Time Travel, Is There a God?, and The Kalam Cosmological Argument

This is an essay I wrote... No reason for it... And yet, for very good reason. Sometimes I have these thoughts, or questions and I stop at nothing to find the answer. Once I finish I desire to write my thoughts down, and sometimes you get an essay like this one.

Phi-los-o-phy

noun. (pl. phies)

The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline.

Greek origin: philosophia, 'love of wisdom'

I was going to say I do this kind of thing for the love of Philosophy, but that'd be rather redundant wouldn't you say that'd be rather redundant?

Time Travel, Is There a God?, and The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Do you believe in God? Let's say you do. Believing in God sometimes has its drawbacks. You may be teased, argued with, you might lose friends, or be martyred... but now, I have the answer to all your problems! Never again will a casual conversation between friends erupt into a pointless pissing contest over who's right and who's wrong. Never again will an over-educated atheist put you in your place, for your lack of empirical proof that God exists. How about actually having something real that they can't disagree with even though it's based on faith? How about getting the respect you deserve for articulating your very valid reasoning for having faith in God? How about opening up the door to a progressive (and civil) conversation with an atheist who now knows you have taken the time to educate yourself on the reasoning behind your faith.

This is where apologetics has lead me. Apologetics is that branch of Christian theology that seeks to provide rational warrant for Christianity's true claims. Unbelievers see no reason to believe, making Christians (among the other religions that follow a god) appear irrational and quite insane; or delusional at least.

I've known many unbelievers who have spent a significant amount of time arming their personal mission against Christians. Why would anyone do that? Why not spend time and energy on who you are and what you do believe rather than what you don't believe. The reason is this: These hardcore atheists have more faith than they would ever admit to. At this point they are using more faith that God doesn't exist than believers who put faith in that He does exist. The reason they win arguments over believers is because they almost always control the conversation by taxing the believer to prove their faith is true. This is difficult. One of the rules of apologetics is to not prove your right, but rather, to prove the other guy's wrong. You stay in control, you ask the questions; don't let them ask you to prove why God exists, ask them to prove he doesn't!

1 Peter 3:15 says, "...always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you." Some say the best defense is a good offence. Here's a very good reason that doesn't rest wholly on "blind" faith. Learn it as a defense first. As you begin to understand it, you can form questions out of it. Make them answer your questions so they can more easily accept the logic behind them.

It's called the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It doesn't prove that God exists, but it proves the universe, at one singular moment, began to exist, and ergo, it must have had a cause.

Whatever begins to exist has a cause

The universe began to exist

Therefore, the universe has a cause

How do we prove this? Especially when there are so many who believe the universe is infinite. (Always existed, no god created it, time never began, but always was.) We obviously cannot travel back to the beginning of time to discover the real truth. We have to understand the present to figure out the past. We start with some basic principals of the physical laws of time.

How does one measure eternity? (It's ok, think about it for a while.) We often consider the possibility of eternity. "This argument could go on forever!" or "I feel as though I could swim forever!" Obviously one could not argue for... forever. Nor could one actually swim for a "length" of eternity. If we even stop and ponder this as an actual possibility we will laugh because the notion is absurd. To answer the question, you cannot measure eternity. The reason for this is that there is no such thing as ACTUAL INFINITIES in our reality. (Dimension of time/space; whatever you want to call it.) The only "infinities" that make any rational sense in this reality we live in, is what are called POTENTIAL INFINITIES. These are things that could potentially go on for eternity, but they will always be measured from their beginning to present. A stopwatch is a perfect example. If I press the button on a stopwatch, it will begin counting seconds. (1, 2, 3, 4...) This could, potentially, go on forever, but you will always be able to record the collection of seconds from beginning to present. Like I said, it could go forever. So the problem with this "infinity" is the beginning. The very first second.

Lets say you are reading an (actual) infinitely long book. It takes you roughly two minutes to finish one page. You are, at present, on page 20. So it took you 40 minutes from page one to page twenty. But again the problem is with the beginning. If it had no beginning, how long would it take you to reach page 20? For the sake of argument lets add (successively) to the beginning of the book 10 more pages. How long will it take you to get to page 20? It would take you 1 hour. Let's add 200,000 pages to the beginning. (Over 6,667 hours.) But if this book is infinitely long, and we successively add to the already completed infinite number pages, how long would it take you to get to page 20?

Uh... after an eternity? Right! But an eternity is a completed measurement. You can't add to it's collection, any more than you can subtract from it. The current page your are on loses all relevancy.

To put it another way, (and easier to remember) if your book has infinite pages, how long will it take you to get to page 20? Forever; (or more accurately, never.)

Here are some more examples of the absurdities of actual infinities and the universe not having a beginning.

If you have an Infinitely large CD collection. Each CD has an infinite number of songs, and each song is infinitely long. You have two artists that make up this collection. The Beatles (obviously) and Mozart. You know offhand that you have one Beatles CD and all the rest are Mozart. But because of the infinite number of songs per CD, not to mention their infinite length, you still have just as much Beatles music as you do Mozart. How is this possible with only one Beatles CD? It's not. If actual infinities existed, it would nullify any physical laws of time that teach us what is, and what isn't. It would erase logic.

Here's a similar example. There once was a racecar driver who was driving circuits on a mile long track. He has a four year old son on a tricycle who, like Daddy, is riding in circles. It takes the four year old 12 circles to equal the distance of his father's one circuit mile. There is an unmovable 12:1 ratio. Now if they both rode in circles for an eternity, how many more circles would the son ride? Would it still be 12:1? The answer is no. Because the father is driving forever, he drives an equal number of circuits as his son who is also riding forever. Nonsense.

If you were on a train traveling at 45 mph, on infinitely long tracks, waiting to get to a train station, how long would you be waiting to reach your destination? FOREVER! This makes about as much sense as a one ended stick. The train station represents the present, the tracks represent the silly notion of an infinite universe, and there you are on the train trying to wrap your head around it!

My point is this. If the present exists, (if we exist) there must have been a "page one" to our book. In order to hold true to the notion of an infinite universe you'd have to successively add events prior to the present until eternity, thus never arriving at our present destination, obliterating our very existence! If one was to believe this was a more rational world view than Christianity, they'd need to have more "blind faith" than the Christian! I once spoke to an atheist who believed we didn't actually exist... ??? Unsurprisingly, he couldn't explain himself, and stated that he merely "just believes" this. Blind faith.

Now-- How does God fit in to this? Because we've only, so far, found that the universe has a beginning.

If you have a set of dominoes standing on the floor, the last domino doesn't fall over by itself. It is pushed over by it's predecessor. But how did that one fall? Well it was knocked down just the same. This is an explanation for every event that happens in time. Every event is the effect of a previous cause. If you exist now, it's because your parents at one time, conceived you, but that's not where the line of cause and effect begin, because your parents were the effect of your grandparents cause of conceiving them. This will continue, but not forever. We've established that you cannot just successively add to a completed measurement of eternity because that would be irrational thinking. Or easier put: blind faith without reason. So what is page one? What's the first cause that sprouted effect which was a cause of the next effect and the next, and so forth until the present. What's the first domino? And more importantly, what pushed it over? It would have to be something powerful. Something that wasn't an effect of a previous cause (as this original "cause" is our supposed page one.) As we are counting backwards, this "something" must be singular, as the effects and their causes are narrowed down to the lowest possible denominator. And it would have to be something that resides outside of our dimension of time; as it would have to already exist as such, to begin the chain of events that we know as time itself.

Whatever begins to exist has a cause

The universe began to exist

Therefore, the universe has a cause

Now, unless you were not the effect of some cause, or perhaps you don't even really exist, then you have an idea of whom I'm speaking of. I'm not saying this proves the Judeo-Christian "God" began the first cause, but it does prove (logically not empirically) that a singular, time-transendant, powerful, self-reliant something-or-other exists. To me, this looks like the God of the Bible and doesn't look like any other 'being' or 'force' supposed by any other religion.

Pretty cool, huh? Tell that to an atheist and they will proceed to ask you every question they've ever had about Christianity, and they will eagerly listen to every answer in full. You don't even have to have great answers... you could practically say, "Dude, it's in the Bible." They will accept this without argument because they now respect your reasoning for believing in the Bible. You'll also be surprised by your answers to them, because you won't be flustered, your mind will be unclouded, non-defensive, and you'll be able to recall scripture you didn't even realize you had memorized. That's the Holy Spirit making His way through your words and into the ever softening heart of the nonbeliever.

Now go tell everybody... lets widen the gates so even the stubborn find they're way to righteousness.

-Randy

P.S. I wanted to make animated visual aids, but ... too lazy to finish sentence... not drawing pictures...