#712 Questions from a Sceptical Seeker

Dr. craig’s response

Thank you for your kind remarks! I’m so glad that you’ve re-engaged with the argument. Let’s take your questions in order.

1) “How can the cause of the universe be eternal if it is without space-time? Isn’t eternality a temporal concept?” No. Eternality is the property of being without beginning or end. Now think about it. There are two ways to be without beginning or end. One way is to exist throughout beginningless and endless time. The other way is to transcend time altogether. A timeless being has neither beginning nor end. In fact, this is the traditional understanding of divine eternity.

2) “If we know through observation of the universe that logic is applicable in the universe, can we then be certain that logic is applicable sans the universe, i.e. to its cause?” The antecedent of your question is false. Logic, like mathematics, is not an empirical science. This is not a controversial matter. The logical rules of inference are a priori truths known apart from experience. For example, if p implies q, and it is the case that p, then, necessarily, it is the case that q. The conclusion follows necessarily from the premisses. (I suspect that when people say logic applies only to our universe, they don’t know what they are talking about; they mean by “logic” something like common sense, not the logical rules of inference.) 

3) “How can one be certain that causation applies sans the universe?” In addition to the observational evidence supporting the causal principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause, I’ve offered two philosophical arguments on behalf of the principle which are metaphysical, not empirical, in nature. (1) Something cannot come from nothing. This is a metaphysical first principle as old as philosophy itself. Being comes only from being. Therefore anything that comes into being has to have a cause. (2) If things could come into being without a cause, then it is inexplicable why just anything and everything doesn’t come into being without a cause. Think about it. There can’t be anything about a thing’s nature that allows it to come into being without a cause, since it doesn’t exist before it comes into being. So why doesn't this happen with everything? Notice that allowing things to come into being without a cause would destroy science.

“Tensed language is needed to refer to causal chains, and, therefore, causality is probably bound by temporality - - and thus, the universe.” The initial claim is false, as is evident by the adherence to causal chains among philosophers and physicists who do not believe in objective temporal becoming but embrace a 4-dimensional spacetime realism, according to which tense and temporal becoming are subjective illusions of human beings. Such persons still trace, e.g., casual chains of biological evolution or causal chains of galaxy formation. In any case God’s creating the universe could be simultaneous with the universe’s coming into being, so there’s no problem if causation is “bound by temporality.”

“Doesn’t simultaneity presuppose temporality and, therefore, not imply the possibility of timelessness?” Right! I appeal to simultaneous causation to establish the possibility that God’s creating the universe is simultaneous with (i.e., at the same moment of time as) the universe’s coming into being. Indeed, how could they be temporally separated events? (N.B. that the kalām cosmological argument allows God to exist temporally prior to creation in a sort of undifferentiated time in which seconds and hours and years do not exist, though my preferred view is that God is timeless sans the universe and temporal since the moment of creation.)

These questions are fascinating, aren’t they? I find that theism is so improving to the mind, stretching it beyond its normal confines. I’m glad you’ve chosen to engage such questions once more; you’ll be a deeper person for the effort—and who knows what else you might find?