Last time, in this space<\/a>\u00a0we talked about the simplicity of the First Cause Argument for the existence of God.\nThis very simple insight is so simple that a lot of people who dislike it have spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways to avoid it.\u00a0 Some people think they can escape the logic of it by supposing that our universe is just one bubble in an infinite foam of other bubbles called the Multiverse, or that some collision between two other universes produced this one.\u00a0 But this is, of course, mere mystification by multiplication and only pushes the problem back since our contingent universe doesn\u2019t somehow stop being contingent if you say there are million or a trillion\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0contingent universes (for which, by the way, we have absolutely no evidence).<\/p>\nAll it means is that the problem got bigger, since you could suppose there is an\u00a0infinite<\/em>\u00a0number of other contingent universes crashing into each other and you still don\u2019t have an answer to the question \u201cWhy is there\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0contingent universe, whether one or a zillion?\u201d At best, all the above is just adding more boxcars to the train, not giving us an Engine.<\/p>\nAnother proposal for getting around the problem comes from Stephen Hawking, who is a fine physicist but an amateur philosopher.\u00a0 He declares:<\/p>\n
As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.<\/p>\n
Hawking\u2019s trouble is that he claims to give us (with his right hand) a universe that appears spontaneously \u201cfrom nothing\u201d.\u00a0 But then with his left hand, he actually gives us a universe that comes from \u201claws of gravity and quantum theory\u201d.<\/p>\n
In short, he\u2019s not really giving us a universe that comes from\u00a0nothing<\/em>, because laws of gravity and quantum theory aren\u2019t nothing.\u00a0 They are something.\u00a0 And they, like all the rest of contingent nature, beg the question, \u201cWhy is there gravity and a quantum vacuum of elegantly fine-tuned physical laws which has a fluctuation from which all of time, space, matter, and energy emerge?\u201d Hawking has not really provided an argument for creation from nothing because he does not understand what \u201cnothing\u201d means.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nMuch more here.<\/a>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2026is up over at The Catholic Weekly: Last time, in this space\u00a0we talked about the simplicity of the First Cause Argument for the existence of God. This very simple insight is so simple that a lot of people who dislike it have spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways to avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[836],"class_list":["post-105438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-weekly-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\n
Part Six of my Series on God the Father<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...is up over at The Catholic Weekly: Last time, in this space\u00a0we talked about the simplicity of the First Cause Argument for the existence of God. This\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/08\/part-six-of-my-series-on-god-the-father.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Part Six of my Series on God the Father\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"...is up over at The Catholic Weekly: Last time, in this space\u00a0we talked about the simplicity of the First Cause Argument for the existence of God. 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