How To Prove The Universe Was Created
In this series of videos we are going to look at some of the classic “Proofs of Creation” arguments from the history of philosophy that I find very persuasive. These arguments show, successfully to my mind, why it is impossible for the world to have existed forever in the past.
In other words, we are going to look at some arguments that show the idea of an “eternal universe” leads to contradiction and is therefore impossible.
By “eternal universe” we mean that the physical, changing, temporal universe has always existed, and goes back “forever” in time. In this way, both time and the changing physical universe would be eternal or infinite in the past.
A lot of atheists like the idea of an eternal universe for obvious reasons. They think that if the physical universe has always been here then we don’t need to ask about how it got here.
But the idea that the world never began is highly problematic.
In fact, there are at least four arguments to show that such an eternal universe is impossible.
The Argument From The Impossibility Of Traversing The Infinite
The Argument From The Impossibility Of Forming The Infinite By Successive Addition
The Argument From The Impossibility Of Increasing The Infinite
The Argument From The Impossibility Of The Part Equaling The Whole
Four Arguments Showing The Impossibility Of An Eternal Universe
These arguments are reductio ad impossibile (“reduction to impossibility”) style arguments showing the contradictions that arise from any claim like “The world has always been here,” “The past is infinite,” or “The universe never began”. Any claim like that cannot possibly be true.
The operative philosophical principle here goes back to Aristotle: “from the possible nothing impossible follows”. This principle means that in order for something to be possible, it has to not only be possible in itself (or like at “first glance”) but it also cannot lead to something else or entail something that is impossible.
So in short, if something is possible, then it cannot entail something else that is impossible.
So this means that if an eternal universe is possible, then an eternal universe cannot entail something that is impossible.
But there are good reasons to think that it does just that. Here we consider four such reasons.
The Argument From The Impossibility Of Traversing The Infinite
The first argument argues from the impossibility of traversing the infinite.
In philosophy, to “traverse” something means to “go through” it. So if I “traverse” the road to my work that just means I go through it.
We can traverse distance and we can traverse time.
We all traverse the time of our lives in the sense that we go through it.
But on the hypothesis that the world never began, that means past time is infinite. And this is where the problem starts, since, as many philosophers have recognized, the infinite cannot be traversed.
Imagine trying to traverse through an infinite number of steps on an escalator. You cannot get to the end because there is no end. An infinite number of steps cannot be “gone through”.
And that means past time must be like that too.
Why?
Well, it is certainly true that all of past time has been traversed or “gone through”.
But could all of past time be traversed if past time were infinite?
Imagine if the past number of say, days, were infinite. And imagine if you tried to traverse all of the past days by going backwards in time. You could never do so! You could never go through an infinite number of days!
But it is the same number of days regardless of which direction in time you travel.
If you can’t go through an infinite number of days going backwards in time, you couldn’t go through an infinite number of days moving forwards in time either.
So the claim “the past is infinite” entails an impossibility. It entails the contradiction: “that which has been traversed, is that which cannot be traversed”.
Or if you prefer, that which has been gone through, cannot possibly be gone through.
We can summarize the argument this way:
If the past is infinite, then infinite past time has been traversed.
But infinite past time cannot be traversed
Therefore, the past is not infinite
The argument is valid which means if the premises are true the conclusion must be true as well.
The first premise is necessarily true.
And the second premise is necessarily true as well since its denial leads to contradiction - the claim “the past is infinite” entails an impossibility. It entails the contradiction: “that which has been traversed, is that which cannot be traversed”.
The conclusion therefore, that the past is not infinite must be true, which means the world had a beginning.
