Impersonal vs Personal forces
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So here we are at our cosmological argument again. I want to just finish with one last thing before we go to lunch. How do we know that this cause is God? Couldn’t the cause be something natural? But here’s the problem with the description of whatever this is. Whatever it is that caused all space, time, and matter, we’re saying these things cannot cause themselves. I cannot cause myself to come into existence. Space cannot cause space to come into existence. It would have to exist first to cause itself. But the problem is, it doesn’t exist yet. See the problem? You can’t get this stuff. You’ve got to work it without having it. So whatever we’re looking at that caused the universe, we would say, first of all, it has to be uncaused. If it’s not uncaused, we’re going to ask, well, what caused it? And we’re going to keep on doing that infinitely. We’ve already seen why we can’t do that.
The second thing we’ve got to ask ourselves is, wow, whatever it is, it seems to be pretty powerful. I’m going to offer one I don’t even have on the wall yet. Whatever this is, whatever it is, it cannot be spatial, because it’s going to create space from nothing. It cannot be the thing it’s creating. So whatever it is, it’s non-spatial. It’s creating space. Oh, it’s also creating time. Okay, so whatever it is, it has to be atemporal. Oh man, it’s also creating matter. Oh, okay, that means whatever it is, it has to be immaterial. So now it turns out we’re looking for the non-spatial, atemporal, immaterial, uncaused, all powerful first cause of the universe. Do you see now what we’re doing? What in the world does that sound like to you? Whatever it is, if nature’s defined by space, time, and matter, it’s not natural. It’s got to at least be extra natural.
I think there’s one more thing though. I think it’s personal. If it’s personal, that’s the game changer. If it’s personal, it’s game over, brainy naturalist. Why do I think it’s personal? I think there’s good philosophical reasons to think it’s personal. First of all, I think it’s personal because the universe is not driven by physics. We used to think it was driven by physics. I don’t believe it is driven by physics. I believe the universe is driven by information, and that’s becoming the conclusion of a lot of naturalists. If it’s driven by information, the problem you have, of course, is information has never ever come from anything other than intelligence. There’s not a single example in the history of science in which information came from anything other than intelligence. In other words, an intelligent source that has to choose between words. That means that is personal. His choice is a distinction of personhood.
But let me give you another way of looking at it. I need you to wrap your heads around this. It’s one last heavy thinking, one last big project. You ready? Then we’re going to go to lunch. Why do I think God is personal? Because there are two kinds of forces in nature. There are impersonal forces and there are personal forces. Whatever the force is that starts the universe, it’s one of these two categories. Does that make sense? Impersonal forces are like gravity. Gravity is not a personal force. If there’s no gravity in this room, everything just floats around. Gravity doesn’t come into the room and go, “Hmm, I think I’m going to apply my force now.” No. Then minute gravity enters the room, you feel its effect. Bingo. The minute gravity enters the room, you feel its effect. As a matter of fact, that’s true for every impersonal force. Every impersonal force, the minute it appears you feel its effect.
Now think about this in terms of the universe. If the cause of the universe is an impersonal force, that means the minute it appeared, you felt its effect. Its effect is the beginning of the universe. So that means the minute the impersonal force appeared, you felt the effect, the beginning of the universe. That means you now know how long the force was there because the minute it here, you felt its effect. That means the cause of the universe can only be as old as the universe. Do you see why that’s so? But there’s the problem. That means we don’t have an internal first cause. We have a finite first cause that’s only as old as the universe itself. And if that’s the case, you’re going to ask, what? What caused it? If on the other hand, the cause of the universe existed independent of the universe and made a choice about starting all of this, now we’ve got a very different kind of force. It can’t be an impersonal force because this force has the ability to make a decision, and that is an attribute of personhood.
This now is sounding more like a personal force and less like an impersonal force. Does that make sense? Now, look, we’re going to have a porch chat tonight at 6:00 so you can bring all your arguments and push back you want to bring. We can talk about it, because we only got a chance to cover very little, really, if you think about it. But this is why I think this description to me, the more and more you look at it, it sounds more and more like what we would say as classic theists. We believe this sounds like God. Now, look what we just did. I want to show you in the scripture where I think some of this actually is before we leave today. I think scripture actually affirms our position on the cosmological argument. Here’s what I mean. Scripture, and this is very unique to Christian scripture, and I’m very familiar with Mormonism, there’s a big difference between the Mormon description of eternity and the Christian description. The Mormon description of the universe and the Christian description of the universe, very different descriptions.
But Psalm 102 says this and I want you to think about it. “In the beginning, you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens,” these terms are used to mean the universe, the cosmos, “are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They will all wear out like a garment.” What is the Psalmist describing? And remember who the Psalmist is, an ancient Israelite who’s been looking at the heavens. You tell me. He says the heavens are going to wear out. What in the world do you think the ancient Israelite is seeing in the stars that makes him believe the heavens are wearing out? People die, things die on earth, but these folks have been looking at the same constellations. We’re still looking at Orion, the Pleiades. We’re still looking at the exact same constellations the Israelites were looking at. Nothing in the heavens has changed from their perspective. Yet this Psalmist says this?
Where would he get this notion? He’s describing the second law of thermodynamics, but why would he think that’s true given he’s never seen any change in the stars? That’s either a pretty cocky, bold assertion or he’s got some inside information. Make sense? You also see this in Isaiah 45, “As I who made the earth and created mankind upon it, my own hand stretched out the heavens. I marshaled their starry host.” You will see this over and over again in the Old Testament. When God is described as creating the heavens, he is said to stretch them. We know we’re in a universe that is expanding, is being stretched. It may just be a figure of speech, but to me, when you see a lot of these things adding up, it just strikes me as odd. Also, you see this in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning,” sounds like we read across it all the time and we make nothing of it. But that first phrase, “In the beginning”, not every theistic worldview says there is a beginning.
Mormonism does not claim there is a beginning. God the father in Mormonism has a father and God’s father has a father and God’s father’s father has a father, and it goes back infinitely. They have an infinite regress problem. They’re in a universe that has no beginning in a lineage of polytheistic gods that have no beginning. It’s a problem. But we don’t have that problem. We actually have a clear depiction of the universe. It says here in this verse from Paul in the New Testament, he describes a time before time began. And, of course, this may just be a figure of speech, and we certainly have used that figure of speech in lots of literature since then, but think about it, not every theistic worldview suggests there is a beginning to time. Mormonism doesn’t suggest that. Lots of Eastern religions don’t suggest this. But we hold to a view of the universe that seems to be what science describes for us.
So we went back to this approach, this approach we call abductive reasoning. Today, we got a chance to do one piece, but the more pieces you put together, the more you have to look and try to explain, how can we be in a universe that has a beginning that appears to at least be fine tuned for life? And also, we have to describe how life emerges in this universe, just naturalistically. By the way, if you’ve ever done research on origin of life studies, you will see what problem this is for naturalists. Also, even Dawkins, probably one of the most aggressive atheists out there, who’s also an evolutionist, says there is at least the appearance of design. He thinks there’s not really a design though. Also, why are we even able to think about these things? Are we just brains or do you have a mind? If you have a mind, where does that come from? If you have free will, where does that come from in a naturalistic perspective, where all you are is matter, physics and chemistry? Where do your free thoughts come from?
You’re really just a set of dominoes one falling over from the other. You have no freedom in that system. It’s called determinism. If naturalism is true, we’re in a deterministic universe in which you don’t even have the freedom to think these thoughts today. These are different things that naturalism has to explain in order to stay inside the room. On the other hand, if the best explanation for these things is outside the room, then theism is the best, most reasonable inference and we can cross off the ones that aren’t as reasonable. Make sense? And that’s how we’re going to come at this and how we make a case for God’s existence. It’s on the basis of many pieces. By the way, I’ll show you after lunch how we build circumstantial cases. I call it “death by a 1,000 paper cuts.” We build them with many pieces and then it’s more reasonable to believe this than the opposite. That is it for this session. We’re three minutes early. I’ve never done that before. Thank you.
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