The $64 million question about the Big Bang is, what caused the bang? And I've heard all kinds of people say, we don't need to answer that question. That goes beyond science and that goes into the realm of philosophy or theology or religion or whatever.
And I say, wait a minute. When you're going to give an explanation for all of reality and you pin all of your hopes upon this concept of a Big Bang, why don't you answer the question, what causes the Big Bang? And it's a cop-out academically and intellectually to say, I'm not going to go there. If you're going to postulate this thesis for the origin of everything, then you're begging the question, what it is that is the outside force that causes this monumental change in your little point of singularity. The Big Bang theory is held to by many people today.
It's assumed in classrooms, and most students don't take the time to press the theory to see the many problems with it. This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and we're concluding five days in R.C. Sproul's series Defending Your Faith. Today is the final day.
You'll hear messages from this series, so it's also the final day that you can request the series for yourself. Hear Dr. Sproul explain the rational, philosophical, and biblical arguments for the existence of God and see how apologetics can bring you comfort and confidence as you live out your faith in a faithless world. Learn more and request your copy at renewingyourmind.org. So how do you respond to those who agree that there is a self-existent and eternal something, but they believe that that something is the universe itself and not God?
Here's Dr. Sproul. We return now to our study of Defending Our Faith through the science of apologetics, and we've been looking at the four alternatives to explaining reality as we encounter it now. We looked, first of all, at the possibility that everything is an illusion, and borrowing heavily from the arguments of Rene Descartes, we eliminated that option, and we spent quite a bit of time looking at various theories of self-creation, all of which collapse by their own weight because they are at the center of their thinking, irrational and anti-reason. We got rid of that one, and we noticed that the two that are left both contain the idea of self-existence, and in our last study, I pointed out that if something exists not only possible but rationally necessary, and then I made the distinction between that which is rationally necessary and that which is ontologically necessary, and I was saying that whatever it is that is the self-existent, eternal something must be not only rationally necessary but ontologically necessary as well, and I said that that square root of self-existence and rationally necessary but ontologically necessary as well, and I said that that squares with the Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature of God. However, I mentioned quite in passing that there are those who agree that something must be self-existent and eternal, but they argue that that self-existent, eternal something must be self-existent and eternal, and I want to take a look at that briefly in our discussions today.
You know, it's certainly not a law of science. It still remains a theory, and the theories of origins of the universe tend to undergo changes and sometimes revolutionary upheavals from time to time. In a lifetime, we saw the advent of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, which was not accepted at all when I was a high school student but now has pretty much won the day, although there are alterations within the scientific community with respect to views regarding the so-called Big Bang. But in simple terms, and please don't respond with more sophisticated definitions of that because I realize there are more sophisticated definitions, but in simple terms what you often hear in terms of describing the Big Bang is that there was a time in past history – 15, 18 billion years ago, give or take a few billion – that at that time all that existed was what is described by some as a point of singularity. And this point of singularity involved the compaction of all matter and all energy that may currently be found in the universe. That is, all of the stuff of reality, at least in its nascent form, was compressed into this infinitesimal point of singularity. And that this point of singularity existed from all eternity in a state of organization.
That is, it was compacted in a steady, organized, stable way. And then at some point, 15 to 18 billion years ago, this point of singularity, for reasons unknown to us, exploded. And out of that explosion came the combining together of certain gases and elements and so on to form other gases and to form the material universe as we know it today. Some have tried to trace the origin of the universe back to the last nanosecond of existence going right after the actual explosion itself. And again, the theory is that the universe now is in a state where everything is moving from organization to disorganization or equilibrium. Just as when something explodes and things move out from the center, they move away from their point of compaction or condensation into an equilibrium state of disorganization. That's why people say, you know, that the universe is wearing down and at some point will implode into some black hole or some such thing. So the idea here is that at one time, whatever was, was in a state of organization, but now the basic laws of thermodynamics indicate that everything is moving towards a state of disorganization.
Well, that raises all kinds of questions. The first question is, if the state of nature is to move inherently towards disorganization, you have to ask the question how it became organized in the first place. And we would have to say that if it is moving toward disorganization, that it is moving from organization and that organization was the original state of things, which is what the Big Bang suggests. Then of course the other law that we have to wrestle with is the simple elementary law of inertia, and the law of inertia teaches that things in motion tend to remain at motion unless acted upon by an outside force. And things that are at rest tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. This for example, law of inertia is what makes golf so difficult, and yet what makes golf possible. It makes it difficult because every golfer I know always wants to find the secret where he can hit the ball further than he currently is able to hit it. If he can hit it 200 yards off the tee, he wants to hit it 220, if he hits it 220, he wants to hit it 250, if he hits it 250, he wants to be able to hit it 300. Now, what happens is the ball begins at rest, it's placed upon the tee, and the golfer himself is at rest, and then he walks up to the ball, and the first thing he does is address the ball. He says, good morning ball, and he takes his club, and then he swings the club, he sets the club in motion, and the club is in motion now, and that which is in motion hits that which is at rest and propels it down the fairway. But while the ball is moving, it is finding resistance from outside forces of the weight of the atmosphere, the friction of air against it, it lands on the ground, and it won't roll forever because the friction of the ground impedes the continued progress of the ball, and so finally the ball comes to rest again. Now, fortunately, there are these outside forces working against our efforts to keep the ball in motion, because if there were no outside forces, and we set the golf ball in motion, the drive would go forever, and it would be the end of the game, you'd lose the ball, and there'd be no way of scoring in the game at all.
So there's a sense in which the outside forces, even though they are frustrating our efforts to hit the ball further, nevertheless because they frustrate it to a finite degree, makes it possible for the game to be played. But the idea, again, is things at rest tend to remain at rest unless some outside force is applied to it, or once it gets moving, it's going to stay moving unless its motion is retarded by some other outside force. Now, the $64 million question about the Big Bang is, what caused the bang?
And I've heard all kinds of people say, we don't need to answer that question. That goes beyond science, and that goes into the realm of philosophy or theology or religion or whatever. And I say, wait a minute, when you're going to give an explanation for all of reality, and you pin all of your hopes upon this concept of a Big Bang, why don't you answer the question, what causes the Big Bang? Scientific theory is innately concerned with matters of causality. And this is the big question of causality on what causes the Big Bang.
And it's a cop-out academically and intellectually to say, I'm not going to go there. If you're going to postulate this thesis for the origin of everything, then you're begging the question, what it is that is the outside force that causes this monumental change in your little point of singularity, that causes this to move, to cause reality to change from the state of organization towards disorganization? Biblical Christianity has the answer to that readily available, that this is exactly what is involved in the doctrine of creation, that we have a self-existent eternal being who has the power of motion, who has the ability to move that which is not moving. That's what Aristotle understood in all antiquity when he talked about the unmoved mover, that he understood that there has to be an origin to motion, and that which has the origin of motion must have the power of motion within itself, just as it must have the power of being within itself, and that's why we attribute these attributes to God. But again, we've answered briefly that objection, but what about the idea that this matter that is compacted there in the Big Bang point of singularity, how about the matter itself or the energy itself being the self-existent eternal being?
Because this is really what's assumed in materialism, that the universe itself is not 15 to 18 billion years old, only the present motion of the universe goes back to that point in time, but actually the ingredients or the stuff of reality is eternal. And I'll say, well, what is it in the universe that is eternal? Is it this piece of chalk in its individuated form?
My car keys in the individuated form? Is it the sun in its individuated form? Is it me as a person in my individuated form? And of course, materialists will say, don't be ridiculous. You know that those are all manufactured or things that came into being that it previously did not exist. No, we're not saying that the sun is eternal. We're not saying that you are eternal. We're not saying that the chalk is eternal or that the car keys are eternal. We know that, and we know that in the material world, the chief characteristic of matter is its mutability, that it changes, and it changes from one state into another state so that it is not stable eternally.
And therefore, it is in process. It is in a state of becoming and not in a state of pure being. So anything that we find within the universe that is changing, that manifests contingency, that is dependent or derived from anything else cannot be the ultimate core of being of the universe that we're describing here in terms of self-existent, eternal something.
But here's what the materialists will say. They will say, okay, we grant that this eraser or this piece of chalk is not the eternal reality that is self-existent, but it is made up of elements that are generated by a self-existent eternal something. But that this self-existent eternal something, contrary to you religious people, is not transcendent, but rather it is imminent. That is, you don't have to appeal to something above and beyond this world to account for this world, and I mean by the world, the universe.
Because what Christianity teaches, what Judaism teaches, what Islam teaches is that outside of the whole realm of the creaturely universe stands this self-existent eternal being that we call God, who is the Creator of all things, and in Him all things live and move and have their being. And so we say that one of the chief characteristics about God is that He transcends the universe. Now the materialist comes along and says, yes, I understand that there has to be something that is self-existent and eternal that must have the power of being within itself.
I don't want to retreat, as many of my colleagues do, to an idea of self-creation. I grant that that's absurd. So we have to have a self-existent eternal something, but I'm not going to grant you, O Christian, that this self-existent eternal something is God, that He's a transcendent being. He is part of the universe, or it is part of the universe, or the sum total of the universe. But the sum total of the universe is, does that include this piece of chalk?
Is this part of it? Well, if we're going to say it's the sum total of the universe, then we have to include this piece of chalk, and we know this piece of chalk is not self-existent and eternal because this piece of chalk can disintegrate. I can break it in half. I can reduce it.
I can change it. It goes through a process where you say, right, its individuated particular existence right now is contingent and all that, but underlying it somehow is some universal or elemental pulsating force that is the cause of the existence that everything that is. And this is this little as yet undiscovered core or pulsating center of universe that is self-existent and eternal. This is the part that accounts for the explosion of that point of singularity, and all of the power of being is compacted and compressed into this little point, and then everything else later on ultimately is generated through the power that comes from this pulsating source. Now, notice I use the word here, generated.
That's why the first book of the Old Testament is called Genesis, coming from the Greek word panau, which means to be, to become, or to happen. To make something come into existence is to generate it, to cause it to be. So here we have this isolated, hidden, unknown point within the universe that is the pulsating core of all reality that generates everything from the beginning. And so the point is there is no God who lives outside the universe, who's above and beyond the universe, but that this self-existent, eternal, generating power is part of the universe itself. That's the immanentistic view that's very popular in certain circles in science and in philosophy today that, yes, there is a self-existent, eternal power without which there can be nothing. But why do we say it has to be outside the universe?
That's the challenge they come to us. Why do they say it has to transcend the universe? Why can't it be a part of the universe itself? And my answer to that is it can be a part of the universe itself depending on how you define universe. If you mean by universe, by the word universe, all that is, and if God is, then God would be subsumed under the term universe because it describes all that is.
If you mean by universe, the created universe, then obviously you can't subsume God into the meaning of the term universe, but you have to distinguish between God and the universe. And the distinction that we make in theology about God is that God transcends the universe. But what we mean, and this is critical that you get this, what we mean by transcendence is not a description of God's location. Transcendence is not a geographical description. We're not saying that God is transcendent in the sense that He lives somewhere out there east of the sun and west of the moon. What is meant by transcendence in philosophy and theology is something is a higher order of being. That is, rather than transcendence being a geographical description, beloved, it is an ontological description. When we say that God is transcendent, we mean to say simply He is a higher order of being than we are. He is a higher order of being than this chalk is. He's a higher order of being than the sun is. He's a higher order of being than pure energy is. That's what we mean by transcendence, that God is a higher order of being.
We don't care where He lives. If you're saying that there is some unknown, invisible, immeasurable, pulsating point or core within the boundaries of the universe that is self-existent and eternal from which everything else is generated ultimately, what you are saying is that there is something here that transcends everything else out here because you must distinguish between this being and all the derivative, dependent, derived, contingent things that are generated by and from it. Now we're just arguing over its name, whether the name of it is X or Yahweh. But no matter how you slice it, you're forced back to a self-existent, eternal being from whose being and from whose power all things come into existence.
Aren't we thankful that by His grace we know this self-existent, eternal being? This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and that was R.C. Sproul from his series Defending Your Faith. Did you know that Renewing Your Mind is heard every week in English and Spanish, and that Ligonier Ministries has active and sustained ministry in 17 global languages and counting? All of this is made possible thanks to your generosity. And when you make a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, in support of the global outreach of Ligonier Ministries, we'll send you this 32-message series on DVD and give you lifetime digital access to all the messages and the study guide. Your support also helps equip teenagers to defend their faith through our all-day youth apologetics events called Always Ready. To make your donation today, by calling 800-435-4343, visiting renewingyourmind.org, or clicking the link in the podcast show notes. But be quick, because this offer ends at midnight. Be sure to join us Monday as Michael Reeves introduces us to the Lord's work during the English Reformation. That's Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind. God bless you.
