[weedseed]

The Cosmological Argument is the argument from the beginning of the universe. If the universe had a beginning, then the universe had a cause. In logical form the argument goes like this:

1. Everything that had a beginning had a cause.

2. The universe had a beginning.

3. Therefore the universe had a cause.

As I showed in Part 1, for an argument to be true it has to be logically valid, and its premises must be true. This is a valid argument, but are the premises true? Let's take a look at the premises.

Premise 1: Everything that had a beginning had a cause--is the the of Causality, which is the fundamental principle of science. Without the Law of Causality, science is impossible. In fact, Francis Bacon (the father of modern science) said, "True knowledge is knowledge by causes." In other words, science is a search for causes. That's what scientists do--they try to discover what caused what.

If there's one thing we've observed about the universe it's that things don't happen without a cause. When a man is driving down the street, a car never appears in front of his car out of nowhere, with no driver or no cause. We know many a police officer has heard this but it just isn't true. There's always a driver or some other cause behind that car appearing. Even the great skeptic David Hume could not deny the Law of Causality. He wrote, "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause."

In fact, to deny the Law of Causality is to deny rationality. The very process of rational thinking requires us to put together thoughts (the causes) that result in conclusions (the effects). So if anyone ever tells you they don't believe in the Law of Causality, simply ask that person, "What caused you to come to that conclusion?"

Since the Law of Causality is well established and undeniable, premise 1 is true. What about premise 2? Did the universe have a beginning? If not, then no cause is needed. If so, then the universe must have had a cause.

Until about the time of Einstein, atheists could comfort themselves with the belief that the universe is eternal, and thus did not need a cause. But since then, five lines of scientific evidence have been discovered that prove beyond reasonable doubt that the universe did indeed have a beginning. And that beginning was what scientists now call "The Big Bang." This Big Bang evidence can be easily remembered by the acronym SURGE.

Every several years or so, the major news magazines--Time, Newsweek, and the like--run a cover story about the origin and fate of the universe. "When did the universe begin?" and "When will it end?" are two of the questions investigated in such articles. The fact that the universe had a beginning will ultimately die is not even up for debate in these reports. Why? Because modern scientists know that a beginning and an ending are demanded by one of the most validated laws of nature--the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This leads us into Part 4