WHY? Course | Transcripts of Interviews and Questions for Further Reflection
Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there order rather than disorder?
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Why God? Does God Exist?
Sunrise from space: the movements of planets and stars follow precise mathematical laws.
Living things evolve in a kind of creative tension, with harmony emerging from individual spontaneity and change.
The invisible world of mathematics has its own beauty revealed by modern computers.
The search for ‘because’ (the ‘cause-of-being’) and for a first or ultimate cause of all things
By nature we desire to know. Not just what things are but why they are. People ask such questions of the things around us. But many have dared to ask why is there something rather than nothing? Why am I here at all? Where am I going? These are big questions which need big answers.
Some people talk about the existence of God today as if this was a new or serious problem. But in fact most philosophers throughout most of human history have held that there is a God, and that we can prove there is a God. Most of the Western intellectual tradition started with two ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. They helped to shape many of our institutions. They invented biology, they helped to invent logic, and we still draw from a lot of their thoughts today. Both Plato and Aristotle in different ways hold that there is a God. For Plato, God was the form of the good. other things, like a domino that has to be pushed by another domino in order to topple over (top-right). But this chain of casues cannot continue forever, or there would be no beginning, middle or end. Nor can all the causes go in a circle (bottom-right), because the circle does not cause itself either. So philosophers like Aristotle (left) came to the conclusion that there must be a ‘first cause’, something that causes everything else without itself being caused - and this is what human beings naturally call ‘God’.
God exists or not?
Today many people struggle with Atheism and Agnosticism but remain unsatisfied. The search for God and the enquiry into whether God is real is not something that people only did in times past but is relevant to people throughout time and throughout the world. We can know that God exists through reason, not just through Faith. It’s clear in the world around us. We see so many things that change, that come and go. They don’t have to be there. They might not be there in the future. But for anything to be there at all, for there to be something rather than nothing, there has to be one thing, one principle that must be – that has to be. And it can’t be material either, because all material things by their nature come and go. It must be a Spiritual principle – which we call God.
There is nothing that we know of in the universe that causes itself. All things are caused by
1 Why should I care if
For Aristotle, the other great founder of Western intellectual tradition, God is that which moves everything else but is not himself moved. He puts everything else into motion and causes the change that we see in the world. Aristotle said that God is good, and God is perfect, and God is eternal.
2 Surely the universe just is? We don’t need to know anything else to explain it.
3 Surely intelligent people today don’t believe in God?