Apologetics

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Three Greatest Questions about the Origin of the Universe
The phenomenon of Gravitational Waves was first predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, after almost 100 years, the evidence about this theory was announced on 17th March, 2014 by a team of scientist when a radio telescope called BICEP 2 at the South Pole picked up imprints left on the ‘cosmic microwave background’, a soup of elementary particles leftover from the Big Bang.
This announcement aroused an old age question, where did everything come from? But after a few months into this announcement, the methodologies and calculations employed in coming to this conclusion have been called into question by several leading scientific groups. The evidence of the BICEP 2 team is being called into question and a member of the team agreed that they are also now reviewing the evidence presented to the world in a recent interview with one of the leading TV stations in the UK. The drama and inconsistencies about scientific theories does not in any way refute the achievements made by this field of studies. What it reveals is that in the light of God’s word, scientific theories cannot be taken as the truth unless it is in agreement with the truth as presented in God’s word. But this does not also quench our desire to seek answers to the very important questions about the origin of everything. It is quite easy to provide the response to this question by pointing readers out to the book of Genesis but that is not my intention in this section. My intention is to address the question of origin philosophically and also scientifically but also using the truth presented in the Bible as a pointer. In the end, I want to point out how limited human faculties are in adequately exhausting the question of origins in the absence of the knowledge of God.
There are three main presuppositions in addressing the question of origin.
> Did the universe create itself out of nothing?
> Was the universe created by an external power?
> And finally is the universe eternal?
The law of non-contradiction plainly indicates a statement cannot ultimately be true and false at the same time. It is either true or false. And if at this point you disagree with the statement I have just made above, then that indicates that you hold the view that the statement I have made is false and not entirely true. This is the law of non-contradiction at work!! These three main questions about origin of life cannot all be true, it is either one of them is true and the other two false or all of them are false. They all cannot simply be true because they all claim exclusivity.
Did the Universe create itself out of Nothing; Ex Nihilo?
Throughout this section, the term ‘universe’ is interpreted according to Webster’s dictionary definition, which is, ‘the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated i.e. cosmos.’
When C.S Lewis was asked the question, what do you mean by ‘nothing’ in a debate, he gave the definition given by Aristotle hundreds of years ago, he answered, ‘nothing, is that which rocks dream about.’ In our observation about this universe, we have come to the realization that nothing has no potential to create anything. The question is, if ‘nothing’ as defined by Aristotle cannot create anything, then why is there something instead of nothing? This clearly indicates how deficient the idea that the Universe created itself out of nothing is. In other words, if the creation of the universe was left in the hands of ‘nothing’ and you go to sleep and wake after several billions of years, you shall be surprised to find nothing.
Is the universe eternal?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states, among other things, that the universe is running out of usable energy. (see Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1992 pp. 32-33). What this means is that, the universe cannot be eternal because then it would require an infinite usable energy. It is like the unbeliever who asked the Pastor saying, ‘have you ever considered how much gas is needed by God to create an eternal hell fire?’ The first law of Thermodynamics also states that that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. (see Robert Jastrow; Until the sun dies, 1977 pp. 32). Now let us look at it this way, if the total amount of gas in your generator is finite (first law) and whenever it is running it consumes gas (second law), would your generator be still running if it had begun running in an infinitely long time ago? No of course not. It would have run out of gas by now. In the same way, the universe would be out of energy by now if it had been running from all eternity. But here we are, the lights are still on, so the universe must have begun sometime in the finite past. That is to say, the universe is not eternal, so if the universe is not eternal, then off course it must have begun at some point in the past. This brings us to the last question about origins. Was the Universe created by an external force? Read more about this in my book; Answers to Life’s Foundational Questions. Subscribe to my Amazon page below for more titles.

Writer
G. K. Sarpong ([email protected])
www.amazon.com/author/gksarpong

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