be a personal being.
Let me explain this last conclusion. If the Cause existed from eternity past, then logically, the effect would also exist from eternity past. But the universe (the effect) hasn’t existed from eternity past, so the best explanation for this is that the Cause of the universe is a personal being with freedom of will, who choose to create the universe at a specific moment. Thus, we’re brought not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe but to a timeless, immaterial, unimaginably powerful, Personal Creator!
I don’t know about you, that sounds a lot like the God of Bible to me!
Since the cosmos didn’t just appear from nothing, by nothing and it hasn’t existed eternally, there is only one other option—it’s the one articulated in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). In an age of imperial science, nothing could be more certain, clear, or correct. I like the way Abraham Lincoln once put it: “I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”
Conclusion:
I want to encourage everyone go out onto your porch on a clear night and look up into the heavens, gaze into the galaxy surrounding us and stand in awe of the of God of the universe. I also want to prompt you to come back again next week as we probe this subject a little deeper and flip on the light of Creation. If you have a notebook and pen, bring it with you so that you can take notes. If you have friends or family members who are skeptical about God’s existence, bring them with you, too.
Invitation:
In the meantime, the coolest thing about the Creator of the Cosmos is that he has invited you know him personally. He says, “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me” (Jeremiah 29:13 NLT). I want to urge you to do that today and if I can help in any way, please come talk to me while we stand and sing.
