Does the Creation of the Universe Imply the Existence of God?

“Is there a God?  I don't know. 
Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?  I don't know.”

Edward Abbey

God, the Creator

This post will consider the question of God himself.   As discussed in the first post of this series, the question of belief in God first requires a definition of God.

The traditional Christian view is that God is omnipotent; omniscient, infinitely good, and above all, interested in Mankind.  Traditionally, God is believed to be Creator of all things, Sustainer of all things, Redeemer of Souls and Judge of all people.   This post will consider God as Creator of the Universe. 

This image by the infra-red JWST shows the earliest known galaxies in the Universe, 

younger than galaxies imaged by the Hubble telescope.

God as Creator

Of all the arguments for the existence of God, the idea of God the Creator seems the most compelling.  The universe exists.  Science is clear that the universe began in a discrete moment of Creation about 13.8 billion years ago.  At that moment, in a flash of pure energy, all of the matter, energy, forces and dimensions of the universe, including space and time, expanded from a single infinitesimal point.  Scientific theory and astronomical observation agree that the Big Bang event occurred; that discovery and proof is one of the greatest achievements in the history of human thought.  And for all of the complexity of the scientific story, it is amazingly similar to the much simpler account in Genesis: “God said, ‘Let there be light.  And there was light.’” 

If Creation occurred as a distinct event, doesn’t that imply a Creator?  Perhaps it does.

To me, the fact of Creation is the most reasonable of all arguments that God exists.  But what kind of God is implied by this moment of Creation, and what is humanity with regard to God, the Creator of the Universe?

Further Evidence of a Creator:  The Fine-Tuning Problem

Recent thinking in physics and cosmology gives further credence to the idea of a Creator.  There are physical constants which govern the forces in the universe and which bind matter together.  These constants form a set of parameters which allow matter to exist, allow atoms and star systems to form, and allow you and me to exist to contemplate these questions.  It turns that the values of these constants are necessarily very specific.  If any of these constants varied from their known values by even a tiny amount, then the universe would not be filled with molecules and galaxies, but might be filled with ionized plasma or pure energy, or perhaps some other dimensionality of space.  Physicist David Deutsch calls this the “fine-tuning problem”. 

One branch of modern physics deals with the fine-tuning problem by invoking the idea of the multi-verse – an infinity of universes encompassing all possible values of the fundamental physical constants.  Our universe, in this view, is not special.  We are simply one of the universes in which matter, life and bloggers can develop.  We are writing about it because life in this universe is possible.  In this view, our existence simply represents survivorship bias, not a specially constructed universe.  We are writing about the fine-tuned universe because life is only possible in the fine-tuned universe.  The problem with this interpretation is that there is no evidence of other universes.  In the absence of evidence, whether we believe that the universe was purposefully designed for life by a Creator, or is simply a random occurrence is still a question of personal preference.

Does the Existence of a Creator Validate the Traditional Concept of God?

Some philosophers argue that the evidence of a Creator proves the existence of Judeo-Christian God, omniscient, omnipotent and good.  A good example of that thinking can be found in Jim Holt’s interview with Oxford professor Richard Swinburne, in Holt’s book Why Does the World Exist?, chapter six.  But does that necessarily follow?

Does the act of Creation necessarily mean that the Creator is also omniscient, able to foresee all details of Creation through time?  I don’t think so.  The Creator may have started something with no idea how it would turn out. 

Does the act of Creation give the Creator omnipotent powers to intervene in what has been created?  Again, I don’t think so.  In our own earthly endeavors, we sometimes start something which is beyond our ability to influence or control.

And does the act of Creation demonstrate that God is good?  The Gnostic religions provide an interesting interpretation of Creation, which casts doubt on whether the Creator is necessarily good.

Gnosticism is a set of religions which developed in the second century, drawing on a variety of earlier sources, including early Christianity.  Gnostic belief holds that there are two levels of reality, a lower, corrupt physical reality, and a higher, perfect spiritual reality.  This aspect of Gnosticism may derive from the teachings of Plato, who lived six hundred years earlier.  According to Gnostic belief, the physical world was created by the demiurge, a lesser spiritual being than God.  Because the physical world is intrinsically corrupt, the being that created it is also believed to be corrupt.  The demiurge is sometimes considered to be Satan. 

So, upon reflection, the Big Bang and the existence of the universe may suggest the action of a Creator, but there is no evidence that this Creator is the God of Judeo-Christian belief.  The Creator may be good, evil, or indifferent; perhaps even unaware of the existence of mankind’s brief existence on a small planet in an unremarkable galaxy. 

Mankind’s Place in the Universe

For a moment, let’s accept that the Big Bang and the structure of our universe imply the existence of a Creator, and that our universe is deliberately fine-tuned for life, by design.  Let’s consider our place in this universe. 

Hubble Deep Field Image, showing galaxies of the early universe.

The image covers an area of sky equal to about 1/100 of the size of the full moon.

According to current estimates, there are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  Perhaps coincidentally, there are about 100 billion stars in the average galaxy.  The number of planets orbiting stars is still unknown, but the recent discovery of over 4000 planets outside the solar system suggests that planets are relatively common.  For a simple calculation, let’s assume that there is an average of 1 planet per star.  This means that earth is one of about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe.

Let’s also consider how long humans have lived on earth, and have had a relationship with God.  Anatomically modern humans first appeared about 200,000 years ago.  Since the earth is 4.6 billion years old, people appeared only in the last 0.000004^th fraction of the life of the earth.  If we take Earth as an average planet, then humans have occupied 1/23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of the available planet time in the universe. 

As I consider the scale of space and time, in comparison to the scale of humanity, I think it is fair to say that whatever the purpose of the universe is, it isn’t about us. 

The Relationship between Mankind and God, and Revelation of God to Mankind.

The current year of the Jewish calendar is 5775, counted from the believed creation of the world.  The Jewish religion is one of the earliest monotheistic religions, and archeology places the origin of Judaism at about 3500 years ago.  One might ask why God waited until 3500 years ago to reveal himself to mankind.  Perhaps we only know of God’s revelation to humans after the development of writing. 

According to some sources, there are an estimated 4200 distinct religions.  Many of those are now extinct, and an unknown number have been lost without record.  There are artifacts and evidence of ritual dating to as early as 35,000 years ago.  Ancient Egyptian religious traditions were already established 5000 years ago, and persisted for about 3000 years.  Many early religions were polytheistic, animistic or related to ancestors.  There is a bewildering variety of traditions about spirits and gods, and customs of worship.  Modern Western philosophy has tended toward monotheism, exemplified by the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but developed independently by Greek philosophers and by other middle-eastern religions. 

The question is, why is the revelation of God to humans so muddled?  Was the one true revelation of God given to Akhenaten or Zoroaster?  To Abraham or Pythagoras?  To Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, Zeno, Jesus, Mohammed, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard?  Or to any of thousands of other prophets?  If divine guidance is present, shouldn’t we expect a little more consistency?

Certainly, there is sometimes deep wisdom in the teachings of these prophets.  But it seems to me that it is a particularly human kind of wisdom, filled with contradictions and errors, rather than a perfect, divine revelation. 

The Nature of Reality I – The Multiverse

When we consider the question of whether God is the Creator of the Universe, we tend to focus on the question of God.  But we should also consider the question of what God has created.  What is reality?

Modern physics continues to produce ever-stranger evidence for the nature of reality.  Physicist David Deutsch writes convincingly of the evidence for the multiverse, an infinite series of alternate universes composed of all possible events, down to the level of sub-atomic particles.  Deutsch is the world’s leading expert in quantum computing, and is using these ideas in a practical sense to build computers that work.  By analogy, it may not be absolutely necessary to accurately understand electricity in order to have a glowing light bulb, but it certainly helps.  Deutsch’s working quantum computers give credence to his notions about the multiverse.

If Deutsch is correct about the multiverse, everything that can happen has happened, or will happen.  In such a multiverse, how can good or evil exist?  How does the moral choice of mercy or cruelty exist?  Anything good in one version of reality is matched by something bad in an alternate reality.  What is the role of God in this vision?  As creator, he created all possibilities, and all realities.  But in this view, there is no good and no evil, just endless variation across all possibilities.  And the first criterion of our conception of God – that he is good – is void.

The Nature of Reality II – Is Reality Material or Non-material?

A different problem exists with the possibility that reality is non-material.  Perhaps it should make no difference whether matter and energy and human beings are physically real, or some digital representation.  We might consider God the Great Programmer. 

If we are merely a digital representation, it is more plausible that Creation is all about us.  Perhaps a forest is only a statistical model, until a person walks into it.  Perhaps leaves on a tree are only a blur, until we put on our glasses to see individual leaves.  Perhaps the stars were only diffuse light, until the invention of telescopes, and distant galaxies only shapes that approximate the gravitational aggregation of matter into stars.  If so, our very history may be suspect.  We may have been created yesterday with our memories pre-formed.  People who deny evolution sometimes approach this idea, when they say that God planted fossils in the ground as a test of our faith when He created the world 6000 years ago. 

But I have to ask why God would be so deceptive.  If we take the idea that we are special further, perhaps humanity lives on the only inhabitable planet – all the rest may be illusion.  It is solipsism for a species.  Perhaps other races, other people are also illusion.  Perhaps God is only concerned with you, the reader, and I am an illusion typing this blog post.  And the Great Programmer created the illusion of a philosopher to invent the word solipsism for this situation. 

Conclusion

I believe that the idea of solipsism is absurd.  I believe in the physical reality of the universe, the reality of the people around me and in the truthfulness of my senses and scientific instruments.  I do not choose to believe that God would be deceptive towards mankind, in creating illusions of any kind. 

Belief in the physical reality of the universe, in the scale that we observe, leads me to believe that mankind is a small part of the universe.  Mankind has existed for an infintesimally trifling part of the space and time in the universe; I don't think it is all about us.  Mankind is not the greater purpose of Creation, whatever that may be.  The existence of Creation may imply a Creator, but the Creator does not necessarily conform to the Judeo-Christian concept of God -- infinitely good, omniscient and omnipotent.  The Creator may be good, evil or indifferent to mankind; capable of intervention in the world or not.  The Big Bang is perhaps evidence of a Creator, but that Creator does not imply the existence of the Judeo-Christian God.

----
References:

Jim Holt, 2012, Why Does the World Exist, 320 p.

David Deutsch, 2012, The Beginning of Infinity, 496 p.

Alan Lightman, 2013, The Accidental Universe, 176 p.

Richard Preston, 1996, First Light, 275 p.