The Cosmological

Argument:
does the universe require God as its
explanation?
The questions surrounding the cause of the universe, God and more recently
The Big Bang, have arguably confounded and perplexed humanitys best
offerings to the pursuits of its answers in the realms of cosmology, religion and
philosophy for centuries ever since we humans looked up to the stars and asked
the fundamental question, How did the universe come into being? One of the
most long standing religion sided arguments is the famous, Cosmological
Argument, which in its various dialects has been utilized by religious people for
hundreds of years like William Lane Craig and Richard Copleston without, so it
seems, a completely fulfilling response from those employing the various Big
Bang stemmed theories employed by most physicists and atheists like Stephen
Hawking and Bertrand Russell, however new theories are as ever probing at the
frontiers of knowledge while breaking down older, established answers in
religion.
Georges Lemaitres logical extrapolation that the universe began at a singularity
(The Big Bang), building on the discoveries of red-shifted galaxies that were in
fact speeding away from each other by Edwin Hubble in 1924, and Einsteins
Theory of General Relativity in 1915, was huge both for religion and for
cosmology, as it proved that the universe had a beginning, contradictory to the
steady-state model percolating through cosmology at the time where the
universe was eternal. Arguably, this proves there to be the necessity for a deity
as is argued by the cosmological argument, which proposes that the universe is
bound by causation; that is to say, that anything that happens or exists must
have a cause; there is always a link between two events, which is justifiable with
empirical evidence from daily life (e.g. we eat because we need glucose and
proteins for respiration which gives us energy to live and to grow). The universe
would not make logical sense nor be empirically how it actually is if the nontangible, non-negotiable notion of causation was not upheld 100%, making it
inherent in the very fabric of spacetime (as far as we now know). The concept of
causation is applicable to every contingent event, which consequently concludes
that everything has a cause, and therefore that cause has itself a cause as well,
and so on. Extrapolating back, this means that there must have been an original
cause, which was per se not contingent (has no cause), which, argue religious
scholars, must be God as there is no other prominent figure that fits this criteria
which suggests that an omnipotent, transcendent God as described by
Abrahamic religions is the original cause of the Big Bang, and hence the
universe, the earth and life in its entirety.
However, as with any philosophical notion or argument, this is just one side to
the argument. Weaknesses are arguably prevalent in the Cosmological
Argument, one being the notion of causation being an intrinsic part of the
universe. An theist would argue that, if everything has a cause, which indeed is
true, how and why can we assume that God is not contingent, and if God is, then
what caused God. And what caused the causer of God? Saying that God is not
contingent purely on the basis of books like the Bible or Quran, an atheist

might argue. Instead of employing a creator, cosmology and physics have many
theories floating around, all of which are derivatives of the Big Bang, that
although yet to be proven, have as much of a chance of considering God
obsolete and redundant in the construction of the universe as their opposing
arguments that require God because, unlike their opposing counterparts, could
theoretically in the next few generations be proven by experiments such as the
double-as-powerful LHC at CERN, Geneva back into operation in 2015. However,
in progressing through the scientific models of creation, one thing is worth
bearing in mind: none of the scientific explanations I will write about disprove
God, for that is impossible to do because of the fluidity and flexibility Gods
attributes have, and due to the fact that God is built upon belief, which can
ultimately, for some people, negate fact. All these explanations do is negate the
necessity for Gods existence, which is important to bear in mind, as it does not
disprove God whatsoever.
The first, and arguably most simple theory is one proposed by many Physicists of
our era, like Stephen Hawking but also Bertrand Russells main argument in his
famous debate against Richard Copleston on the cause of the universe. Russell,
and indeed many others, concede that they do not know what caused the
universe, but say that actually, because space and time came into existence
during or indeed after the Big Bang, therefore the concept of before the Big
Bang simply does not exist as before means to be further back in time, yet
before the Big Bang, time itself did not exist, and neither did space. Indeed,
argues Hawking in his famous new book, The Grand Design, pointing or
imagining to a time before the Big Bang is like pointing North of the North Pole;
both are intrinsically wrong however we should not let the confinements of our
brains and imagination force us to consider a causer. Although we cannot
physically imagine something coming out of nothing, the mathematics strongly
justify the explanation that, there simply was no before. This negates the need
for a creator, however it does not per se deny one if there was one.
Another theory loosely attached to the Big Bang Theory is the Oscillating
Universe Theory, which suggests that the Big Bang was, in fact the result of the
universe before collapsing in on itself before due to the pull of its on gravity
once expansion slowed down. This theory predicts that the same will happen in
this time-phase of universe as well, with the universe continue to expand, but
with the dilution of a fixed dark-energy forcing the universe to expand,
eventually slow down and start shrinking exponentially under the pull of the
galaxies gravity unto singularity, when Big Bang 2.0 would occur. The
weaknesses in this theory are distinctly apparent what caused the first Big
Bang, or was it God?
Other theories include string theory, and its popular unifier M-Theory which is,
for modern cosmologists, a very exciting theory with in theory should be correct,
but is yet to be tested, as the LHC is currently undergoing major performance
and power improvements. In addition, the notion that the infinitesimally small
particle or whatever it was created out of nothing is not so far fetched, and is
seen often in quantum mechanics with electrons, quarks, etc., hence potentially
a quantum fluctuation might have created a super-particle, the singularity
which then inflated, resulting in the universe as we no know it after 13.8 billion
years, once again ruling out the need for a creator.
To conclude, to answer the original question, does the universe require God as
its explanation? personally I think the answer is no, citing theories that
spacetime was created in the Big Bang, hence there was no before, or the
potential for quantum fluctuations to be the trigger in causing something from

nothing, and being a part of the obscure realm of Quantum Mechanics, the
cornerstone for 21st Century Physics, some very interesting results might come
through in this generation alone.
Aditya Goel 4L