THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
How do we know about God?
Does God really exist? Whenever I ask my class whether they believe in life-after-death, a few of them would raise their hands to signify their disbelief or doubts about it. However, if I ask them whether they believe in the existence of God or not, everyone will raise their hands to indicate their overwhelming conviction that God exists. This is the faith of the majority of the population in my country, the Philippines. Unfortunately, in Europe and in America, a significant number are now atheists specially the former. Does God really exist? I will use the proofs of Saint Thomas Aquinas to prove the existence of God which herein, I will try to expound, but only 2 of them. The other three proofs are deeply philosophical and may not be appreciated by most readers.
1. The Principle of Cause and Effect
Every effect comes from a cause simply means that everything has a beginning. Whenever I discuss this concept in my class, I normally begin by asking them why does the wind blow inside this closed room. They would answer, “it is because of the electric fan.” How does the electric fan do it? The motor rotates the fan blade which blows the air. Why does the motor rotate? The electric current brings the motor into motion. Where does electric current come from?..from the power plant. Who made the power plant? .. men constructed it. Where does man come from? If we take Darwin's theory of evolution, man came from APES. Where do APES come from?..from small apes?.. Where do the small apes come from? And so on, and so forth...Does this series of cause and effect have no end? Does it go infinitely? If it does, then there is no beginning. Is that possible? Atheists believe that the universe could have existed from eternity. Is this true? or possible?
My contention is time itself has a beginning. By the very essence and definition of time, time must have a beginning. Time is the duration between before, now and after. The before of now is the past. Now is the present and the after of now is the future.
finite
infinite past present infinite
past <----------------|------------------------|---------------------------------------------> future
beginning
1. If we are going to meet in the infinite future, we will never meet because the infinite future has no final point or end.
2. If time is eternal, that means it has no beginning, then time has an infinite past and therefore has no end either.
3. The present relative to the past is the future of the past and if the past is infinite, then the present will never arrive because the present becomes an infinite future of the past.
4. But the present is here and has arrived. Therefore the past is not infinite, that means the past is finite and therefore time has a beginning.
5. The principle of cause and effect states that every physical effect has a cause. The physical universe is a series of causes and effects. This series of physical cause and effect cannot be ad infinitum or cannot go on infinitely since the physical universe is time bound. In other words, this series of cause and effect cannot regress infinitely since the physical universe is time bound and because time has a beginning. Therefore, there is the beginning of the universe wherein the initial physical cause has no physical cause but has a different kind of cause.
6. What is then the cause of this initial physical cause? What is then the cause of time? That cause is not physical but spiritual and is transcendental to it which we call God. It is transcendental in the sense that it transcends the physical universe and is not part of it.
The argument of some philosopher atheists that the universe could have been here from eternity is not valid since time itself is not eternal but has a beginning. The universe is time bound. The universe exists in time and it cannot exist outside time. Therefore the universe has a beginning as time has.
Scientists particularly cosmologists do not believe that the universe has no beginning. That is exactly what they are trying to determine: how did the universe begin? The most accepted theory of the origin of the universe now is the Big Bang Theory with some new modifications. In a capsule, according to this theory the whole unimaginable vast universe came from a very explosive energy beginning from a very tiny space, a billion times smaller than a proton. From the explosion of this energy, matter appeared; that means in the beginning there was transformation from energy to matter beginning with sub-atomic particles to atoms. What we experience in our daily life is matter being transformed into energy like when you burn paper. The matter or substance of paper is transformed to heat energy. The matter is gone because it is turned into energy. However in the beginning of the universe the reverse process was happening. It was energy being transformed into matter. But where did this time, space and energy come from? Some cosmologists are now considering the proposal that the whole universe started from absolute nothingness, in which neither matter nor energy, space nor time exists. But that would be the most absurd theory that you can think of. It is against logic to say something comes from nothing. Can you believe that inside your room suddenly an apple appeared on the table and say it just appeared there from nothing. That is absolutely an absurd proposition because nothing comes from nothing unless that something has been there ever since which means that something has no beginning. But the universe had not come by itself and neither is it eternal, that is why the search for the origin of the universe has been continuous. That theory that the universe came from nothing can only hold if what they meant by nothing is nothing physical: there is no other physical cause that had brought time, space and matter into being. That would be understandable. I can understand that scientists do not include philosophy in their scientific research. They only involved themselves with physical matters. Scientists are now heading towards the end of the line wherein they can no longer find an initial physical cause that brought time, space and matter into being, in essence the cause that had brought the universe into existence. They will never find one because the initial cause is not physical but spiritual. What is beyond time , space and matter is no longer physical and that is why their search for the origin of the universe would end there. This is what St. Thomas proposes in his proof of the existence of God that in the principle of cause and effect, the series of cause and effect cannot go on infinitely. Thus, there would come a point that scientists will find the initial physical cause of everything, the physical origin of the universe. And when that time comes, the big question remains: Where did that initial physical origin come from? Who started it all? The answer is GOD. GOD WHO LIVES IN ETERNITY. NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING.
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References
www.howstuffworks.com/Big Bang Theory and Before the Big Bang
good read!
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