Monday, October 7, 2019

Who Created God?

In an interview featuring Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig the former said a higher intelligence, like God, as the agent responsible for the Universe, is not a satisfactory explanation.  Roger Penrose wants a reason for the higher intellect as well.

Before Edwin Hubble demonstrated redshift in the nineteen-twenties, most people were happy that the Universe had just always been there.  In Stephen Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to Big Questions, he states that with the Law of Gravity in place, the Universe could have just happened.  Now the Law of Gravity had to be there for all time.  Others say that fluctuations in a quantum vacuum or quantum space were responsible for the existence of the Universe.  That means the quantum something must just always have been there.

So it's clear - most people are happy with something just always being there, as long as it's not a higher power to whom they are most likely accountable.  A few come right out and say so, to their credit.  But most are not that honest.  They have to invent a "scientific" reason for their disbelief in a higher power.  Their big question is if God created the Universe, who created God?  Richard Dawkins asks that question frequently.

First, let's get our heads around what a chain of causation is.  Say Y created Z, then the immediate question is who created Y?  Why X of course.  And who created X, you ask.  That's W.  And so on and so on.  If we travel back along this chain of causation, we will eventually reach A.

In our quest to discover who created the Universe, we can start with anything in the Universe and then travel back along this chain of causation.  There are only two possibilities.  This chain can be:
1) Circular
2) Non-circular

If the chain is circular, we will eventually get to something that was created by something that it had created - the chicken came from the egg that the chicken had laid.  That's Wheeler's Participatory Universe.  In short, the Universe was created by intelligence the Universe had created.  This concept has to do with particles acting like waves if not observed but acting like particles if observed.  That means that the act of observing them after their creation made them go back in time and influence their own nature so they act like particles.  That's enough to give anybody a headache and, not surprisingly, this explanation for the Universe's existence hasn't really caught on.

If the chain is not circular, there are only two possibilities:
1) Infinite regression - we never get to the ultimate creator, which will mean nothing can exist.  We know this is not the state of things.
2) Somewhere we run smack-bang into an uncaused cause - the higher intelligence.

There are only these three possibilities:
1) The Participatory Universe possibility
2) Nothing exists because there's no ultimate creator.
3) The uncaused cause is behind everything.

One cannot ask where the Uncaused Cause came from - that's a stupid question.  Just like people were happy to accept that the Universe was eternal and Stephen Hawking was happy to believe that the Law of Gravity was eternal and those of the Quantum faith have no problems with something quantum being eternal we have to accept that there may be an infinite higher intellect.  Not only that, an eternal higher intelligence is by far the most satisfying explanation.  After all, who would want the Law of Gravity or something like a quantum field as their God?

1 comment:

  1. One must also take into consideration the explanation of “time” from the Bible’s point of view. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, it’s all the same. We cannot comprehend “forever” or a state of being where time does not exist and hence what was, is, and will come being one and the same. Now this definitely calls for a blog post! What’s your opinion?

    ReplyDelete