God, Math, and Existence

Who or what created numbers? The Big Bang? God? I don’t really know that it matters. Now, before my Christian brethren get ready to lynch me as defecting from Theism or creationism, let me explain myself. When I’m talking about numbers, that is not the same as talking about information. There’s really only one explanation for information, and that is intelligence. Numbers themselves are simple abstract concepts. You can have two cars or chicken wings, for instance, but you cannot possess the number two all by itself. You cannot interact with the concept of “two”. We call objects, matter, energy, and so forth concrete objects. (Not to be confused with concretes, which are a very tasty treat found at Ted Drewes.) Anyway, besides being abstract, numbers also happen to be very necessary to our universe. They have to exist as a logical consequence of things (matter, energy, people, objects, etc) simply existing. They are, in a sense, uncreated. No matter how you think the universe got here, neither God nor a cosmic hiccup intentionally produced numbers. Now all of the things that numbers represent- almost- were created at some point in time. Even naturalism’s strongest adherents accept this as fact. Numbers are different, as is the whole of mathematics itself. Numbers exist because they have to.

Now, most people who are Theists believe in the self-existence of God. We believe that God exists in the same way that mathematics exists. I don’t need to explain how He exists or where He came from, really. Like numbers, the God of the Bible is self-existent. Christians do not believe in a contingent god, one that needs an explanation for how he came to be. Christians believe in a God Who is absolutely necessary for existence to even have meaning. Created gods, as John Lennox has pointed out, are a delusion, and I don’t know anybody who believes in a god who needed reason for being. Who needs to worship a being that is dependent on another being for its existence? Ought we not to worship the greater of the two, as that will be who is really in control? If the cosmos spawned God somehow, ought not we to worship the cosmos? In Christianity, God is- by definition- necessary and uncreated. If God exists, my atheist friends, He exists because of Who He is. It is the nature of His being, so to speak. Before atheists, agnostics, and Christians can hope to discuss beliefs, they must agree on the definition of the terms, and atheists and agnostics must understand what a Christian means when he says the word “God.” After proper definitions are provided, I believe we can actually accomplish something.

Nobody and Nothing

One of the most memorable parts of Homer’s Odyssey is when Odysseus and his men land on the island where Polyphemus the cyclops lives. They are captured and are doomed to be eaten by Polyphemus, but Polyphemus tells Odysseus he will eat him last if he tells the giant his name. Odysseus tells the cyclops that his name is “Nobody”. Since the cyclops was drinking anyway, he doesn’t think much of the name and falls asleep. Odysseus and his men gouge out the eye of the cyclops, but the cyclops is unable to explain to the other giants what has happened because he keeps shouting “Nobody has hurt me!” While the cyclopes are left believing that Polyphemus is either a fool or drunk, Odysseus and his men escape. Even one-eyed brutes know that nothing cannot do something.

‘If you start asking scientific questions to scientists, you’ll find that they’re loaded with information. A good scientist has a love of knowledge and a virtually insatiable curiosity, well, at least in their field of expertise. They love to find out why something happened, when it happened, and how it happens. I’m very glad that these people are out there finding out the answers to all of these questions. However, I’ve found that many of these folks only have an apparent insatiable curiosity. Let me illustrate…

We’ve developed some pretty good theories about how and why continents, for instance, were formed. We’ve developed theories about how and why our planet was formed. We’ve developed theories for solar systems, stars, clusters of stars, galaxies, and galactic clusters. However, if you try to back it all of the way up to how and why the entire universe was formed, you’ll find a lot of folks reluctant to answer. I’m not talking about simply explaining the Big Bang theory. I’m talking about explaining how we got to a point (no pun intended) of having a singularity that needed to expand. Where did that come from?

“The Big Bang doesn’t have to answer that”, some will say. “It’s only trying to explain what happened to the singularity after it expanded.” Or, if you prefer biology, evolutionists will tell us that life developed through natural selection and random mutation from a “simple” single-celled organism. How that organism came to live originally, however, is a mystery. And there have been no successful explanations, partly because, as many have said, “Evolution doesn’t seek to explain how life was originally created. It only seeks to explain how it has developed since it began.” Every aspect of biological life has an explanation for its existence in terms of purpose and origin, but life itself has no purpose or origin. Everything from subatomic particles to entire galaxies has an explanation for its origin, some role to fill, but the entire universe itself, taken as a unit, has no purpose. Why is that? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

It’s a logical fallacy to use good, solid science to determine the function and origin of everything in the universe but then turn around and say that the universe as a whole has no function (purpose) or definable origin, or to act as if such an origin does not matter. Yet, I understand why atheists and other naturalists are reluctant to venture a guess into the origin or means by which a singularity came to be. At least when Christians speak of creation ex nihilo there is a God in back of it all to do all of the work. With naturalism, you have to start with nothing. Just try to picture nothing! Even the “void of space” isn’t really a vacuum, isn’t really a void. There’s always a little bit of something there. And there are heavenly bodies, energy, and dimensions to fill up that space. The naturalistic explanation of the universe must not include time, empty space, matter, or energy. You couldn’t even properly imagine it as sheer darkness, for that would require a place for the darkness to exist in. Without space, energy, or time in our description, science can’t even begin to explain what it was like before the universe began. (And I can’t even use the word “before” here in the chronological sense, since there is no time before the universe began. I merely mean it in the descriptive sense.)

Besides all of this, naturalism must assume that the universe is all there is, which means that it is begging the question. Naturalism assumes that observation is the only source of information and that all our observation is accurate and comprehensive, and since nothing beyond our universe can be observed with either instruments or the five senses, then nothing can exist. Of course, the moment something beyond the universe is posed as an explanation for the universe, the naturalist is immediately implying the existence of the supernatural. I suppose you could appeal to the multiverse theory, but you’ve only pushed the problem back a stage or two. Where did the multiverse come from? What created this series or cluster of universes? Then you’re back at the same problem again. If the universe is all matter and energy, then the cause of the universe must be nonphysical and transcendent. That narrows down our options significantly, now doesn’t it?