|
The idea that something is not created by anything, that
it comes out of nothing, is very different from the idea that it creates itself.
It is strange therefore to find some scientists speaking about them as if they
are one and the same thing. It is not only Davies who confused these two
notions as we can see in the quotation just cited, but others also. Taylor tells us that electrons can create themselves out of nothing in the manner Baron
Munchausen saved himself from sinking into a bog by pulling himself up by his
bootstraps.
It is as if
these particles special particles are able to pull themselves up by their own
bootstraps (which in their case are the forces between them) to create
themselves from nothing as Baron Munchausen saves himself without visible means
of support...This bootstrapping has been proposed as a scientifically
respectable scenario for creating a highly specialized Universe from nothing. (Taylor, 46)
Is it science or science fiction that we are being told here?
Taylor knows and says that Munchausen’s is only a story; what he claimed to
have done is in fact something that is physically impossible to do. In spite
of this, Taylor wants to explain by his idea something that is not only real,
but is of the utmost importance, and thus ends up saying something that is more
absurd than Munchausen’s fictitious story of saving himself by pulling up his
bootstrap. At least Munchausen was talking about things that were already in
existence. But Taylor’s special particles act even before they are created! They
“pull themselves by their own bootstraps... to create themselves from nothing.”!
False Gods
The third alternative to attributing the creation of
things to the true God, is to attribute them to false gods. Thus many atheists
try to attribute the creation of temporal things to other things which are
themselves temporal (as we said before). Davies says:
The idea of a
physical system containing an explanation of itself might seem paradoxical to the
layman but it is an idea that has some precedence in physics. While one may
concede, (ignoring quantum effects) that every event is contingent, and depends
for its explanation on some other event, it need not follow that this series
either continues endlessly, or ends in God. It may be closed into a loop. For
example, four events, or objects, or systems, E1, E2, E3, E4, may have the
following dependence on each other: (Davies, 47)
_-_Room_for_God_001.jpg)
But this is a clear example of a very vicious circle. Take
any one of these supposed events or objects or systems. Let it be E1, and ask
how it came about . The answer is: it was caused by E4, which preceded it; but
what is the cause of E4? It is E3; and the cause of E3 is E2, and of E2 is E1.
So the cause of E4 is E1 because it is the cause of its causes. Therefore E4
is the cause of E1 and E1 is the cause of E4 which means that each one of them
precedes and is preceded by the other. Does that make any sense? If these
events, etc. are actual existents, then their coming into being could not have
been caused by them the way Davies supposes it to be. Their ultimate cause
must lie outside this vicious circle.
And the philosopher Passmore advises us to:
Compare the following:
(1) every event has a cause;
(2) to know that an event has happened one must
know how it came about.
The first
simply tells us that if we are interested in the cause of an event, there will
always be such a cause for us to discover. But it leaves us free to start and
stop at any point we choose in the search for causes; we can, if we want to, go
on to look for the cause of the cause and so on ad infinitum , but we need not
do so; if we have found a cause, we have found a cause, whatever its cause may
be. The second assertion, however, would never allow us to assert that we know
that an event has happened ... For if we cannot know that an event has taken
place unless we know the event that is its cause, then equally we cannot know
that the cause-event has taken place unless we know its cause, and so on ad
infinitum. In short, if the theory is to fulfill its promise, the series must
stop somewhere, and yet the theory is such that the series cannot stop anywhere
– unless, that is, a claim of privilege is sustained for a certain kind of
event, e.g. the creation of the Universe. (Pasture, 29)
If you think about it, there is no real difference
between these two series as Ibn Taymiyyah clearly explained a long time ago (Ibn
Taymiyyah, 436-83). One can put the first series like this: for an event to
happen, its cause must happen. Now if the cause is itself caused, then the
event will not happen unless its cause event happens, and so on, ad infinitum.
We will not therefore have a series of events that actually happened, but a
series of no events. And because we know that there are events, we conclude
that their real ultimate cause could not have been any temporal thing or series
of temporal things whether finite or infinite. The ultimate cause must be of a
nature that is different from that of temporal things; it must be eternal. Why
do I say ‘ultimate’? Because, as I said earlier, events can be viewed as real
causes of other events, so long as we acknowledge them to be the incomplete and
dependent causes they are, and as such not the causes that explain the coming
into being of something in any absolute sense, which is to say that they cannot
take the place of God.
What is the relevance of this talk about chains after
all? There might have been some excuse for it before the advent of the Big
Bang, but it should have been clear to Davies in particular that there is no
place for it at all in the world-view of a person who believes that the
universe had an absolute beginning.
The fact that every thing around us is temporal and that
it could not have been created except by an eternal Creator has been known to
human beings since the dawn of their creation, and it is still the belief of
the overwhelming majority of people all over the world.
It would, therefore, be a mistake to get from this paper the impression that
it hinges the existence of God upon the truth of the Big Bang theory. That
certainly is not my belief; neither was it the purpose of this paper. The main
thrust of the paper has rather been that if an atheist believes in the big bang
theory, then he cannot avoid admitting that the Universe was created by God. This,
in fact, is what some scientists frankly admitted, and what others hesitantly
intimated to.
There is no
ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized
into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in
eternity? ... It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo, Divine will
constituting nature from nothingness. (Jastro,122)
As to the
first cause of the universe in the context of expansion, that is left to the
reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him. (Jasrow,122)
This means
that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen
indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of
time. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun
in just this way except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like
us. (Hawking,127)
References
Al Ghazali, Abu Hamid, Tahafut al Falasifa,
edited by Sulayman Dunya, Dar al Ma'arif, Cairo, 1374 (1955)
Berman, David, A History of Atheism in Britain, London and New York, Routledge, 1990.
Boslough, John, Stephen Hawking's Universe: an
Introduction to the most remarkable Scientist of our Time, Avon Books, New York, 1985.
Bunge, Mario, Causality: The Place of the Causal
Principle in Modern Science, The world publication Co. New York, 1963
Carter, Stephen L. The Culture of Disbelief: How
American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. Basic Books,
Harper Collins, 1993.
Concise Science Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984
Davies, Paul, (1) The Cosmic Blueprint: New
Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe, Simon &
Schuster Inc, London, 1989. (2) God & The New Physics, The
Touchstone Book, New York, 1983.
Fritzsch, Harald, The Creation of Matter: The
Universe From Beginning to End, Basic Books Inc Publishers, New York, 1984.
Ibn Rushd, al Qadi Abu al Walid Muhammad Ibn Rush, Tahafut
at-Tahafut, edited by Sulayman Dunya, Dar al Ma'arif , Cairo, 1388 (1968.)
Ibn Taymiya, Abu al Abbas Taqiyuddin Ahmad Ibn Abd al
Halim, Minhaj al Sunna al Nabawiya , edited by Dr. Rashad Salim, Imam
Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyad, AH 1406 (1986)
Jastrow, Robert, God And The Astronomers, Warner
Books, New York, 1978.
Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time,
Hoyle, Fred, The Nature of the Universe, Mentor Books, New York, 1955.
Kirkpatrick, Larry D. and Wheeler, Gerald F. Physics, A
World View, New York, Saunders College Publishing, 1992.
Newton, Sir Isaac, Optics, Dover Publications
Inc. New York, 1952.
Pasture, J. A, Philosophical Reasoning, New York, 1961.
Taylor, John, When the Clock Struck Zero: Science's
Ultimate Limits, Picador, London, 1993
|
