A live atlas of reasons and replies

Is God the cause of the Universe (or physical reality)?

Trace the strongest lines of support, challenge each claim, and follow every response as far as the reasoning goes.

Orient yourself to the question
02 Reasons
supporting
04 Reasons
challenging

Before you begin

Orient yourself to the question

01 Clarifying the question

Assuming that physical reality began to exist, and it has a cause, the following question can arise in canonical Kalam Cosmological Argument: Is that cause God?

  • God = def. The “greatest possible being”—maximally worthy of worship. In virtue of God's unsurpassable greatness then, God is thought to have the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence.
  • Physical reality = def. The Universe, or conjunction of all universes, and the laws that govern them. All space and time.
Current question Is God the cause of the Universe (or physical reality)?
Yes
No
Yes Reasons affirming the proposition Is God the cause of the Universe (or physical reality)?

  • It can exist with no space, time, matter

    If space, time, and matter began to exist, then the cause of those three things obviously can't depend on those three things. (That would require self-causation.) So the cause is spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. This is relevant because it sounds very suspiciously like God; and functions as a powerfully fulfilled theistic prediction that atheists never imagined and entirely failed to make.

  • It has the power and disposition to cause it

    Whatever caused the Universe to exist (i.e. space, time, matter), must have at least both the ability and disposition to cause those specific three things to exist. This is relevant because such a cause sounds very suspiciously like God; and functions as a powerfully fulfilled theistic prediction that atheists never imagined and entirely failed to make.

No Reasons challenging the proposition Is God the cause of the Universe (or physical reality)?

  • God wouldn't have reason to (not expected)

    Even if God existed, creating a universe is not the kind of thing God would do. This is relevant because in the absence of seeing a reason to create something as highly specific as a universe, the likelihood that an all-good God would choose to create it is very low.

    But no, plausibly God sees a “choice arena” for embodied agents as very good.

  • God does not exist

    Theism is false. There is no God to create the universe.